Canadian comics is all Drawn & Quarterly and Dave Sim, right? English language Canadian comics get the attention from the English reading blogosphere, but there’s a whole world of French language comics from Quebec. Thanks to the webcomics at Grandpapier (a few of which I’ve written about before: here, here, here, and briefly here) I discovered the work of the group of Quebecois comic artists around the small publisher Colosse, which publishes small print runs of books by a fairly consistent group of artists. I’ve read and reread a few of these in the past weeks, and I thought I’d share some thoughts on works by three of the artists.

Page 14 from Cinema (web version).

Cinéma by Sébastien Trahan (Colosse, 2010) – I was first tipped off about this book by Vincent Giard (on whom, more below) who suggested this to me after reading my recent comic Badman’s Cave, in which I redrew an old western comic, removing the figures and abstracting some of the objects. In this book, created for Grandpapier’s “24 heures de bande dessinée” in 2009, Trahan has also redrawn an old western 24 heures pour Doc Silver (1968). In a loose black line, Trahan starts with redrawing the full contents of the panels. The story has the Doc looking for disappeared people, one quickly realizes, not people who have been kidnapped or run-off, but those who have literally disappeared. At one point he speaks to a woman who is invisible. Across the course of the comic, more elements of the story-world begin to disappear: characters, words, objects, setting, even panel borders. The penultimate page is a few panel borders and some hatching, the last is blank. Beyond this level of the comic, the captions set-up a framing narrative. An unnamed and unseen (though I guess that is him on the cover) narrator speaks in black caption boxes that pepper the story: the comic we are seeing is a film the narrator is watching. The narrator is confused by the film, watching as the sound goes out (the words balloons are emptied), as the characters disappear. Soon even the narrator disappears. The comic is haunting in its way, not through the emotional pull of the western story but through the slow disintegration of the world. I’ve read and reread this book a number of times, something in it speaks to me. Sure, I love formalist art like this, but there is more to it than that. You can read it yourself (the words are in French, but almost half the book is wordless) at Grandpapier.

Lecture à Vue: La Mauvaise Tête Dessine Alto by various (Colosse, 2010) – This anthology features a group of six artists (La Mauvaise Tète) making adaptions (very loose ones it seems) of works from the publisher Alto. The included artists are David Turgeon, Vincent Giard, Jimmy Beaulieu (who is also the publisher of Colosse), Julie Delporte, Sébastien Trahan, and Catherine Genest. Perhaps it is just the artists’ styles, but I think the loose adaption concept ended up causing them to create stories that are quite open. Almost every story in the book has the pleasing quality of feeling unexplained, not too wrapped up, never completely clear. Because of this, the stories lend themselves to rereading. This is one of the most successful anthologies I’ve read in awhile (probably a combination of the theme and the group coherency). A few comments on my favorite pieces:

Page 61 from Lecture a vue. From Trahan's La reduction.

Trahan’s 24 page story “La réduction” is the longest in the book, a story that I find hard to explain. The images all have the look of being photo referenced (though not photo realistic), showing images of China. There are no apparent characters shown, the images coalesce around setting and occasional scenes (people waiting in a train station, crowded city streets, empty plains traversed by train tracks). The narrative captions which provide the main narrative thrust of the story are elliptical, telling the story of Monsieur Ho (which is the title of the novel Trahan is adapting) a officer of the census for the Chinese government who seems to lose himself in the country, in thoughts. I am guessing, based on the title, that Trahan is taking text from various parts of the novel to create a reduced form of the story (kind of like the Oubapian procedure reducing a comic to one page formed from various panels from different places in the work). Overall the mode is quite evocative. I sure wish Trahan made more comics, because the two I’ve read so far are really fabulous.

David Turgeon’s “La Thrave: un introduction” is basically a man explaining a strange tarot-esque card game to a women. The art is almost exlcusively simple frontal images of the man and the woman punctuated by more detailed images of various cards in the game. The narrator’s story winds around to autobiography and the blurring of boundaries between the game and life. It’s a credit to Turgeon’s writing that the repetitive imagery does not get boring and how effectively the card images work with the narrator’s monologue to suggest untold aspects to his tale.

Vincent Giard’s “Le trou dans les nuages” (“The Hole in the Clouds”) is only four single panel pages, yet it succeeds as a short and mysterious narrative about a strange object on a beach that seems to be sucked up into the sky while observed by a crowd of people. I’m also a big fan of Giard’s style, an unvarying line that is both angular and curved punctuated by black shapes. The figures have a certain cartoony minimalism to them.

Page 28 from Jardin botanique.

Jardin Botanique by David Turgeon (Colosse, 2011) – This book is subtitled “bande dessinée automatique”, automatic comic, which I assume is automatic in the sense of Surrealist automatic writing, where the writer just lets out whatever comes to mind, trying to bring forth the subconscious’s narrative. In this case Turgeon has created an abstract comic filled with organic forms. It does not have the slow transformation of an organic “character” that a number of abstract comics have, rather Turgeon’s images are unstable and shifting never clearly staying long with any single identifiable “character”, hinting at (partially because of the title) trees, flowers, insects. What starts as predominantly vertical images, evoking dense tree trunks, moves through a number of stylistic sections. The verticals slowly give way to smaller rectangular shapes then to scribbled forms that seem like insects flying about. A two page spread is dominated by areas of dense parallel shading. Another section is composed of short hatch marks. At one point I can almost see small, loosely drawn stick figures. Turgeon creates rhythm and motion through the not quite chaos of his pencil marks’ repetition and variation. The gestural marks bring to mind a kind of abstract expressionism in pencil. The cover image rhymes with some of the internal pages but is drawn in a plethora of colors (I can imagine the whole book done this way, it would be lovely). Originally published in 2006, an excerpt from this would have made a nice addition to the Abstract Comics anthology, as nothing in that volume has quite the same feel. You can read an excerpt at Turgeon’s site.

Page 31 from Laisse Tomber les Filles (web version of story).

Laisse Tomber les Filles by Vincent Giard (Colosse, 2010) – A collection of shorter pieces by Giard. Like the comics in Lecture à Vue these stories all leave much unsaid, in this case literally, as the two longest stories in the book eschew any real text. One story follows two men one evening as they walk around town and head into the woods (you can read it online here). Throughout the pages the two men are conversing yet Giard has erased through the center of the text, obscuring the actual words. One can occasionally make out a letter of a partial word, but except for two phrases we are left outside their words. At one point the phrase “Her tiny pyramids” is completely unobscured, while later on the last two balloons in the story are crossed out but readable. I should note that Giard has subtitled the French text with English at the bottom of each page. This text is obscured the same as the text in the balloons. Another story (which you can read here), which starts with the image of empty word balloons popping out the window of a building, takes place at a party where all the word balloons are left empty. The interaction between the characters is almost completely opaque because of this. Two men fight for reasons I cannot fathom. In both stories Giard slips into abstraction for a brief few panels, the shift away from representation echoes the incomprehensibility of the dialogue in the stories. Without really being able to articulate why, I love Giard’s style, especially in that second story, where details seem unnecessary and the lines are crisp yet not too precise.

For some of Giard’s color work, check out this awesome wordless comic.

You can view Colosse’s catalog here. The books are printed in very limited runs, so many of them are sold out (though Cinema, Jardin Botanique, and Lecture à Vue are still available), but they put out new volumes pretty frequently.

This panel from Blueberry: The Outlaw is certainly a dramatic, dark and moody, well-crafted image. The panel suggests a whole story surrounding it, a previous moment, a next moment. Alone it offers all sorts of possibilities and questions. Who is this figure on horseback? Why is he approaching that run-down gothic house which seems so out of place amongst the empty landscape that surrounds it? Who lives/lived in that house and what will the rider find when he gets there?

A certain strangeness infuses the scene. The odd house evokes a horror setting (not just for the Psycho reference which I never would have noticed if Craig hadn’t mentioned it). Is this the start of a ghost story? Lightning flashes in the background, illuminating the hills in white, a line that cuts across the panel. The style is realistic: proportioned figures (human and equine) and background, shadowing and texture that attempts to replicate some sense of reality. Yet, as we look closer, we can see rain falling on the roof of the building in the foreground and dripping over its edge. The rain doesn’t fall anywhere else. There is no indication of water anywhere else. The rain adds to the dramatic almost clichéd mood, yet it is also at odds with the stylistic realism. The colors too (done by the artist himself, I feel I should note) work both for the mood and against the realism. The monochromatic blue is perfect for a nighttime scene with that single spot of yellow to draw the eye and generate some plot-based tension.

This panel made me want to read the rest of the story, and it provides a lesson in taking the part for the whole. The drama that this panel evokes, the gothic horror, the mystery, begins and ends on one page. It starts with this panel and is deflated with the turn of the page. There is no real mystery, there is no real surprise. I tried to read the story, really, but… I couldn’t get through it. I’ve had this growing interest in westerns over the recent past, mostly films, finding examples that are more than just rote genre exercises. I’ve wondered about western comics, a genre that seems to have mostly disappeared. Many westerns are about individual heroes, and all the western comics I can think of are, from those based on tv/film stars (Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Johnny Mack Brown) to those that seem are more superhero-esque (Blueberry, Jonah Hex, Rawhide Kid).

I realize now that what I like in the westerns I enjoy most is not the wandering gunfighter, the “man with no name” type, but the clash of characters and society, of society forming in a chaotic (if not lawless) setting, and characters fighting with and against their own desires and that of others: Deadwood, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, Johnny Guitar, Canyon Passage, Stage Coach.

I, for one, am glad Jean Giraud became Moebius, as the latter’s work is, to me, more interesting.

A few comments from the original post at The Panelists:

Derik Badman:

Isaac Cates:

Derik Badman:

Isaac Cates:

Craig Fischer:

Derik Badman:

Derik Badman:

Noah Berlatsky:

Noah Berlatsky:

Derik Badman:

Noah Berlatsky:

david t:

Derik Badman:

david t:

Charles Hatfield:

Derik Badman:

Charles Hatfield:

Derik Badman:

Noah Berlatsky:

Matthias Wivel:

Derik Badman:

Charles Hatfield:

Aristophane has been on my radar for awhile as one of those French comic artists I needed to read more of. This year I am extremely happy to have become acquainted with his work. In conjunction with translating an amazing article on Aristophane by Fabrice Neaud, I ended up reading his epic Conte Démoniaque (L’Association, 1996), a powerful Dante-esque story about hell, demons, and the damned (which I hope to write on at another time) and now comes this translation of Les Soeurs Zabime (Ego Comme X, 1996) as The Zabime Sisters.

