House of Five Leaves by Natsume Ono (Viz) (5 (of 8) volumes): Ono’s art isn’t as slick as most manga, and there is an occasional awkwardness to some of the drawing, but I really love this low key historical drama about an out-of-work samurai and the kidnapping gang he gets involved with. A lot of what goes on the narrative is left unsaid, and Ono is skilled at revealing the various characters’ histories and personalities as integral parts of the forward movement of the narrative. Especially interesting is the way she seems to completely eschew showing fight scenes, opting, in the rare times when they occur, to show what precedes the action and the result of the action, but not the action itself. It’s almost counterintuitive to the genre (think of the volumes long fight scenes in Lone Wolf and Cub or Vagabond), but it works here, perhaps for that very reason. Ono also has quite the way with harsh cropping of her compositions, which adds to the fractured and subtler parts of the story.

Wandering Son by Shimura Takako (Fantagraphics) (1 (of 11) volumes, ongoing): Much like House of Five Leaves, I like the way this series is subtle and very low key. Like Ono’s work Takako’s is also less slick than most manga, and rather spare in its own way. I’m looking forward to volume 2 (which appears to be out just as the year starts).

Cross Game by Mitsuri Adachi (Viz) (5 (of 8) volumes): I think I’ve written enough about Cross Game already. Certainly the most conventional of anything I’ll list in my favorites from the year.

Lorsque Nous Vivions Ensemble by Kazuo Kamimura (Kana) (3 volumes): One of the French manga translations I’ve read. Kamimura is known, if he’s known at all, in the US for doing the art on the Kazuo Koike written Lady Snowblood (Dark Horse). This is a very different work written and drawn by Kamimura in the early 70′s, apparently after the popular success of Red-Colored Elegy (D&Q). It’s much like that other work in basic plot (a young artistic couple living together as an unmarried couple), but is much more drawn out (these are big volumes) and melodramatic. If you can accept the melodrama, you can be impressed by the way Kamimura tells the story visually. One day I’ll reread this and write at more length on it.

[Check out my list of webcomics and minicomics/short stories for the year.]

I’m not just a critic but also a creator of comics, so instead of writing another post I thought I’d put together a comic for you fine MMF readers. I’m calling it, “Cam”.

Click on the first one to view it in the lightbox, then you can page through the images (if you are viewing in the feed, go to the original post first).

In case it isn’t obvious (or for those not following along with the Manga Moveable Feast) these are all pages from Cross Game by Mitsuru Adachi (published in English by Viz).

About Mitsuru Adachi (or… “What I Could Find About Adachi on the Internet”):

Mitsuru Adachi has been a published manga artist since 1970. Over the past 40 years he has published many series primarily in the various Shonen Sunday magazines. He is most famous for his shonen baseball manga such as Touch, H2, and Cross Game, and most of his series involve sports in one way or another, including series about swimming and boxing. His works have been adapted into a number of anime series and live action series and movies. According to the brief biography in Viz’s edition of Cross Game his works have sold over 200 million copies and he is in the “top echelon” of manga creators. Take that for what you will, but it does appear that his career has been long and popular.

His appearances in English have been few. Viz published two volumes of short stories called Short Program in 2000 and 2004. Copies of this are kind of rare, and the cheapest one I could find on abe.com was $25 with the next cheapest being $40 (for the completist only, I guess). Cross Game is his first series to be released officially in English (oddly enough three of Adachi’s baseball manga–H2, Touch, and Cross Game–have been published in France, perhaps baseball wins for being exotic there?), though there are scanlations of a great number of his works online. I probably wouldn’t have picked up Cross Game if it weren’t for my reading of the scanlation of his baseball series H2.

From what I’ve read of his work, Adachi’s works share many qualities both visually and narratively. Besides sports they mostly feature teen male protagonists, often focus on siblings, and tend to combine the coming of age story with teen romance and light comedy. Adachi’s comedy often includes metafictional touches, like the appearance of Adachi himself, comments on the work process, and characters commenting on extradiegetic elements. In this respect in reminds me of some of Tezuka’s comedic turns. His character designs are surprisingly consistent, especially if you look at a few of the protagonists. For instance here are male and female leads from three of Adachi’s most recent series (images from Adachi Fan):

Cross Game:

Katsu:

Itsumo Misora:

See what I mean?

