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Drawing from Life: Memory and Subjectivity in Comic Art

Online ISBN:
9781621039907
Print ISBN:
9781617039058
Publisher:
University Press of Mississippi
Book

Drawing from Life: Memory and Subjectivity in Comic Art

Published:
1 December 2013
Online ISBN:
9781621039907
Print ISBN:
9781617039058
Publisher:
University Press of Mississippi

Abstract

Autobiography has seen enormous expansions and challenges over the past decades. One of these expansions has been in comics, and it is an expansion that pushes back against any postmodern notion of the death of the author/subject, while also demanding new approaches from critics. This book is about autobiography, semi-autobiography, fictionalized autobiography, memory, and self-narration in sequential art, or comics. The book engages with well-known figures such as Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, and Alison Bechdel; with cult-status figures such as Martin Vaughn James; and with lesser-known works by artists such as Frédéric Boilet. Negotiations between artist/writer/body and drawn/written/text raise questions of how comics construct identity, and are read and perceived, requiring a critical turn towards theorizing the comics’ viewer. At stake in comic memoir and semi-autobiography is embodiment. Remembering a scene with the intent of rendering it in sequential art requires nonlinear thinking and engagement with physicality. Who was in the room and where? What was worn? Who spoke first? What images dominated the encounter? Did anybody smile? Man or mouse? Unhinged from the summary paragraph, the comics artist must confront the fact of the flesh, or the corporeal world, and they do so with fascinating results.

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