First Second clearly picked the more accessible of Aristophane’s major works, this one seemingly targeted at young adults (or at least not, like Conte Démoniaque, a work most people would not give to children with its violence, trauma, and pervasive nudity) but also readable and enjoyable for adults. If not a true all ages book, it is a “most ages” book.

If for nothing else, I urge you to read this book for the art. Aristophane’s expressionistic brushwork is captivating and beautful. His line ranges from a thin sinuosity to thick dense slashes of black. In between is the rare (in comics at least) use of dry brush where the depletion of ink causes a disintegration of the density of the line, allowing for the white of the paper to show through and the bristles of the brush to become apparent. It’s a dense and loose style, even the panel borders are dynamic often with a panel having three thin borders and one that splashes into a thick swath of black. You can enjoy this book just for the art. A case in point, though they are shown in a rather reduced size, are the short stories Aristophane’s French publisher Ego Comme X has made available online (in French). Three early prequel/preliminary stories of a sort to this book (click on the little pages on the right), featuring the Zabime sisters, show off his work even if you can’t read it, though, I should note, in these stories, a slightly less evolved form of his style (ie this book is even better). (For those who do read the French text of these, I’ll add that those stories are also less effective, more childish in a way, than this later version of the sisters.)

The story is a fairly simple realism with characters and situations that are easy to accept and believe. The plot itself, such as it is, flows smoothly like a small fragment of life, a day in this case, the first day of summer vacation for the three Zabime sisters. Oddly, the event that is most built up through the course of the story, is one that barely involves the sisters, a fight between two boys, which is witnessed by only one of the sisters. This fight is mentioned early in the book and provides a momentary element of suspense and a sense of time to the story.

But primarily the story is made of small episodes, a busy day for the sisters as they play. What comes through most to me on my two (three?) readings of the book so far is the how much the children commit what one might call small evils against each other: mean jokes, taunting, humiliation, etc. They fight and forgive. These are not the idealized children you find in many stories where the protagonists are all good and the antagonist is clearly limned. There’s a honesty to the depiction that is quite refreshing.

Aristophane keeps the reader from identifying any one of the characters as the primary protagonist by shifting the focalization frequently throughout. Even the kid who has started the fight and is seemingly hated by almost everyone else, is given some amount of focus that softens (if not forgives) his actions. This shifting of focalization is primarily attained through the textual narration. The narration is not prevalent in the book, it just jumps in at certain moments, almost exclusively to give the reader a brief insight into the thoughts/feelings of a character. This is not thought balloon-like internal monologue, rather, the extradiegetic narrator just tells us something about the character: “Celina got up after making them beg her. She took particular pleasure in being pleased with and in feeling indispensable.” (p.4) “Rodrigues was as proud as his brother, maybe even more so. He was radiating self-satisfaction.” (p.18) These moments of narrative insight color our views of the characters, providing information unavailable through the imagery, pointing out motivations for actions and a limited psychology, often the invisible pleasures of taunting a friend. At some points the narration is less successful, offering much more conventionally descriptive text that is an unnecessary addition to the images, such as this panel:

We don’t really need the text here, and unlike most of the narration, it does not give us an internal information.

The story would be interesting, but only so much if it weren’t for the artwork. Aristophane’s brushwork is so loose and expressive. The panels show a fondness for foliage. The lush foliage of the setting (Guadeloupe) fill the pages, often overwhelming even the characters (see the image below) as if Aristophane were creating the landscape itself as the real subject. And perhaps it is. The story takes place almost completely outside, and most of that time is away from any man-made structures.

The images also use expressive effects to underscore the actions, thoughts, or other diegetic content. A few examples to showcase some of Aristophane’s art.

Here the dry brush technique is used to show movement. Similarly we see the use of expressive abstraction, which is used a few times in the book. Here’s another example:

In the image below we see thick brushstrokes which cover the heads of the children as they suffer from the effects of smoking a pipe stolen from one of their fathers:

Also note the use of a wasp(?) as an adjacent symbol to the tobacco effects. The thick strokes are used in the panel below not only as representative abstractions of foliage but also to bring the reader’s view in line with that of the characters, obscuring the object of attention (a baby bird).

Here, the dry brush is applied very lightly, in contrast to the primarily very dense panels, to bring forth the fear of the children:

At times Aristophane’s compositions are so dense and uniform that they lose focus creating an all-over structure that can elude any easy center of attention, perhaps this mirrors the characters themselves as they too lack clear goals or attention. It’s summer vacation after all, and they are young.

Over at The Hooded Utilitarian my translation of Fabrice Neaud’s “Conte Démoniaque: La fin des temps” from Critix 2 (1997): 37-53. It’s a engrossing article about Aristophane’s Conte Démoniaque, a long and brilliant French comic that takes place in hell.

On a broad sense, most writers about comics have some sort of shorthand they use to describe a comic’s style without having to go into too much detail. R Fiore took on this language in a post at The Comics Journal earlier this year. He mostly seems interested in replacing terms like “realist” and “cartoony” with his own terminology “literal” and “freestyle”. His plotting of some kind of continuum is reminiscent of McCloud’s pyramid in Understanding Comics (Chapter 2, p52-3 in my edition), though Fiore’s is a lot less complex (one assumes he didn’t spend a lot of time charting this out like McCloud did). McCloud gives his continuums names (“realistic,” “iconic,” “non-iconic,” “abstraction”) but does not offer much in the way of general descriptive terminology that doesn’t involve a direct reference to the style’s location on his chart (which is how he discusses the work in the rest of the chapter). I do think his two continuums are important to discussions of style, the realistic to iconic and the realistic to abstract, one might say. Though these categories really only address the style fidelity (or not) to representation in relation to what we see, to a kind of ideal viewing of the world, an invisible style of photography and film at its most conventional.

Fiore’s argument with “realist” seems to be based on the idea that many images in comics do not actual exist in reality. This is a rather limiting way to address the issue, and, I think, creates a needlessly confused terminology. If anything, I think “realist” is a term most people can hear and grasp rather easily. To me the descriptor “cartoony” is about caricature, exaggeration, and a certain plasticity that I associate with early Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons. Exaggerated proportions, exaggerated movement, exaggerated features combined with a simplicity of representation.

In a recent comment thread at Comics Comics, Frank Santoro made some style related comments, that offer another stylistic descriptor: mannerist.

What I’m saying is that there is a lack of “naturalness” in the alt/art comics tradition. Think Mazzucchelli’s Year One. Toth’s Bravo for Adventure. Jaime’s Locas. All are “natural” or “realistic” approaches. Frank Quitely is a “natural” approach. What I call mannerism is a style that shuns “realistic” proportions and reduces everything to symbols. Think Clowes’s Ghost World. Realistic but mannered. I looked on the shelves for “unaffected, natural drawing” in comics (think Edward Hopper’s drawings or even, again, Eddie Campbell) and I cannot find much. There’s Jaime. So between photo-realism and Gary Panter there is alot to chose from. Fine. But there isn’t much to choose from on the shelves because most comics artists draw in a highly affected style. Particularly alt/art cartoonists. In fact, I think that is beginning to describe alt/art comics: not realistic. How many alt/art cartoonists “tighten up” and draw “real people” without too much reference and keep all the proportions right? Not many by my count last week when I was at work.

In a later post he further discusses “naturalism” as style: “A clear, observational drawing style based on a study of life as it appears to the naked eye. Stylized, yes, but accurate to life in proportion and feel.”

It seems to me there are multiple factors at work in many of these issues. Fidelity to (a real or imagined) reality can take the form of rendering, details, proportion, shape, or color. I can draw a realistically proportioned figure that is all straight lines and ninety degree angles or I can draw the exaggerated proportions of a Schulz character but render it with realistic shading/tone. Another factor at work, when trying to describe style is how often it is not consistent across the work as as whole or even within the same image (McCloud addresses the issue in relation to figure/background in manga, while Parille (see below) notes variations even within the same figure). Can I say Tezuka’s Phoenix is realistic or naturalistic when he draws an almost photorealistically rendered mountain scene and places a character in the scene who is four heads tall and has a giant bulbous nose?

Style is so much more than just about representation in relation to reality (whether that be a real or imagined reality), which is something Ken Parille addresses in a post about an exercise he did with one of his classes. Parille had his class comparing and describing the “basic visual style” of three separate comics. By “basic visual style” he is excluded issues of theme, plot, words, pacing, page layout, etc. and concentrating on a single panel image, which is certainly a good place to start, though I think addressing issues of style in comics should extend to use of those other elements (particularly pacing and layouts).

He notes the areas focused on in his class’s discussion:

Line: smooth to rough; loose to tight; thin to thick
Texture and pattern: (what kinds?); sparse to dense, loose to organized
Panel density: sparse to dense (amount of empty space relative to filled space)
Gestures, face and body: compare with “reality” — realistic to exaggerated
Body proportions: within the figure and when compared with “reality” — realistic to exaggerated
Density of character detail: in particular we looked at the number and kinds of lines used to draw the faces

One could probably find dozens of more facets to describe in relation to style, any discussion or description is necessarily limited both for time/length and in relation to the works under discussion (we wouldn’t discuss color in relation to a black and white image, though we may discuss tone; we wouldn’t discuss body proportions in relation to a comic without bodies).

I thought Parille’s exercise would be helpful for my own writing and reading, so I’m going to attempt to describe the style of three comics I’ve read recently (or am reading now). All three are French language autobiographical bandes dessinées, which gives them a certain similarity, but each are stylistically different. The three works I will address are: Faire Semblant C’est Mentir [Pretending is Lying] by Dominique Goblet (L’Association, 2008), Journal (3) by Fabrice Neaud (Ego Comme X, 2002; Expanded edition 2010), and 1h25 by Judith Forest (Cinquieme Couche, 2009). (I’ll note all are excellent works and well worth seeking out and reading.)