About Cross Game:

Cross Game ran from 2005-2010 in Weekly Shonen Sunday and has been collected in 17 volumes. Viz, wisely, is releasing the series in multi-volumes. Volume 1 contains three of the original volumes with subsequent volumes including 2 of the originals. So, Viz’s translation will last 8 volumes. Volume 3 was just released in April, comprising volumes 6 and 7 of the original. It was adapted into a 50 episode anime which you can view in English online for free from Viz. I haven’t watched the anime, so no comments on that, maybe someone else during the MMF will have something to say about it.

The series protagonist is Ko Kitamura, the son of sports equipment store owners. He grew up alongside the Tsukishima sisters. Wakaba is his own age (they were born on the same day), and Aoba (who is the second protagonist) who is a year younger. The Tsukishima family own a cafe and batting cage, where Ko spends a lot of time hitting.

It’s hard not to discuss this series without spoiling the first volume, so be forewarned, I’m spoiling the first volume…

Ko and Wakaba are very close fourth graders and volume 1 shows them interacting, buying birthday presents for each other, etc. It also introduces some of the other characters that end up forming Ko’s baseball teammates and friends. At the end of the volume, though, Wakaba drowns at swimming camp (saving a younger girl). Her death forms a pivotal moment in the story and affects much of the underlying motivations and emotions that follow for Ko, Aoba, and many of the other characters.

The second volume moves forward to Ko entering high school. More characters are introduced, and what seems to be the larger overarching plot of the series is revealed. The day before her death Wakaba revealed to Ko’s friend Akaichi, that her dream was to see Ko and Akaichi playing in the Koshien, which is the stadium where the annual high school baseball tournaments in Japan are played (i.e. it’s like the World Series but high school). And so, that’s what they start working towards.

Of course things are not that simple. There is an antagonistic coach, other players, romance, unexpected rivals, unexpected friends, and all kinds of plot that goes on. Aoba, Wakaba’s younger sister, becomes a major character. She is an extremely skilled pitcher and a figure of romantic interest, who seems destined to be matched up with Ko (because that’s how these things go). And of course, there are baseball games. Adachi is very skilled at showing baseball games in a way that is not too detailed, but also not too generic. He mixes the playing itself with the emotional drama playing out between various players, rivals, and spectators. In this way he can make a game last a whole volume without it feeling like one is watching a whole baseball game (which would be pretty tedious in comic form even for a baseball fan like I).

So that’s a quick introduction. More on the series tomorrow from me. And then we’ll have a few more posts during the week from other writers: Craig Fischer, Andrew White, and Joe McCulloch. I’ll also be rounding up all the participating posts at other blogs throughout the week. Stay tuned.

A shonen sports manga would seem like an unlikely manga choice for a guy (me) who makes non-narrative comics and is often writing about work that exists on the fringes of narrative or genre. But, alas, while baseball drew my interest at first, Mitsuru Adachi’s skill and artistry made me a fan.

Cross Game is a shonen sports manga. Viz rates their edition at “Teen” but, almost halfway through, I can’t see how this couldn’t be read by younger kids (or maybe I know nothing about children, which is likely). A light hearted coming of age story is not exactly my normal reading fair. In fact, I’m not sure when I last read any shonen manga let alone one that wasn’t a sci-fi story (as much of the very early manga translation were when I was reading manga more indiscriminately). So what it is about this series that attracts me?

I could be really off-base, given my lack of experience in the genre, but it seems to me that Adachi is very skilled at working the genre. These types of stories (teen coming of age, sports) have a certain familiar storyline, tropes that everyone with any experience reading/watching narratives will already know. You know the hero is going to reach his goal. It doesn’t take much to figure out the romantic through-line that will play out, oh so slowly, over the course of the series. Of course the girl that is so quick to disavow her interest in the hero will fall for him. The bully becomes a valued friend. The plucky team will win out against the more experienced team with less heart. The only characters on that team that we will ever learn anything about are the only ones that will stick around during the rest of the story.