I’m going to take a single page (or portion of a page) from each book as a representative example. I’ve tried to select panels that include both figures and backgrounds. I should note that Goblet’s and Forest’s books both, to differing extents, use variable styles through their course, while Neaud is much more consistent. For this reason I’ll start with this panel from Neaud’s book.

Most of page 24 of Neaud's Journal (3).

The first thing we note about Neaud’s art is the realism. His figures have realistic proportions; his faces lack the exaggerated features or the extreme iconic abstraction of so much comic art. They look like actual people (and they are, the figure in the lighter coat is Neaud himself). Similarly, the buildings, cars, and other objects in the background are realistically sized and share the figures appearance of being representationally close to an existing reality.

The amount of detail in the characters and backgrounds is variable from one object to the next. The foreground face in panel one shows more detail than the background face in the same panel, but both share what we might call a contour line representation of the features. The objects in the background are primarily outline and texture or pattern, maintaining a simplicity that is appropriate to the importance and size of the objects.

Neaud’s lines are variable but consistent. That is, he uses lines of varying weight, but each line does not change weight (or only very little). He’s either using a number of very stiff pen nibs (so the line weight does not vary) or possibly (though it seems less likely) some kind of technical pens. A variety of line weights are found throughout the image, from the thick lines at the back of Neaud’s coat in the first panel or on canopy of the foremost car in the third panel, to the very thin hatching lines on the face of the foremost figure in panel one or the clouds in panel three.

The lines are precise without being stiff or ruled. Even in the textures, patterns, and tonal hatching Neaud’s rarely becomes overly stiff or creates too flat a surface. The tonal hatching on the face in panel one, the jacket in panel two, or the figures’ shadows on the ground in panel two shifts angles in a way that models the shapes (face, jacket) or adds texture to the tone (ground). The flat patterning found in panel three (the background building, the area in the foreground behind the car) serves primarily as a compositional element, filling in spaces that don’t require detail and creating an illusion of depth of space. The less flat patterning/texture of the stones on the buildings show a looser use of line work.

Dense blacks are spread across the panels, with larger areas serving as compositional foci (the black jacket) or visual direction (note the movement of blacks in panel three from the largest area at the upper left (where we read the first caption) through the smaller but denser areas around it to the car (the second largest black area) which leads into the second caption. The panel ends with the horizontal black area under the foliage which leads off the page.

In general, Neaud uses tone inconsistently. He is not modeling every figure with hatching, nor is he adding texture or pattern to all the spaces. These elements are all applied as necessary to add a sense of realism (this is autobiography after all, and one that is very much about “telling all” in some sense) without overpowering the images.

Compositionally, the panels are filled without being overly crowded. The third panel has a lot of content in it, but it does not read as too busy or crowded. Throughout the book, more often than not, Neaud fills his panels, including background elements behind his characters to keep the scene set, so to speak.

In the end, Neaud’s realistic but simplified rendering of his images, using variable amounts of tonal, modelling, and texture inconsistently, allows for panels that hover between a photorealistic level of detail and a more iconic simplicity. This keeps the sense of reality and the feeling that the images are drawn from life but without bogging down the images in an excessive amounts of line, tone, or detail.

Forest's 1h25, page 173.

Judith Forest’s images are also clearly drawn from life, but have a very different style than Neaud’s. Like Neaud’s images, Forest’s use realistic proportions for the figures and background and she also eschews exaggeration of features. Unlike, Neaud, Forest’s images are less concrete and precise, attributable to a few stylistic factors.

This page (and many in her book) are drawn in pencil, which gives a line of fairly consistent weight but of less consistent density (or tone). The lines are looser, less precise than Neaud, Forest’s images look like sketches more than a “finished” drawing. Lines overlap and overshoot the limits of the object they represent.

Forest uses varying levels of detail in her images. Often, the faces are blank or reduced to just a few features, such as the figure in the first image. The backgrounds have details on the level of shape and outline, but mostly eschew tone, texture, or any kind of modeling. The level of detail despite its sparseness in these areas still retains the sense of being drawn from life, the small details that are often overlooked in fictional recreations. This sense gives the book an immediacy, an intimacy, and a grounding in reality appropriate to a book that is so diaristic.

These two panels feature fuller backgrounds, but many images in the book are less full, showing just a figure (part of a figure) or just a figure and part of the background (a figure at a table, a figure on a bed). In this respect the panels are more or less full, a shifting between the two.

The green tone (a little too bright in these scans, and, for what it’s worth, put in by Cecilia Dos Santos not Forest) simultaneously works to add light, focus, and to help differentiate objects/backgrounds/characters. Here we see the light aspect on the figure in the first image, while the use of a large swath of the green in the same image also emphasizes the light in the window. In the second image, the color adds some visual variety and compositional movement.

Not as obvious in these scans is the texture of both both the pencil and the green (made to look rough and pencil-like around the edges), which gives a softness to the images, most obvious in the cases where Forest switches to a thin black ink line. Dense blacks are almost never used, the closet to such being cases where the pencil line is used to scribble a denser, darker area.

As a whole, Forest’s sketchy pencilled realism grounds her work in reality and emphasizes not only her gaze on events but also her participatory observation through drawing (her obsessive drawing comes up a number times in her narration). The style of the images makes 1h25 feel less constructed than Journals (3) but also less intense, less full.

Goblet's Faire Semblant C'est Mentir, unpaginated.

Goblet’s style in Faire Semblant… is much more varied than either Neuad or Forest. One could say part of the style of Goblet’s book is her shifting styles from an abstracted, iconic style, that is more conventionally comic-like, through a sketchy realist style, to a painterly non-figurative abstraction that ends the book. She also shifts media throughout the book, pencil, ink, paint, collage, some kind of oil crayon (possibly?). The image above is chosen as an example of the most used style.

In general, Goblet’s figures are more simplified and exaggerated than either Forest’s or Neaud’s. They are proportionally off, having larger than real heads and limbs or torsos that are either shortened or elongated (most obvious in the eighth panel where Goblet’s arms are short and her torso is long). They are rendered primarily in outline with the occasional tonal shading. Faces are simplified and exaggerated (Goblet’s large eyes). Yet, even in the distortion, the figures maintain a level of realness to their poses, the way Goblet leans over, hands on her knees in the first panel, the way the man leans towards her in comfort in the second panel.

The backgrounds are consistent with the style of the figures, primarily outlines, though perhaps less exaggerated in size and proportion. As a whole the images have less of a documentary reality to them than Forest or Neaud, they read as made-up or at least not drawn from observation or photo reference (which isn’t to say they couldn’t have been drawn that way).

Goblet’s line is less precise than Neaud’s, tighter than Forest’s. Her lines are simultaneously soft and hard, curved and straight, as if in the drawing process she stopped and started as the pencil moved. Note the line of the older man’s arm in panel two. It is a curve made up of shorter not quite straight lines. The line of Goblet’s back in panel eight is sharper, more angular, while the line of her shoulders and neck in panel five is all curves.

Similar to Forest’s line, Goblet’s pencilled line varies more in tone than width, though Goblet gets a greater tonal variation from her pencil. This is perhaps most obvious in panel seven where there is great difference between the outline of the book, the “dring” lettering, and the fabric pattern. She also makes much use of the pencil for tone, to help create depth and composition, through both tonal shadows and flat tone as color. Note the variation between the coat in panel three, the shadows in panel eight, and the dark window(?) in the last panel. Patterning is also made use of quite frequently, in this page we can see it in the sky in panel three and the bedspread in panels four through seven.

The panels throughout Faire Semblant… are very full. She makes heavy use of tone (this page is actually, rather lighter than most), patterns, line, and text to fill her panels. Backgrounds are present or the panel is filled in with a tone appopriate to the scene (a number of dark/night scenes). The panels are crowded and dense, and rarely feel open and airy (until the very end, a thematic choice that would be worth examining in a more detailed examination of the book as a whole).

It is a disservice to Goblet’s work to just discuss this one page, as the stylistic and media shifts the book goes through are stunning, but this page felt most relevant in comparison with the previous two examples, as an example of a less realistic but still naturalistic style.

In discussing these works at this level, I can’t help noticing all the other elements of style I could discuss. Just in the context of these examples there is lettering, use of text, placement of text, panel borders, use of sound effects, use of emanata (or, in these examples, absence of same). On a more global level of these three works, I could example page layouts, decoupage, stylistic shifts, the use of non-reality based imagery (visuals used for expressive or thematic effect rather than a literal representation of reality (for instance, there’s a wonderful scene in Faire Semblant…, where the ghost of Goblet’s boyfriend’s ex-lover follows them around a grocery story)), and more depending on the work. (Suggestions? Ideas?)

In the end, this discussion of style does little to aid in a generalized description. I’d consider all three works “realist” to some degree and more or less naturalist. Goblet’s is clearly the least naturalist of the three, more what Santoro would call mannerist. But Neaud and Forest’s realism, their naturalism even, is not so very similar that using any one (or two) words feels right as a way to discuss both. There is so much more going on, and the more you look the more you see of their difference, and, moreso–something I was unable to avoid even in this attempt to just be descriptive of style–the more you can see thematic connections between the stylistic choices and the narrative.

I hope to write more on this subject in the future, or at least to pay better attention to these issues as a write about specific works. The works I chose here were rather limited in scope, so they don’t cover all the possibilities for what one could discuss even at this level of specificity (for instance, color gets a pretty short shrift).

He's fully satisfied with these.

Hergé: …I am quite happy with the panel showing the panic in the ranks of the pillagers [above left]. It’s one of the two panels that satisfy me fully: in a single panel, a series of movements, broken down and distributed among several characters. It could have been the same individual, lying down first, then getting up slowly, hesitating and finally running away. It’s basically, if you will, a shortcut through space and time.

Sadoul: What is the other drawing you’re happy with?

Hergé: It’s in Red Rackham’s Treasure [above right]. Everything is condensed, too, but in a different way. By looking at the drawing itself, which shows the captain walking barefoot on the beach while his companions are pushing the dinghy ashore, the spectator/reader mentally reconstructs what happened before: the “Sirius” has dropped anchor, a dinghy was lowered in the water, Tintin and his companions boarded; they rowed and finally reached the island where the captain just set foot. All this, which preceded the action depicted in the drawing, is expressed within that same panel. This drawing is based on a principle different from Crab’s – which I just described – where the effect is the result of both the simultaneity and the succession of movement. In this one, on the contrary, this is an unconscious reconstruction, by the reader, of movements which happened prior to the drawing. It’s like a self-generated mental flashback. Although the reader doesn’t realize it, he/she is unconsciously subjected to this entire analysis.

Sadoul, Numa. “The Hergé Interview.” The Comics Journal 250 (Feb 2003): 201.

Introduction

The concept of “point of view” in narrative has taken on a number of theoretical transformations through narratological study. The ur-text on this subject being Gerard Genette’s work on focalization in Narrative Discourse. While an overwhelming amount of words have been written on this subject in regards to literary and filmic narratives, only a few texts have addressed this issue in comics narratives.[1] The all too common use of “first person” and “third person” in many discussions of comics shows a distinct lack of specificity for addressing this often complicated issue.

At its heart, the subject at hand is about the “regulation of narrative information” (Genette,1980: 162). Is narrative information filtered through a single character? Is the reader privy to what the character is thinking or only their external actions? Does the reader see through a character’s eyes? Or does the reader watch their actions from an external place? Over the course of the story, does the narrative seem to be unfiltered: the reader is privy to the internal thoughts of many characters, actions are shown from many characters, actions are shown that no character would have seen? These are only some of the narrative questions that will be addressed.

This article is meant to be analytic and descriptive, pulling together various theories of focalization and an international array of comics works to take another step towards furthering a shared vocabulary that will enable a more nuanced discussion of the works themselves. My purpose here is not specifically to evaluate the effects of any of these narrative strategies; all have their uses and effects. My purpose is to investigate how these strategies are created in comics and how they can be named and discussed.

Literature Review

I will focus specifically on texts about “point of view” in relation to comics. Writings on focalization in literature are numerous, with many variations of theories. I have settled on Genette’s work as a basis for my discussion as his is both clear and relatively uncomplicated. Many authors have followed his work by adding, in my opinion, often unnecessary complications to his system. These complications offer little gain in descriptive power. Literature, being a textual medium, also offers only a limited use to discussion of comics, as comics are (perhaps primarily) a visual medium.

Writings on this topic in regards to film are also quite numerous. Being a visual media, filmic theories bear some relation to the studies of comics, but there are many places where the two differ. In particular are issues of the “camera” and the “profilmic” (that is, the material that exists as that which is filmed (actors, sets, etc.)). As comics have neither a true camera nor are they recordings of material that actually existed, many of the elements of film focused on by film theorists are irrelevant to comics studies.

The earliest writing on comics and focalization I have found is Parent’s 1982 article on Mexican “Illustrated Stories.” He discusses focalization, drawing only on Genette and Bal, focusing primarily on levels of narration (stories within stories) within what appears to be a very consistent and unvarying corpus of works.[2] He never address the images at all nor how the text and images interact.

Shamoon’s (2003) article looks at work by manga-ka and novelist Uchida Shungiku. She compares the use of focalization in a novel and two manga stories, focusing on how the shifting of focalization can effect the reader’s identification and sympathy with characters and can create internal critiques of specific characters. The reading is interesting, but by narrowing her focus so much Shamoon only addresses a very limited set of possibilities in comics.

Eric Lavanchy’s Etude du Cahier bleu d’André Juillard : une approche narratologique de la bande dessinée (2007) is the only booklength study of the issue in regard to comics. Lavanchy uses Andre Juillard’s The Blue Notebook as his primary example through a close reading of that narrative’s shifting focalizations. Lavanchy’s theoretical work is primarily a synthesis, but as such has been quite useful to me in clarifying many issues from other sources.

Ann Miller, in her Reading Bande Dessinee (2007), also uses The Blue Notebook as an example for a discussion of focalization and ocularization in comics. Her work, like Lavanchy’s, is also primarily synthesis, but it is clear and accessible synthesis (and in English for the non-French readers).

Julia Round’s (2007) article is oddly retrograde in the way she brings the concept of first, second, and third person back into the discussion. She also shows only a partial familiarity with many of her sources, citing Genette’s work on narrators but completely missing the concept of focalization.

Mikkonen’s (2008) article focuses on comparisons of verbal and visual strategies and norms for presenting internal thought. Her comments on the interaction of textual narration and visual narrative are astute and worth reading.

Focalization

In his highly influential work, Narrative Discourse, French narratologist Gerard Genette posited the concept of focalization, originally describing it in such ways as “the question who sees?” (1980: 186), “who is the character whose point of view orients the narrative perspective,” (1980: 186) and the “regulation of narrative information” (1980: 162). Later, he offered, the “selection of narrative information with respect to what was traditionally called omniscience” (Genette, 1988: 74). The concept has been debated by narratologists ever since, with numerous refinements, expansions, and criticisms. It is not possible to address even a majority of the debate, though two of the most cited authors are Bal (1997) and Rimmon-Kenan (2002). Bal in particular takes Genette’s work and adds layers of complication and terminology, creating a system that becomes less descriptively useful the larger it grows and the more it focuses on micro-level changes of focalization. Rimmon-Kenan, on the other hand, offers the useful addition of considering focalization through multiple facets–perceptive, cognitive, and ideological–, a variation of which I will use here.

For our purposes, focalization is a restriction on narrative information, usually in relation to characters. Though one can imagine narratives with animal or object related focalization, I will refer to focalization in relation to characters to simplify my writing. Focalization is often associated with the protagonist(s) of a narrative, though this is not always the case (for instance, while Sherlock Holmes is generally considered the protagonist of A Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson is the character through whom the book is focalized).

Narrator v. Focalizer

An important part of Genette’s original purpose for the concept of focalization was to take the idea of “point of view” or “perspective” in its conventionally considered literary sense and separate out the issue of the narrator from the issue of the “restriction of narrative information.” The classic “first person” point of view tends to focus on the grammatical “I” of a narrator without providing the kind of specificity that allows for an “I” narrator who is telling a story through someone else’s perception. Genette’s classification of narrators can be quickly summarized, as further details will be offered in the analyses below.

Narrators are classified by their relation to the main narrative (diegesis). A homodiegetic narrator is telling a story in which she herself takes part. A heterodiegetic narrator tells a story in which she does not take part. Narrators can also be categorized in relation to the story “levels.” An extradiegetic narrator is narrating from outside the story, while an intradiegetic narrator is a narrator inside the story. There can also be hypodiegetic narrators who are narrating from within an intradiegetic narrator’s narrative. In The Book of the Thousand and One Nights, the framing tale about Scheherazade is narrated by an unknown narrator outside of the story itself, a hetero-extradiegetic narrator. Within the framing tale, Scheherazade herself narrates a number of stories, wherein she becomes the hetero-intradiegetic narrator. Within Scheherazade’s stories are often found narrators telling another level of stories, making them homo or hetero (depending on the story) hypodiegetic narrators. And so on, until one gets to a story like John Barth’s “Menelaiad,” where there are seven levels of narrators at work. In The Canterbury Tales, many of the character narrators tell a story about themselves, making them homo-intradiegetic narrators.

Narrators and focalizers are not always different characters (many autobiographical narratives, for instance), but it is important to be able to differentiate these two functions in a narrative when necessary.

A Typology of Focalization

A typology of focalization is best shown though a number of variables. I borrow from Rimmon-Kenan in considering focalization as a faceted function, but I am not explicitly using all of her facets. Her “ideological” facet is outside the scope of my interests. I leave that to another to analyze in comics narratives.

Location of Focalization

The facet is concerned with the location of focalization as seen through the number of characters used for focalization. Free focalization (a term I borrow from Nelles (1990) in place of Genette’s “zero focalization” or “non-focalized”) is a narrative with access to the perceptions of any character (i.e. traditionally labelled omniscience) where focalization can shift between any number of characters. Fixed focalization is when only one character is accessed (“limited point of view”). In between these two extremes are degrees of variable focalization, where the focalization shifts between a limited number of characters (i.e. The Sound and the Fury, Rashomon).

Focalization is not always consistently located. Even the most fixed focalization, where the whole story only offers narrative information through one character, often includes small moments where information outside the focalizing character’s perception/knowledge is available. Genette calls this a “paralepsis.” The shift from variable focalization to free focalization cannot be easily demarcated outside of a specific narrative context. One can imagine a narrative wherein each of a hundred sections is focalized through a different character that could be considered variable focalization, whereas another narrative where the narrative is focalized through one hundred characters seemingly at random could be considered free focalization. Variable focalization is often about structure more than the number of focalizers (again, consider The Sound and the Fury or Rashomon).

As noted above, the location of focalization is often, but not necessarily, connected to the protagonist(s) of the narrative. An observing focalizer who acts as a witness to the protagonists actions could also be used.

Cognitive Focalization:

A second facet of focalization concerns the narrative’s access to the focalizer’s inner thoughts, feelings, memories, and other intellectual processes. It is called internal focalization when the narrative has access to those aspects of the character, while external focalization is when those processes are not accessible except as perceptible from the actions and words of the character.

Internal focalization can take the form of simple represented thought or more complicated stream of consciousness. It can also be much more subtle than that, offering the character’s inflected view of the world. The use of thought balloons in comics provide a direct and clear example of some kind of internal focalization at work. Comics also make use of various visual effects to make an image show a character’s internal thoughts or feelings. Prominent examples include may of the types of emanata commonly found in comics or the flowers and stars used in the background of many shojo manga.

In a narrative with multiple focalizers, cognitive focalization may be different for each focalizer.

Perceptual Focalization and Ocularization

The perceptual focalization facet can shift between an as direct as possible (for the medium of the narrative) recreation of a focalizer’s perception to a complete disconnect between the narrative information and the focalizer’s perception. Depending on the sense evoked, this can take different forms. The most relevant perceptual focalization for comics narratives is of a visual nature, which I will address here. Lavanchy discuss aural focalization in his work, which can also be relevant to comics but much less so than visual focalization.