Not all these things have happened, yet (7 out of 17 volumes in*), in Cross Game. Some have and some are just my generic expectations of what will happen. Maybe Adachi will throw me for a loop (ok, he definitely–no way, no how–won’t have the hero fail to reach his goal, I just can’t fathom that), but the majority of the time he won’t. And I don’t really care, there is something to be said for the fulfilling of expectations, for the following the well-trod path, at least occasionally, as long as the execution is skilled.

Adachi does, though, throw off a few expectations from the end of volume 1 to the beginning of volume 2. And you can’t talk about it without spoilers, so… SPOILERS, though honestly, I was ruined for the surprise ending before I had started even reading the series, so I think the plot points are out there already fairly widely and I don’t feel like it ruined my enjoyment. Volume 1 sets up Ko, our male protagonist, and Wakaba, our female protagonist (so we expect), as grade school kids with a generically expected future romance, childhood sweethearts. Of course they’ll have a high school romance, not, one expects, without some obstacles, but still… they’ll get together. She even expects they’ll get married some day (she puts “engagement ring” on a year-by-year list of suggested presents for her that she gives to him).

Then, she dies. Volume 1 ends just after her death by drowning. And volume two picks up with Ko entering high school. Wakaba’s younger sister Aoba becomes the real female protagonist and Wakaba becomes the sainted dead girl. The characters (particularly Ko and Aoba, but also Ko’s friend, and catcher, Akaichi) are seen thinking about her, visualizing her presence. And, as these things go, her last words that we know about (spoken to Akaichi before she goes off and dies), her dream of Ko and Akaichi playing in the Koshien baseball tournament, become Ko and Akaichi’s dream and the driving long term goal of the series.

This taking on of another’s dream is not limited to Ko and Akaichi, though. As the story unfolds we find this theme repeated in a different form in the character of Azuma, another baseball player. He too seems to be living to play out his brother’s failed ambitions to reach the Koshien, though in this case he is motivated by a more direct sense of guilt. I say, “more direct”, cause it is not clear how much a sense of guilt plays into the Ko/Akaichi/Wakaba dream. I’m curious to see how these plots play out. Will Adaichi treat them uncriticially (probably) or will the idea of following a dead fourth grader’s dream start to seem a little silly (doubtfully, though wouldn’t that be interesting). (I guess I could read the plot synopses out there, or watch the anime, but I’ll stick it out in serialization as long as Viz doesn’t cancel the series.) I also wonder how my expectations for the Ko/Aoba romance will play against their feelings about the dead Wakaba. There is space for some interesting drama there, though I’m not convinced Adachi will go too far with it.

Of course after that first volume surprise there isn’t much that doesn’t go as you expect it would… Aoba’s cousin gets mentioned (they see him in a photo), so you know the mystery character that appears a few chapters later is him. And how can you doubt he will prove to be 1) a baseball player (or at least somehow end up on the team) and 2) somehow interfere between Aoba and Ko (who haven’t, yet, admitted any feelings for each other).

So… wait… why am I reading this series? Adachi does what he does really well. He works the characters and the plot so you want to know what happens next, and he keeps throwing in enough new characters and plot twists (as any serial must) to keep things interesting. For me, it may partially be a case of my lack of experience with comics in most of the genres Cross Game falls in: sports manga, shonen manga, teen coming of age stories. I couldn’t read a lot of series like this, but one really well done one will do. Kind of like how Nana is pretty much the only shojo manga series on my shelves.

And even knowing how the story will go is not the sum total of the interest it holds. I’m a huge fan of Yasujiro Ozu’s films (on which more another day, perhaps). Even watching most of them the first time you have a sense of how the story will end (marriage or death in most cases), and the second time through you definitely know how it will end. Yet, that doesn’t stop me from watching them multiple times and from gaining enjoyment out of the films: the shots, the compositions, the colors (when there is color), the interplay of the characters. There is much more to appreciate than the narrative.

So I guess what I really love is Adachi’s style and pacing. The series goes on its way in a leisurely manner and Adachi’s images lack the frenetic ostentation of so much manga targeted at boys, perhaps it is just his origin in the 70′s, or the subtlety of some of his scenes. As a whole, I’m attracted to elements of the work, sections here and there, rather than what amounts from the whole.