Visual focalization is more easily referred to with the term coined by film theorist Francois Jost: ocularization (1983). Like the cognitive facet, one can also consider ocularization as internal or external, with some extra variations.

External ocularization includes the most conventional of comics imagery, where the focalizing character is seen from the outside, with no attempt at recreating their particular visual field. Even more extreme is what Jost calls spectatorial ocularization where the viewer/reader is privy to visual information outside the focalizer’s ken. The classic example of this being an image of the monster/killer sneaking up behind an unwitting victim. Most comics are predominantly in external ocularization.

Internal ocularization covers the range of effects used to represent the viewer’s visual field. Jost divides this into primary and secondary forms, though the difference is primarily in how much context the reader/viewer needs to connect the image with the focalizer’s perception. The primary form is when the image “allows us, without relying on context, to identify a character not present in the image” (Jos,t 2004: 75). Jost lists a number of cues for this, including: a part of the body reaching forward so it appears to be connected to where the “camera” is, seeing the shadow of the viewer, the exaggeration of a foreground object such as a key hole, or seeing the camera apparatus (or another viewing apparatus like binoculars) (Jost, 1983: 196). A comics specific cue is the tail of a word or thought balloon which trails off the bottom of the panel (see Fig. 1, which also shows the reach body part cue and the close-up on an object).

Fig. 1: Acme Novelty Library, v.18 p.11

Secondary internal ocularization relies on context to show the character/viewer’s visual perception, such as an image of the character looking at something and then the image of the object looked at. In the case of comics, this form of ocularization usually requires the context of another panel (often the preceding one), though the use of braiding [3] or the narration might also establish this. This is the filmic “point of view shot” as discussed by Edward Branigan [4].

Related to both these forms is the less internal “vision with” which Lavanchy discusses in his book. In this type of image the viewer sees along with the character, often showing the character from behind in the foreground and the object of the character’s gaze in the background. This is like a point of view shot compressed into a single image.

Narration and Monstration

The theories concerning narrators and focalization were first made in relation to literary texts where words are the medium. In a comic, words are not always present, and images are often the primary means of storytelling. In this respect there is not always a “narrator” as such in a comic. A comic strip like Peanuts (almost) completely eschews any narrative text. The story is told primarily through images as well as through text that is either a visual representation of sound/speech (word balloons) or thought/internal monologue (thought balloons). This is quite similar to a film where the story is primarily told through images and sound (excepting films that include actual audio narration). Many film theorists have worked to create a narrator-like function to exist as the narrator of image-based works, with names such as the “grand imagier” or the “monstrateur,” but I side with Bordwell in believing that there is no need for some kind of personified creator function to account for the images (Verstraten).

In the case of comics, one must make allowances for what is often two levels of narration: the images and the textual narration (Lavanchy, 2007: 56). While these two levels (when both are present) are often closely connected, there are cases where the two levels diverge and need to be considered as separate narrative functions. For our purposes, I will refer to written/scriptural narration in a comic simply as the narration. This most frequently takes the form of text placed in boxes referred to as caption boxes, but can also appear free standing in the panels or outside the panels. The narrative level of the image, the primary narrative level of almost every comic, will be referred to as the monstration, borrowing from Gaudreault’s film theory (but leaving out his concept of the monstrator in the background).

While the narration will have both a narrator and focalization, the monstration can only have focalization. The exception to this is when the monstration is a result of transsemioticization, a term taken from Gaudreault and discussed in relation to comics by Miller, wherein a narrative in one medium is transformed into narrative in another. Miller uses the example of André Juillard’s The Blue Notebook, wherein a chapter is narrated through the written diary of one of the protagonists. This starts out as narrative captions, but, instead of actually writing out all the text of the diary, Juillard, for most of the content, switches to just showing what the diary is narrating. That is, the narration has been shifted from written language to visual representation; it has been transsemioticized. In this case the monstration is a result of narration and thus has an intradiegetic narrator.

It is important to realize that all text in a comic is not narration (Lavanchy, 2007: 46). Text representing sound (sound effects, contents of word balloons) is not narration. Text in thought balloons is also not part of the narration. These textual elements are part of the monstration. Thought balloons in particular are an indication of internal focalization at work in the monstration not the narration.

The interaction of text and image in a comics narrative creates the potential for a great variety of narrative strategies through the use of different types of focalization in the narration and monstration. In particular, ocularization of the monstration can offer a rich source of narrative variety. A brief look through the following comics narratives will highlight some of these strategies and interrelations. This will show where the above concepts offer a richer descriptive power than the traditional notion of “point of view” (first, second, third). In contrast to much of the literature on comics in extent, I will address comics from three strains of cultural legacy: American comics, Franco-Belgian bande dessinée, and manga.

Analysis of Works

Tarzan #15 “Tarzan and the Cave Men”

I’ll start with a Jesse Marsh drawn Tarzan comic from 1950. The story follows Tarzan as he rescues a deposed jungle queen, fights animals and cave-men, and unites said queen with a new group of subjects. Narration is limited throughout the story, with only 12 panels containing captions over the course of 23 pages (approximately 5-6 panels per page). The narration is primarily objective description, setting scenes and timeframes; for example: “For the next twelve hours, the herd of great pachyderms travels slowly, grazing as it moves” (155). The narrator occasionally colors the narration with subjective commentary, such as a panel showing hyenas watching Tarzan and his companion: “But others than Tantor are interested in the strange man-things that have invaded Pal-ul-don” (161, my emphasis). Once the narrator even seems to know the internal feelings of an elephant: “Wistfully, Tantor, the elephant watches his friends out of sight” (161, my emphasis). At no point is the narrator identifiable or present in the story.

Fig. 2: Tarzan: The Jesse Marsh Years, v.3 p.161

Almost every panel of the monstration shows Tarzan. Those that do not are all events Tarzan is there to see with the exception of a couple panels where Tarzan is briefly knocked unconscious and the queen is kidnapped by a cave man. At no point are any thought balloons used or is any indication, that is not spoken or externally visible, given of a character’s thought or feelings. Perceptually, a few of the panels not showing Tarzan could be considered as secondary internal ocularization. For instance, the third and fourth panels on page 161 (see Fig.. 2) first show two hyenas, then an image of Tarzan and the queen looking back at the hyenas. One could read that first panel as part of what Branigan (1984) would call a retrospective point-of-view, wherein the seen object seen is shown before the seeing subject.

Thus, one can say that the narration is clearly of the hetero-extradiegetic type and, if it can be considered to be focalized at all, one would have to say it is freely and externally focalized. The monstration is, for the most part, fixed external focalization with external ocularization.

Daredevil #239 “Bad Plumbing

In a similar vein is this Ann Nocenti written, Louis Williams pencilled Daredevil issue from 1987. While written in a quite traditional comics style, the character of Daredevil, imbued with super-senses, offers the creative team room to create unusual subjective effects. In this issue, among other things, Daredevil confronts a mentally disturbed antagonist called Rotgut.

Like many comics in the “mainstream” and our previous example, the narrator is an unidentified voice who speaks from outside any involvement with the story and is present only intermittently through the comic, a hetero-extradiegetic narrator. The narration starts on the first page describing the surroundings of the yet to be named Rotgut. Three pages later the narrator shifts to describing Daredevil, telling not only of his thoughts, but also of his special perceptions: “The voices strike chords, a concerto of tones and chills rush his spine” (4). The internally focalized narration continues on two more pages (6-7) with Daredevil and then drops away. For the rest of the issue, the narrator provides only a few time and locational cues: “The world of rotgut.” (9), “Outside a lecture hall” (13), “Moments later emerging from the alley…” (18). The focalization is variable, shifting between the two primary characters in the story, hero and villain, but, by internally focalizing on the former and externally focalizing on the latter, it offers the reader a closer look at the hero.

The monstration is also variable in its focalization. The primary focalizer in the story is Daredevil himself, with a secondary focalization coming through Rotgut. Early in the story, there is additional external focalization for a limited time on a woman Rotgut harasses via phone. The reader sees her on the telephone reacting to his words, information that he would have no way of knowing. In one scene there are also a limited number of brief thought balloons given to a boy Daredevil meets, but otherwise all thought balloons in the comic belong to either Daredevil or Rotgut.

The reason I chose this example, though, is some of the ocularization in the story. At different times, the monstration shows subjective images from both Daredevil’s and Rotgut’s viewpoint. Daredevil’s are primarily recreations of his special “radar” sense that he uses in place of his (lost) sight.

Fig. 3: Daredevil #239 p.7

These panels from page 7 show different types of subjective images (see Fig. 3). In the first, the reader sees Daredevil’s girlfriend Karen as he sees her, with an altered visual sense. In the third he is seen (as his non-costumed self) embracing her with the background drawn in a pale blue monochrome. Both are internally focalized, but the former is also an ocularization, while the latter is simply a metaphorical image of the separation (“enveloping”) he feels from the world in her arms. The color shift seen here is an often used tactic in comics to signify some type of shift in perception, narrative level, or subjectivity.

Fig. 4: Daredevil #239, p.9

Similarly (and surely a way the writer is drawing parallels between the hero and the villain), two pages later are a similar set of subjective images for Rotgut (see Fig. 4,5). Panel one shows what I infer as his view of the world, distorted and grotesque, an internal ocularization and internal focalization. Then in panel six, there is an externally ocularized, yet cognitively internal focalization where a visual representation of the “foul hot breath of the dying” that he imagines enveloping him is seen behind him.

Fig. 5: Daredevil #239, p.9

Another noteworthy element in this issue is the use of a what is most likely a transsemioticized narration. On page 11, the first panel opens up a two page sequence where Rotgut becomes an intradiegetic narrator telling of his childhood and his mother. This second level of narration is marked off in a few ways. The first and last panels of it have, respectively, a left and right panel border that, instead of the straight lines used in the rest of the issue, appear ragged like ripped paper. Panels borders are often used in comics to indicate changes in narrative level from the primary narrative to a dream or fantasy sequence or, as here, to a flashback. The panels in this sequence are also marked by their monochrome yellow backgrounds which are in great contrast to the rest of the issue. Even more importantly are the narrative captions that start and end the sequence which are the narration of Rotgut rather than the unknown extradiegetic narrator speaking in the issue’s other captions. One can also note the way the first caption ends and the last one begins with ellipses.