Let’s look at a couple pages…

Cross Game v.1 p. 152-3

Cross Game v.1 p.154

Late in volume 1, Wakaba has gone off to swimming camp, and Ko is walking home at night. The newscaster mentions the weather (which comes up a lot in the series, mostly visually). The second page shows us a peaceful nature scene. It is now daytime, the reader is left out of the context. Where are we? How does this relate to any of the characters? It’s a nice day out somewhere. Then, the third page, focusing in on the water, fast moving, gaining some menace as the images use a closer viewpoint. End of chapter.

It is only in the next chapter that this scene takes on any significance. For in the next chapter, we learn of Wakaba’s drowning. The first time reading the series, you think nothing of this sequence, it’s just another transition, another page of setting (which Adachi does a lot, on which, more later). The second time around, though, you understand. That speaks something to Adachi’s work, that, despite it’s origin in a serialized magazine, he is expecting that readers will reread, that something will be gained from rereading. It also speaks a bit to the concept of death and memory. When a person dies, settings, objects, words, feelings, can take a new meaning when revisited. The passage of time changes our conception.

More so, than the generic dream of going to the Koshien, it is in the moments like this where Wakaba’s death forms the real heart of the series.

Similarly, in the first chapter of volume 2, the reader still not aware that 4-5 years have passed since volume 1, we find Ko waking for school.

Cross Game v.1 p.198

We’ve seen the two alarm clocks in volume 1. They were birthday presents from Wakaba. That panel in the lower right is silent and relatively uninflected, yet, knowing the origin of the alarm clocks we guess Ko’s thoughts are of Wakaba (and on a first read through, this could be only days after her death). A second time through, we know the time has passed, Ko is still thinking of her, and having passed through the story once we also can imagine Ko is looking at something else in the room. He keeps the birthday present list Wakaba gave him in volume 1 on his wall.

Cross Game v.1 p.212-13

Another three page sequence on the same theme. A half page of Adachi’s pillow shots, returns us to Ko walking. He sees a baseball hat floating in the water which returns us to the baseball hat Wakaba borrows from Ko before leaving for camp. A hat her father gives back to Ko at her funeral. This is fairly subtle, Adachi doesn’t need to tell us what Ko is thinking about, the images make it clear enough. He hear’s his name, and, turning the page…

Cross Game v.1 p.214

Ko sees Wakaba for a second, but then reality intrudes, it is just her little sister, now the same age Wakaba was at her death.

Moving on, I have to talk about the other main part of the series, baseball. Adachi clearly knows his baseball and if the internet is to be believed, he even owns a baseball team. But he doesn’t make his manga all about the baseball. He using the game narratively in subservience to the characters and their stories. The games he shows are about the individual characters he is focusing on, and the primary action he focuses on is the confrontation between pitcher and batter (with catcher thrown in as the third part of the equation) as well as the interactions between team members and coaches. His portrayal of the game as a battle between pitcher and batter works into the sense of battle/fighting predominant in so much shonen manga, but it also provides a dramatic hook that can be understood without extensive baseball knowledge. Even someone with the most rudimentary knowledge of baseball knows that the pitcher doesn’t want to allow the batter to hit the ball, and that the batter wants to hit the ball. Drama. Conflict. It’s no surprise then that the protagonists of Adachi’s baseball series are always pitchers and sluggers, with a catcher thrown in as a secondary character. You don’t really learn much about the fielders, you often don’t even know what position the slugger plays. He’s unimportant in the field, only when he’s at the plate.

So you can get something out of the baseball scenes without knowing too much, though Adachi does show his knowledge. For instance, in the big game in volume 4 we see Ko pitching against the varsity team from his own school (there’s this whole thing about the new varsity coach and… well it’s just plot…). Aoba (who we see in the bottom corner) had pitched to the varsity team at one of their practices, so she learned a lot of valuable intelligence on the hitters. Here we see Ko putting it to use.

Cross Game v.2 p.107

You have to put this scene together a bit. The batter swings. In panel two we can see he connects to the ball pretty far in front of himself. The ball bounces over the first baseman. Easy out. Aoba notes that the batter was great against fastballs. To those who know about baseball, it’s clear what happened here. The batter is strong against fastballs, he expects a fastball (Ko throws a lot of them, as do most pitchers). Ko throws a slower pitch and the batter, swinging sooner because he expects the ball to be moving faster, has his bat way “out in front” (as they say) and hits the pitch too early to make an effective hit. Now you don’t need to know all that to follow the story, but it does show that there is a lot going on.

Cross Game v.2 p.118

I like the first panel on this page, as we see Adachi switching to a more realistic figure drawing to show the stopped action, surely based on photographic reference.

Cross Game v.2 p.94-5

Here’s a nice two page spread from volume 4. First thing you notice is the way the panel layout really works to add a movement between both pages. It’s dynamic but also in accordance with the content itself, with the large triangle in the center providing the real thrust of the homerun from right to left. The right hand page quickly sets up the locations and oppositions: Pitcher in one direction, batter in the opposite direction (setting up their opposition), and observer (that’s Aoba in the middle panel watching the game and commenting on it for the reader) watching it all, but here pointed in the direction of the ball (thus stacking the movement of the page against Ko, the pitcher. Adachi uses the speedlines and freeze frame type actions to play up the movement with a bit of an optical illusion in the bottom panel where it looks like the ball is passing through the bat. The bat is just poking out of the panel borders adding a little punctuation to its movement.

Where the right page is all dynamic quick motion, the left page slows down the movement a bit, the calm after the storm as everyone watches the ball fly. The close-up on Aoba’s eyes in the right page acts in accordance with the reader’s viewing. The compositions of the panels on the left page provide a nice sequence of close/distant, distant/close. There’s the ball in the air, the focus of everyone, still nearby to the batter, the pitcher, the observers. Then, it’s far away, just a tiny circle in the sky. The transition simultaneously slows the action and emphasizes the speed of the balls movement. And then the spread finished off with the antagonist haughty coach in his dugout, grinning at what he thinks is his great success.

It’s a really great sequence that is easy to read right past without appreciating how well Adachi has put it together to emphasize a lot of important details and oppositions. And it is that type of work that really makes Adachi such fun to read.

*Henceforth, referencing volumes, I’m talking about the Japanese numbering (i.e. volume 1 means the first third of Viz’s first book) except my images which are referencing to specific pages in the Viz volumes.

p.46-47 from Kazuichi Hanawa's Doing Time

I was reading Kazuichi Hanawa’s Doing Time (Fanfare/Ponent Mon, 2004) and came upon this spread (p.46-47, read right to left) early in the book. Earlier this week I read Greice Schneider’s post on the Comics Grid about Jason’s use of excessive type in Hey, Wait… where she writes: “Meaninglessness, though, can also be expressed by adopting an aesthetics of visual excess (since both lack and overload can be equally menacing to the production of meaning).”

This spread from Hanawa’s book about his time in Japanese prison (for possession of an illegal gun) is a great example of visual excess. It features 21 panels showing the meals Hanawa is fed, with only a single varying panel which focuses on Hanawa’s concern that he will get “flabby” because all he does is eat and sleep, i.e. from the excess. So the excess is both visual and thematic. A quick scan of the spread could lead one to believe the many panels of meals are simple repetitions, yet each image is distinct, despite it’s basic sameness. In fact, as far as I can tell (without making a list and checking it closely), each meal, and even each element of each meal, is unique. There are no actual repetitions on the diegetic level. Hanawa’s meal is different each time.

This uniqueness found in the repetition of the mundane is a vital part of the concept of the everyday. Our daily lives can, on the surface, appear repetitive and banal, yet, examined at a closer level, the repetitions of our daily lives are variable. Hanawa’s limited and highly structured life in prison attunes he and his cellmates to the repetitions and variations of the everyday. In the book itself, Hanawa’s stories break down any sense of time as being a continuous ordered flow of recognizable events. It’s never quite clear when each chapter takes place and how much time passes from one chapter to another, as there are no real markers except the structured parts of each day. At times Hanawa is in a shared cell, at times in a single cell, without any real sense of when or how he moves from one to the other.

This spread also takes me back to another article by Schneider “Comics and Everyday Life: from Ennui to Contemplation” (European Comic Art 3.1 (2010): 37-63), an excellent article I command to your attention. In it, she discusses representations in comics of everyday life and strategies related to showing ennui and contemplation. In reading the spread above, once can access both of these states, the ennui of the repetition and time passing through sameness, as well as the contemplation of all these varying meals, a seemingly endless variation of foods (even more worthy of contemplation for the non-Japanese, who will find the foods even more strange and needing of attention).