So, like the Tarzan story, this story has a hetero-extradiegetic narrator, but there is also more internal focalization at work in the narration. In a similar way the monstration is primarily externally ocularized but includes more internal ocularization and internal focalization around the main two characters.

Paradise Kiss

Ai Yazawa’s Paradise Kiss is a rather different example. As this manga series runs five volumes in length, I will only discuss some elements of the first volume’s first chapter. Even in this twenty-four page section, many levels of narration and variations in focalization are in evidence. The first page starts with a series of narrative captions that is clearly retrospective (speaking of the past) and internally focalized: “It was like a secret hideout. They called it their studio,” (7). The tone is almost wistful. The reader quickly realizes that the narrator of this text is the protagonist Yukari narrating from some point in the future. This narrator sets up the beginning and closes off the ending of the chapter (as well as other chapters later).

After a two page title spread, the next page includes a new narrator, this time outside of any caption boxes and written in the present tense: “It makes me sick the way these people scurry through the streets like roaches,” (10). This is Yukari’s internal monologue concurrent to the events in the story. Yukari’s present internal monologue narration runs through the story much more so than the retrospective narration. The use of two narrators who are the same person but speaking at different times is an interesting tactic used by Yazawa. She is alternating between the homo-extradiegetic narrator who knows what the future will hold and the homo-intradiegetic narrator who knows only the present. Both show consistent fixed internal focalization.

The monstration, on the other hand, is less consistent in its focalization. While Yukari is, especially at this point in the story, the primary focalizer in the story, one scene in this chapter exists outside of her perception, as some of the other protagonists talk, a shift in focalization that is not unique to this chapter.

Fig. 6: Paradise Kiss, v.1 p.14

Internal focalization is used throughout and signaled with a variety of strategies. Thought balloons are used as an entry point to the thoughts of both Yukari and other characters. A variety of emanata are used, primarily in regards to Yukari: for example, jagged lines emanating from Yukari’s head (see Fig. 7) or a small tear drop placed in front of her head. Also prominent are various subjective image effects (quite common in shojo manga). For instance, in one scene Yukari first meets the unconventional looking fashion students who later become her friends. The tall cross dresser (or transvestite, it’s never clear) hugs Yukari, who thinks she is being chased for some nefarious reason. Yukari’s internal narration mentions the “angel of death” and around that text is shown a circle of spiky flowers on a vine, emphasizing her fear (see Fig. 6). These effects are not exclusive to Yukari, though, at this point in the manga, they are used more in regards to her[5].

Fig. 7: Paradise Kiss, v.1 p.11

Yazawa also uses secondary internal ocularization at a number of times during the chapter. These cases involve multiple characters and are part of the narrative’s shifting of attention to characters other than Yukari. This is emphasized early on, where the narrative, to this point focusing only on Yukari, makes use of spectatorial ocularization to show us the punk rock fashion student, Arashi, watching her (see Fig. 7). Yukari is shown walking with her head buried in a book, but we see Arashi from behind in a “vision with” panel. This at first seems like a classic horror/stalker type interaction, which Yazawa plays up in the panel mentioned previously. But these people other than Yukari, who are first shown as outsiders, also become primary characters for the reader to identify. This starts with that “vision with” image of seeing Yukari from the outside.

Were I able to spend the time, the shifting focalizations of Paradise Kiss would prove a fertile ground for further investigation. In contrast to the previous examples, this manga uses more wide-ranging effects of focalization and ocularization in regard to a larger number of characters, but it is all enclosed in the retrospective internally focalized narration of Yukari herself.

“Life Through Whispers”

“Life Through Whispers” by Jaime Hernandez offers a more subjective narrative. The six page comic is narrated by the character Ray Dominguez. Ray’s narration appears at the top of every panel in the story, written in the first person (the first person pronoun that is). Ray is a homo-extradiegetic narrator, narrating his own story (Genette calls this type of homodiegetic narrator an autodiegetic narrator). At no point is the story in a place where Ray is not, nor does the reader learn anything Ray does not know. But the story is also not just following him around. The reader is privy to his thoughts. The narration is fixed internal focalization.

On the other hand, the images are almost completely externally ocularized. In the thirty-one panels that Ray appears there is no indication he is being viewed by any character (or object). Of the four panels that remain, three panels might be read as secondary internal ocularization. Because of the context of the surrounding panels and the accompanying narration, I read these images as ocularized through Ray. For example, in one panel the image shows Doyle (a friend of Ray’s) standing in the foreground center mostly obscuring two men doing something between two cars (see Fig. 8). The accompanying narration clearly indicates this is what Ray is seeing: “…before I could see more, Doyle blocked my view…” (Hernandez 58).

Fig. 8: Life Without Whispers, p.58

The last panel of the four that do not show Ray, and coincidentally the last of the comic, is a mental picture in Ray’s imagination, a kind of full panel visual thought balloon, what I might call a mental image. While I know this panel is part of the internal focalization of the narrative, I cannot, from cues in the panel (including the narration) or in the surrounding panels, say that the image is ocularized through Ray, that it’s something in reality he is looking at. One must assume it is in his imagination.

“Life Through Whispers”–as a comic with an “I” narration and a strictly internal focalization both in the narration and monstration–is much closer to a single character’s experience than our previous examples, which worked at more of a distance. A great many autobiographical comics are written/drawn this way. This comes as no surprise since comics have historically and are contemporarily focused greatly on character (and autobiography tends to focus on the creator/narrator/character). But not all comics are so completely focused on the narrator/character.

Yukiko’s Spinach

Frederic Boilet’s Yukiko’s Spinach is an ambiguously autobiographical comic about the narrator/protagonist’s, whom I will label “Boilet”, brief affair with a Japanese woman named Yukiko. In contrast to “Life Through Whispers”, Yukiko’s Spinach does not use any traditional narrative text. It is a work solely of monstration. Even without the narration, a reader of the comic quickly realizes that the narrative is completely restricted to what “Boilet” knows and experiences. Nothing outside of “Boilet’s” perception is ever included. But this restriction to “Boilet” is not the same as the restriction seen in “Life Through Whispers.” The reader is never really inside “Boilet’s” head. His thoughts and feelings remain almost completely opaque. The reader remains outside his cognitive point of view. This is an example of fixed external focalization, but Boilet does not completely distance the reader from “Boilet”. The comic is almost completely internally ocularized through “Boilet”. The reader does not know “Boilet’s” thoughts but does see through his eyes.

The seven page opening sequence of the book shows a series of buildings and signs along a street. No characters appear, nor do any cues of primary internal ocularization. The accompanying text, appearing in captions at the bottom of the panels is, at first, easy to mistake for narration, but this is actually the first of a couple paralepses in the book. After reading further into the book, one realizes that these caption boxes at the bottom of the panel are how “Boilet’s” dialogue is shown. Even further into the book, one finds these words repeated again in a scene. My reading of the first seven pages, with its images of a Japanese street with a prominent hotel scene and the parallel dialogue, is that it takes place subsequent to the rest of the story. This is “Boilet” walking down the street and remembering. The words are not narration, they are the memories that trigger the rest of the story as recollection. This scene is an internal focalization, only really noticeable on a second reading. Also, only really noticeable on a second reading, do the images in these seven pages take on a secondary internal ocularization. In fact, the majority of the book’s panels require the context of the surrounding images to create the sense of “Boilet’s” viewpoint.

In the context of a sequence of panels, Boilet often creates a sense of the wandering gaze of “Boilet”. Images that could be read as “normal” non-ocularized images in isolation become the directed view of the character when the images are sequenced. In one scene, “Boilet” and Yukiko are having dinner together (See Fig. 9). Over the course of a few panels, the reader sees Yukiko’s face as she talks, then a lower view on her chest, back to her face, and then sideways to the legs of a woman at an adjacent table. Through this use of ocularization, Boilet says a lot about the protagonist in a way that would be difficult and more obvious without it. It should also be reiterated that the text at the bottom of the panels, treated like conventional narration (in boxes), is actually the represented speech of Boilet, shown at the bottom of the panel, metaphorically near the location of the character. It is a more subtle cue than the trailing word balloon tail shown in the Ware example previously.

Fig. 9: Yukiko's Spinach, p.24

Fig. 10: Yukiko's Spinach, p.26

The majority of the book is in this secondary internal ocularization through “Boilet,” though a number of panels make use of some of Jost’s cues to indicate primary internal ocularization such as foregrounded body parts and a visual deformation of the image. At a dinner scene, the reader sees “Boilet’s” hand reaching forward to pick a bean from a plate. (See Fig. 10) In a few scenes his notebook is shown in the foreground with a hand holding a pencil, drawing in the book. He makes use of a subjective optical effect to show a blurred bicyclist speeding by. (See Fig. 11)

Fig. 11: Yukiko's Spinach, p.35

Boilet does not maintain the ocularization for every panel in the book. At a few times “Boilet” is seen from the outside. The two longest scenes where this occurs are still internally ocularized: one occurs in a video photo booth with “Boilet” and Yukiko seen in the video screen, while another occurs in front a large mirror in a hotel room. The other times offer no such visual cue and seem out of place in a work that is otherwise so consistent in its internal ocularization (it’s another paralepsis). They do serve to distance the reader from too much identification with the character. Perhaps this is purposeful by Boilet.

In comparison with Hernandez’s work in “Life Between Whispers,” Boilet’s use of ocularization and focalization shifts the focus from the character to the gaze. Boilet seems less interested in telling a story about the character than he is in constantly showing images of Yukiko. By mostly removing the character/viewer from the comic this focus becomes ever more prominent. The comic ends up being about the gaze, the look, more than anything else. A prominence he solidifies with the way he sequences and composes his panels to foreground the movement of the viewer’s gaze (as in the example page above).

Daybreak

If Boilet’s strategies shift the focus from character to the gaze, Brian Ralph, in his series Daybreak attempts to shift the focus to the reader and his identification with the viewer.