A few comments from the original post at The Panelists:

Charles Hatfield:

Derik:

This post is part of this month’s Manga Moveable Feast on Kozuo Amano’s Aria (currently (?) published by Tokyopop). For more entries in the MMF, visit Animemiz’s page on the feast. I’m not getting into a lot of plot or character summary here, but there’s plenty of it in the other posts. You could also check out the previous times I’ve written about the series in 2005 (Aria v.1-3), 2009 (Aria v.5) (I appear to be on a 2 year cycle) which have a little more plot description (and you can see some of my changing opinions of the series as I read more of it).

Kozue Amano’s Aria (the the two volume predecessor Aqua) doesn’t look like, nor does it sound like, a book I would enjoy reading (and rereading as it turns out). It’s a big-eyed manga about girls whose goal in life is to be great at piloting gondola’s in a futuristic Mars city designed to replicate 19th century Venice. Yet, it’s a series I now have 8 volumes of (more than any other manga except Phoenix, Nana, Lone Wolf and Cub, and Vagabond) all of which I’ve read at least twice. I’ve read the rest of the series in scanlation. [1]  I’ll try to avoid “spoilers” for the 6 volumes that don’t have official English publications, though I can’t think of a comic that would be less affected by knowing how it ends, as I can’t imagine anyone whose read the first few volumes who couldn’t guess where it ends. [2] I will use a few examples and images from later volumes but nothing extensive, though I think some of my points are clearer the more you’ve read of the series.

For a manga, Aria fits oddly with existing genres. Tokyopop labels it “Sci-Fi/Drama”, which is technically true though perhaps a bit misleading. As I’ll discuss later, the science of Aria‘s “sci-fi” is, if not completely absent, only a minor part of the series, more background than integral to the story or even the characters. And to call Aria “drama” is to use that word in only the lightest of senses, it is the least dramatic manga I can think of, excepting perhaps Jiro Taniguchi’s Walking Man. Even the quiet and slow (but beloved) Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou by Ashinano Hitoshi has an element of dramatic disintegration at work over the course of its story. Aria is almost absent of romance (more on that later) or much in the way of conflict. Instead it is primarily an evocation of both the everyday (at least a very particular sense of the everyday) and the passage of time. It is a most undramatic form of bildungsroman, telling the story of Akari, a young gondolier in training, and her friends as they learn their trade. If nothing else, we can say that the overarching story of Aria is about time passing and how to best spend and appreciate that time.

As such, repetition and variation are integral to the series: visually, narratively, and thematically. Visually, there is a frequent use of non-exact repetitions of certain imagery: characters standing erect on gondola’s as they glide through the water in a state of bliss, cityscapes, seascapes, skyscapes dotted by floating weather controlling ships, sunsets/rises, smiling and laughing faces, superdeformed characters showing their angry faces. There are also some striking scenes of exact repetition. Early on volume 1 of Aqua, two of the protagonists, Akari and Aika, gondoliers in training, get lost in a labyrinth of water-filled passages inside a building. To visually hammer home the disorientation, Kozue uses a series of page spreads that are almost exactly the same (remember to read right-to-left, click for larger views):

The first image in each spread starts off each spread back at the same spot, and the following two panels on the recto also closely mirror each other. The whole of the recto pages in the first two spreads are also almost exactly the same visually, with only slight variations in character position and differing dialogue to let us know it is not a misprint. This use of repetition works well to emphasizes the strangeness of the situation (lost in a labyrinth), but also works with the greater themes of the book.

Narratively, the story itself offers a repetition of situations, shifting out characters, locations, or times of the year, but offering familiar situations. This can work both for and against the narrative. The reader may get bored with the sameness (as I did on occasion), but the repetition also plays in to some of the greater thematics of the series.

Thematically, repetition is a touchstone for the heart of the series and its use of time, not only through seasons but also in the way the two generations of characters (trainees and mentors) are depicted.

In my most recent reading of the series, in preparation for this article, I finally noticed that each volume of the series marks one season in narrative time. With each new volume Akari (our protagonist and primary narrator) announces the arrival of a new season. This assures the reader’s attention to the passing of time and the growth of the characters (such as it is) and also nicely mirrors our segmentation of the year into the segmentation of the story. Time passing is closely tied with the series use of repetition and the thematically primary nostalgia that suffuses the series. Narratively, Kozue also uses seasons as a generator for stories. A great many of the stories revolve around season specific festivals, events, and nature (weather, animals, etc.). One chapter (49) in volume ten actually recapitulates a whole years worth of time by passing through each of the seasons.

The protagonists and major secondary characters in the series are all so-called “undines,” gondolier tour guides, divided into three younger trainees (the real protagonists) and three older mentors. As the series progresses, Kozue plays up the repetition in the larger strokes of the two generations’ lives: their friendships, career paths, and futures. This repetition and the opportunity it provides for the older generation to see themselves and their pasts in the younger generation and for the younger generation to see their future and, even more so, their present as a past time, is the greatest (and most moving) generator of nostalgia in the series.

The nostalgic core of Aria is impossible to ignore. All the larger elements of the story emphasize nostalgia and force attention to it on the reader. We can start with the setting of the series, Neo-Venezia. The city, found on a terraformed Mars of the future (2300 C.E.) renamed “Aqua”, is a recreation of 19th century Venice, a city from a previous century (to the reader), existing in a world centuries ahead. This situates the story both in the past and the future of the reader, a perfect location to best evoke nostalgic longing. Neo-Venezia, as is noted numerous times in the series, is essentially a “backwards” place existing with the perks of a science fictional technology, yet culturally and aesthetically maintaining the “charm” of a vanished (and certainly non-existent) past. Technology brings a clean, healthy world, shorn of any sign of poverty, homelessness, disease, or war, with weather controlled to be perfect seasons. Culturally, the city exists without motor vehicles of any sort (excepting flying machines that provide transportation of goods), without any visible phones (ok I just found one in volume 10, it has a crank, separate ear and mouth pieces, and two visible bells on top), televisions, or other trappings of contemporary or future technology–excepting Akari’s laptop, an object she brought from Earth. Earth itself is portrayed, through narration and dialogue (it is never shown), as an artificial world where everything is controlled by machines and no longer “natural” (Akari has never swum in a “real” ocean). One story is devoted to Akari assisting a mailman as he delivers letters and an evocation of the wonders of paper mail, because, while Akari’s narration is provided in the form of emails back to a friend on Earth, the people of Neo-Venezia prefer to use paper mail.

Narratively, a number of stories explicitly rely on the nostalgia theme. It is explicitly mentioned in a scene early in the series in Aqua volume 2:

As noted above, the younger generation of characters are themselves a source of nostalgia for the older generation, while the older generation’s nostalgia puts the younger into an increased sense of the fleeting nature of their present. Their place as trainees, i.e. students, also evokes a great location of nostalgia, school, a period that is always limited in time, guaranteed to pass, and so often looked back on with a nostalgic glow.

This is perhaps most explicit in the first chapter of volume 6 (which is just at the middle of the series (2 volumes of Aqua and 12 volumes of Aria, means volume 6 of Aria is actually volume 8 out of a total 14)) where the six undines are gathered together for the first time. The older generation (admittedly, older seems to mean early 20s in this story) tell the younger about how they met. This story clearly mirrors the way the younger characters met in earlier volumes. The younger characters note this in the story. What disturbs the characters is the way over time the older generation got so busy with their work that they don’t get to see each other very often, when, as youths, they spent every day together training (as the younger generation do throughout the series). This sense of change and lose is closely associated with the nostalgic longing, time passes, life changes, and those situations where we considered ourselves most happy seem to gain luster by their distance.

The sadness of nostalgia and change is countered by the didactic content of the series, an example of which can be seen in this very scene. The older generation offers the younger generation advice on enjoying the present:

I should note that this scene (again, situated at the center of the series) is repeated in memory in the final volume of the series, with this same advice replayed, further showcasing this as a core scene in the series.