The first panel of Daybreak shows a single one-armed man saying “hello” and looking out at the reader. He continues on, addressing “you” and looking out. The reader of Daybreak quickly realizes from the context that the one-armed man is addressing an unseen viewer. Unlike in Yukiko’s Spinach, Ralph never shows any hint of this unseen viewer, no appendages, no shadow, not even any dialogue. The book maintains a secondary internal ocularization over the course of the whole comic. The unseen viewer is never seen, yet one can surmise from the context that someone/thing exists in that viewing position. Primarily this context is the one-armed man’s ongoing conversation at (one cannot say “with” since no replies are ever shown) the viewer, but a few other scenes point to effects on and actions by the viewer.

In one case the one-armed man says, “Behind you.” The next shows a dark passage. The viewer has turned around to look behind (See Fig. 12). Another scene features the cave-in of a tunnel. Two panels show falling stones and wood beams, followed by an all black (well, brown) panel. I assume the viewer is knocked unconscious.

Fig. 12: Daybreak, v.1 p.21

While this strict ocularization might lead to an easy equation with “first person point of view,” Ralph’s use of focalization belies this. There is no narration in the comic, the unseen character never speaks, nor is the reader privy to any thoughts. This narrative of strict internal ocularization is equally strict in its external focalization. This combination of focalization and ocularization is so strict and consistent that it is hard to say there is even a character there at all.

Oddly, because of this, the one-armed man becomes the real protagonist of Daybreak. He appears in almost every panel in volume one except for a brief scene where he is believed lost. Despite the unusual narrative strategy at work, Ralph follows most comics in focusing his panels on a character. When the one-armed man disappears, another man comes to temporarily take his place as the focus of the panels.

Daybreak becomes a narrative of following the one-armed man around. The unseen viewer fades into the background (foreground) and the reader is mostly left with a protagonist who has an odd tendency to narrate his own actions in the second person. The few times that some action on the part of the unseen viewer (such as in the example above) is actually shown are not enough to establish any real presence to the viewer nor any sense of participation in the reader.

Conclusion

As shown in the above analysis, the interaction of narration and monstration, of focalization and ocularization can create a broad variety of narratives strategies with differing effects. I hope the breadth of options for “point of view” or “perspective” in comics has been made clearer and that my attempts at adapting terminology from literary and filmic narratology have added some descriptive potential for discussing and analyzing works. Surely, more remains to be said on the subject, in particular on the types of subjective imagery seen in comics and how other formal elements of a comic may be said to show focalization.

Endnotes

1. I used the term “comics” here as a generalized stand-in for the form/media (an argument for another day) that encompasses American comic books and strips, European bande dessinée, Japanese manga, and other cultural forms, as well as the marketing term graphic novel.

2. This issue is not specific to the article in question. Too often academics write broad reaching articles on comics using an extremely limited corpus of works that is insufficient for the attempted task.

3. On braiding, see Groensteen, 2007.

4. For a summary of pov types as discussed by Branigan see this post on my blog: http://madinkbeard.com/archives/branigan-on-point-of-view

5. One might even argue that the shape, size, and composition of panels can be used for internal focalization. That is a subject for another day which would require more study. For some study of this see Driest, 2008.

References

Bal, Mieke. 1997. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Second edition. University of Toronto Press.

Boilet, Frédéric. 2001. Yukiko’s Spinach. Trans. Stephen Albert. Wisbech, U.K.: Fanfare/Ponent Mon.

Branigan, Edward. 1984. Point of view in the cinema: A theory of narration and subjectivity in classical film. Mouton.

Driest, Joris. 2008. “Subjective Narration in Comics.” Secret Acres: Critical Ends. Available at http://www.secretacres.com/snicone1.html. Accessed Jan 24, 2010.

Genette, Gérard. 1980. Narrative discourse : an essay in method. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

—. 1988. Narrative discourse revisited. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

Groensteen, Thierry. 2007. The System of Comics. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Hernandez, Jaime. 2008. “Life through Whispers.” In The Education of Hopey Glass. Seattle, W.A.: Fantagraphics Books, pp. 55-60.

Jost, Francois. 1989. L’oeil-camera: entre film et roman. Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon.

—. 1983. “Narration(s): en deca et au-dela.” In Communications 38, pp. 192-212.

—. 2004. “The Look: From Film to Novel: An Essay in Comparative Narratology.” In A Companion to Literature and Film. Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 71-78.

Lavanchy, Eric. 2007. Etude du Cahier bleu d’André Juillard : une approche narratologique de la bande dessinée. Louvain-la-Neuve: Academia-Bruylant.

Marsh, Jesse (a), and Gaylord DuBois (w). 2009. “Tarzan and the Cave Men.” In Tarzan: The Jesse Marsh Years. Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse Books, pp. 155-178.

Mikkonen, Kai. 2008. “Presenting Minds in Graphic Narratives.” In Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 6.2 , pp. 301 – 321.

Miller, Ann. 2007. Reading bande dessinée : critical approaches to French-language comic strip. Chicago IL.: Intellect Books.

Nelles, William. 1990. “Getting Focalization into Focus.” In Poetics Today 11.2, pp. 365-382.

Nocenti, Ann (w), Louis Williams (p), Williamson & Isherwood (i). 1987. “Bad Plumbing.” Daredevil v1 #239 (Feb 1987). Marvel Comics.

Parent, Georges-A. 1982. “Focalization: A Narratological Approach to Mexican Illustrated Stories.” In Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 1, pp. 201 – 215.

Ralph, Brian. 2006. Daybreak. Vol. 1. Jersey City, N.J.: Bodega Distribution.

Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. 2002. Narrative fiction. Second edition. Routledge.

Round, Julia. 2007. “Visual Perspective and Narrative Voice in Comics: Redefining Literary Terminology..” In International Journal of Comic Art 9.2, pp. 316 – 329.

Shamoon, Deborah. 2003. “Focalization and Narrative Voice in the Novels and Comics of Uchida Shungiku.” In International Journal of Comic Art 5.1, pp. 147-160.

Verstraten, Peter. 2009. Film Narratology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Yazawa, Ai. 2003. Paradise Kiss vol. 1. Trans. Anita Sengupta. Los Angeles: Tokyopop.

• Emile by Fabrice Neaud – An english translation of this French’s comic artist’s short story. I’ve heard lots of praise for Neaud, but this is the first of his work I’ve read. After reading it, I’ve added his Journal 3 to my list of bande dessinee I want to read. This particular autobiographical story is most interesting in not including any actual people in the images (with the exception of drawings of images of people (photos, posters, etc)). A visually people-less comic in a sense, it is primarily a visual record of spaces and places. The translation has a few hiccups and oddities to it, but it works for the most part.
• Interview with Blaise Larmee at TCJ – I’m a fan of Blaise’s work (writing about his new book Young Lions is on the list for when my paper is finished), though I’m not always a fan of his writings (primarily at the Comets Comets blog) where I’m never quite sure how much of what he writes is just about the performance. This interview does have some engaging ideas in it, like this one that seems quite Oulipian:
  

  Honestly, I can barely read comics anymore. There are so many boxes and word balloons and all it just tires my eyes so quickly. I feel like there is so much investment on the creator’s behalf in building a visual template — boxes, word balloons, characters, settings, etc. — that the creator has no energy left for concrete or conceptual concerns. I am currently developing a standardized template, so that creators can focus on content and conceptual structure instead of style.

  I would love to see TCJ posting more interviews of younger, less established artists talking more about ideas than biography. The famously long TCJ interviews with older, famous creators always seem to go on too long about biography and history.

Groensteen, Thierry. La Bande Dessinée, Mode D’Emploi. Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2007. ISBN: 9782874490415. 22 Euros.

Thierry Groensteen’s La Bande Dessinee Mode D’Emploi is unlike any book on comics I’ve read. The title, which one could roughly translate as “Comics: Instructions for Use” or “Comics Manual”, gives some indication of his goal. The book is written not as an academic treatise, like his most well known work (in the English speaking world at least) The System of Comics (a little more) (Systeme de la bande dessinée, 1999), but as a work for the student, for the lay person. In the introduction he states his goal as:

Tout en délivrant quelques rudiments d’une “culture BD”, le présent ouvrage visera d’abord à instruire l’oeil des moyens visuels que les meilleurs auteurs savent mobiliser pour faire naître le sens et l’emotion. [While delivering the basics of a "comics culture", the present work aims first to instruct the eye in the visual means that the best authors can call upon to evoke meaning and emotion.] (8)

In this sense it is a guide for “reading comics”, one is tempted to say that this would work as a perfect title for the book, more apt than Douglas Wolk’s book of the same name, though the parallel with McCloud’s much different works might be too close. Groensteen’s book has a casualness to it that fits with these other works, but it is aware of the scholarly literature and makes use of it where necessary without getting too jargony. One could see this as a better gateway work for students to a scholarly approach to comics, offering a plethora of paths to take in studying comics.

Groensteen starts at the beginning with the format and cover. While he has an international (though primarily Western) approach throughout the book, his emphasis is, not unexpectedly, on the Franco-Belgian tradition. This emphasis is immediately apparent by his focus on “albums” and the series nature of the mainstream of that tradition. From covers and series, he moves into opening pages, page layouts, decoupage (breakdowns/sequencing), stylistic variations, composition (both in the panel and in the page), figuration, color, use of text, and much more. He structures the central section of the book into two chapters based on the ideas of reading competencies both basic and expert.

The idea of competency-based education has seemed to be increasingly prominent over the years, and it is interesting to see Groensteen’s take on comics reading competencies. He argues that, opposed to commonly held belief, there are reading skills that must be learned in order to successfully read a comic. He starts off looking at the basic skill of reading the image and the sequence, being able to piece together the parts to make the whole. A reader of comics must connect what is outside the frame to what is inside it and connect what is shown in one image to what is shown in the next, often creating hypotheses that are either proved or disproved as the reading continues. I’d argue these particular skills are not all that different than are necessary in viewing a film, though film has an easier ability to give the viewer more information in making the gaps less difficulty to close.

He strays from the focus on readers and competencies as he gets wrapped up in close readings of pages, discussing text and color use in two pages from Jimmy Corrigan or the ligne claire style and Joost Swarte. As he moves into the issue of style, Groensteen makes the valuable (and under explored) point that style in comics is more than just the way the images are drawn but includes also the framing, the layouts, and all the other decisions an artist makes in creating the comic.

Moving into the “field of expertise”, Groensteen covers the ways artist make their comics, definitions, history, stylistic genealogy, aesthetic judgement, and other issues, some of which are glossed over in a only sentence or two (such as the influence of computers). Any of these topics could birth a book of its own, but in this context, Groensteen piques the interest of the reader and offers quick examples before moving on.

This is followed by a chapter on various “registres” [styles/modes/register]: citational, comedic, “le mimique” [gestures and expressions], erotic, and political. This section is the least successful in the book, and the individual close reading are, for the most part, the least engaging. The section, unlike the others, includes no prefatory remarks on these “registres”, whether Groensteen sees these as comprehensive or merely a sampling, and how they integrate with the previous chapters. The book concludes with a chapter on the pleasures of comics where he address the pleasure of the story, the pleasure of the art, and that third pleasure which comes from the combination of the two which he calls the pleasure of the medium.

Throughout the book, Groensteen’s text is accompanied by full-page color examples of comics. While the selected artists showcase a variety of styles and genres, they are primarily Franco-Belgian in origin covering time periods from the very early creators (Topffer, Christophe) through classic creators (Peyo, Morris, Goscinny & Uderzo, Jacobs) and into more recent and contemporary artists (Moebius, Tardi, Trondheim, Blain, Guilbert, Sfar, Blutch, Baudoin, Goblet). He includes a number of English language artists (Ware, McKean, Herriman, McCay, Smith, Campbell, Crumb) and a smattering from other countries/languages (Calpurnio, Munoz, Mattotti, Crepax). It is noteworthy that only one manga example (from Kiriko Nananan) is included. As has been noted elsewhere (see Macdonald, Amanda. “Groensteen’s User’s Guide: A User’s Guide.” European Comic Art 1.2 (2008): 202-206) women comics artists are given only a small representation (Goblet, Johanna, and Nananan). Whatever the limitations of Groensteen’s range of selection from the corpus of comics as a whole, his selections are still quite broader than seen in most works of comics studies. By discussing different elements of comics through a variety of examples, Groensteen not only shows the variety of ways, for example, page layouts or visual style can work, but he also provides a kind of reading list for the interested amateur.

The use of full-page reproductions gives the read a greater context for any reading and allows Groensteen more room to discuss issues such as layouts, breakdowns, and composition that are not revealed in a single panel. He does not always make the best selections of the examples, not just in which works he discusses, but in the pages he selects from the work. His choice of a Crepax “Valentina” page, containing only three panels of a standing figure, in the section on the “erotics of drawing” seems tame on many levels considering the artist’s innovation with page layouts and reputation for images far more visually sensual (stylistically and thematically) than the selection. His selections from McKay and Herriman are also both lesser selections of each artist’s great works.

Books about comics like this, focusing not on creating comics or comics history or a specific genre or a specific artist but about reading comics in a skilled way, are in short supply (in any language, I suspect, but definitely in English). Popular works like those from McCloud or Eisner or anthologies like the Comics Studies Reader take quite different approaches to understanding comics, and works like Madden and Abel’s Drawing Words and Writing Pictures are closely directed toward aspiring comics artists. The closest work, in English, I can think of might be Ann Miller’s Reading Bande Dessinee, which has a more academic and historical focus, but does include excellent close readings of a limited number of works.

One clear bonus to this volume is how clear Groensteen’s passion for and engagement with comics comes through, an aspect so often missing from a lot of the academic literature on comics. I could see this work being a successful classroom text were it translated into English, though the lack of availability (in English) of many of the examples would be a detriment.

I wrote this review for the class I’m taking (on which, more later).

The comics (or should I say bande dessinee) duo of Florent Ruppert and Jerome Mulot have made only two appearances in English: a two page spread in Kramer’s Ergot 7 and also a short comic (“The Pharaohs of Egypt”) that was translated at the Words Without Borders site. The latter does give a decent example of their work: long strings of word balloons, protagonists that tend to be less than savory, long sequences of McCloudian “moment-to-moment” transitions with a close attention to body language and movement, dry humor, and layouts that mix really large panels with long sequences of small panels.

I first learned of their work from Bart Beaty’s column at The Comics Reporter where he’s raved about their first two books Safari Monseigneur and Panier de Singe. Le Tricheur (L’Assocation, 2008) is their fourth book. In comparison with the earlier works of theirs I’ve seen, it is a fairly tightly organized narrative set within a detective/police/heist genre framework. The story is told non-linearly through multiple timelines. In a timeline that is in the “present”, a police detective interviews four characters: a private detective (“Short Hair”), an art collector (“Batman” because he wears a Batman shirt), a gallery owner (“Tie”), and his niece (“Handbag”). (Yes, all the characters are given names based on some aspect of their physical appearance.) The longer parts of the book take place in an earlier time and show these characters and their companions through a sequence of actions that are part heist, part revenge play, part art project. The logic, meaning, and interrelation of all the events in the story reveal themselves slowly. Each time I reread it (I’m at my fourth or fifth time through) more elements click into place, more layers start to make sense (admittedly, part of this may have been the accretion of vocabulary words as I looked them up and began to remember them).

The police interview scenes provide the only dialogue or narration in the book (excepting the final epilogue). Ruppert and Mulot make use of long strings of word balloons floating above the characters in tall panels. While most comic artists, when using long conversations, try to mix in changing views of the characters or setting and attempts at body language or facial expression, here, the dialogue is the focus. The characters serve as little more than indicators of who is speaking in the panels. One interesting use they make of these long strings of word balloons is branching off a balloon that acts as a kind of aside to the main string of dialogue.

An “aside balloon”. This is one of the smaller dialogue panels, most are much taller (this is an unusually tall book).

Mixed between these conversations are longer scenes taking place previous to the police interviews. These scenes are told without words of narration or dialogue and tend to use a large number of panels to show characters acting with great detail. Where the interview scenes are all dialogue, these scenes are all action. I say “action” more in the sense of movement and acting than in the “action movie” sense, though, this being a heist type story, it does feature its share of violence (and one completely absurd gun fight).

Most of the action scenes have the quality of animation: using numerous small panels in a sequence of unvarying composition where the only change is the movement of the characters. The artists attention to body language and posture is impressive and expressive, particularly in light of the complete lack of facial expressions. You see, the artists don’t draw faces. The characters all have a kind of wide V line on their face, like eyebrows except more in the center. This cuts off the possibility for facial expression, putting that much more emphasis on the body language. (It also tends to give all the characters an vaguely angry look.) The expression possible without facial expressions or close-ups (they don’t use them) or even variable angles (none of those either) on the characters is quite impressive, all due, no doubt, to the body language in the drawings.

The viewpoint on the characters is set at a consistent visual distance: they are always the same size on the page. When it is necessary or desirable to show more of the background or set the scene, the artists simply enlarge the panel, including the use of the unconventional (in the West at least) “L” shaped panel (see below). This changing panel size on a fixed scene emphasizes the sense of the panel as a window on the world, a small cropped segment of vision which hides all that is outside of view, all that remains unseen and unsaid. This feeling is quite apt for the story itself which slowly reveals flashes of motivation and background outside of the immediately seen actions. You have to pay attention to the small panels, important events pass in a single panel, and many events are elucidated only through earlier or later events/words.

Characters (Hat, Handbag, and Cap) stay the same. Framing changes with panel size.

The relationship between the dialogue scenes and the pantomime scenes is vaguely ambiguous. Are the pantomime scenes the visual representation of the dialogue? Are they thus colored by the narrator? Or are they completely separate, objective views of events which gain some elucidation through the dialogue–dialogue which is not necessarily true. The title “Le Tricheur” is literally, “the cheat,” and there is a certain amount of tricking and game playing going on here. As the story unwinds through the dialogue, the majority of the events seen in the book are revealed as part of a grand plan of the gallery owner, Tie. He has hired almost all the other characters and given them orders as to what they should be doing.

Ruppert and Mulot’s drawing style is all thin, almost scratchy lines, reminiscent of an etching (yet without that gray glow seen in works like those of Frederic Coche). They use no solid blacks and very little tone or texture, yet everything has a realistic appearance. Characters are naturalistic and proportional. Backgrounds are rather simple line drawings, setting and re-setting the scenes in large panels, yet only sketched out by a few brief lines in the smaller panels.

I love the way they draw the strip club in this scene with all the lines representing lights.

What we learn (yes, I’m spoiling it for you, you can skip this paragraph) is that the gallery owner is doing all this as a kind of art project, promotion for his gallery, and revenge scenario. Two hoodlums, named “Hat” and “Cap” (I’m translating these names), are hired to perform strange activities on their own or with the gallery owner’s niece (“Handbag”). Many of these activities bear some close metaphorical resemblance to a series of paintings in the gallery which the owner (“Tie”) shows to his “friend” “Batman” (he wears a Batman t-shirt). Two private detectives (“Beard” and “Short Hair”) are hired to follow and photograph the two hoodlums, thus creating a photographic record of their activities. The story culminates with Hat and Cap breaking into the gallery to steal paintings and kill “Batman”, all of which is recorded by the security cameras. In this way, the gallery owner organizes these activities but also creates an inter-related visual document revolving around the paintings in the gallery and the gallery itself, with twofold goal of art production and revenge.

The comic “Le Tricheur” becomes, in a way, another level of this interaction/documentation as if the comic itself is part of the whole series of actions and representations of actions that fill the book, with Ruppert and Mulot as the real orchestrators of the whole scheme. This image of the two artists as schemers fits with the image of them seen in some of their other projects. For instance, for this year’s Angouleme festival they organized a collective project with 20 other comic artist called “Maison Close.” Wherein they created a scene (a house of prostitution), drew all the background images, and organized the participation of the other artist. All the participants (including the two organizers who act as the proprietors of the house) drew themselves (or their comics stand-in (ie Trondheim as the bird-self from his autobiographical works)) into various interactions with each other on top of the existing backgrounds. If you’re interested in see more of their work, you might visit their website.