Similarly, in contrast to the nostalgia, Aria frequently calls for the appreciation of the present as fleeting moment to be enjoyed to the full, a call that is the series other main theme. Akari as a personality is often shown with, and admired by the others for, her ability to find pleasure in the everyday and to make the most of her experiences. Her enthusiasm for life, people, and the world around her becomes infectious both to the other characters and acts as a draw for the reader. As an example, in volume five a whole chapter is devoted to Akari and her enjoyment of waiting: “I love to wait. I relish little pockets of spare time.” (154)

This pleasure in life is often found in beauty, scenery, and the scenic view. This is the aspect of the series that many reviewers focus on, the phrase “scenery porn” comes up a few times, and it is an aspect I focused on with my first reading. It is also more prominent in the early part of the series, before Kozue has had time to grow the themes of the series and the characters’ relations. Akari is often shown in rapture at a wonderful view (cityscape, sunset, the sea, rainbows, buildings, etc.) and I assume the reader is supposed to share in these feelings, but Kozue’s conventionally realist manga backgrounds (thin lines, clearly photoreferenced, ziptones) don’t really convey that sense of aesthetic wonder that one feels on seeing the real thing. One thing art can do is to reframe and reimagine these natural wonders in new expressive ways. Art is about how the thing is represented not necessarily what is represented. I find less realistic artwork is often more expressive and aesthetically moving in this respect, particularly when the object of representation is something out there in the world that is aesthetically stunning on its own. For instance, Oliver East’s watercolors are rarely realist, but his images of nature, buildings, even wind (realist art can’t really draw wind) are visually exciting. Aria’s artwork is too often too real but plain to be aesthetically surprising in the way Akari, the character, sees the objects represented.

For instance, the scene shown above where Akari is watching fireworks and is told about nostalgia, the fireworks themselves just don’t really work as a wonderful image in themselves, making it harder to share Akari’s enthusiasm. Similarly, in volume 1 Akari discovers a rainbow in the water she is using to clean her gondola. Her excitement just can’t be matched by the representation itself:

It is to Kozue’s credit that she often can pull off these scenes not with stunning imagery but with the combination of the imagery and the characterization. Often the art is more striking when the scene is not about the natural beauty of the scenes itself, but rather some other aspect, like this striking scene from v.10 where the frozen moment (important in the story) and the visual angle work together to make the image moving:

Kozue is also skilled in setting up some of the more fantastical scenes that go on in the book, like the labyrinth scene above. A similar scene finds Akari and her mentor Alicia on an island designed like a traditional Japanese shrine setting. As the characters walk through the torii the scene again creates a sense of disorientation and confusion that is quite lovely.

So this appreciation of life and the moment is not always successful when Kozue focuses too much on the view itself, rather her strength in the series is making use of the characters and their interactions to control the reactions to various scenes.

The idea that people are in charge of their own happiness is also frequently evoked through out the series by different characters. All this didactic content is certainly a positive message to try to convey to the reader and indeed forms one of the larger themes of the series, but these ideas are undercut by the relentless sunniness of the series. As noted this futuristic city shows no sign of homelessness, poverty, war, violence, or any negative effects of technology. The setting is basically a utopia, though it is also, despite the theme of change that runs through it, strangely static, as we see neither births nor deaths across the 4 years of narrative time.

Nor, along with birth and death, is there any real sexuality in the series, though there are clear gender related issues. The primary characters are all women, though a few recurring males are seen throughout the series. Akari’s best friend Aika has the only hint of romance with one of these males, a romance that is so innocent and unspoken that it is almost not there. One of the males also has an endless crush on one of the older undines, but it is primarily played as a joke. In fact, the male characters as a whole are portrayed as unserious characters and with seriously weird looking appearances. The main women are all attractive–and in this odd fantasy they must be to have the jobs they have–within the bounds of the style (big eyes, lots of hair, impossible figures) while the men are all odd and caricatured, one of them barely looks like he belongs to the same species as the women.

The roles of the genders in this utopia are also backwards (as perhaps befits the nostalgic setting but not the futuristic one). We are at one point told that the gondolas the undines use to give tours are the only boats women are allowed to pilot in the city. And in chapters where the girls see the work that their male friends do (one works in a floating ship that controls climate, one underground in a place that controls gravity, and another is a flying delivery man) there is no indication that women perform any of those jobs.

That a series so focused on happiness and the pleasures of daily life, starring teenage girls is so void of romance is a bit odd, but romance would also introduce drama and the potential for heartbreak, which would break the fantasy. And the series is essentially a fantasy. It’s least successful moments are where the fantasy of a science fiction utopia is given a layer of mystical fantasy elements. A few chapters in the series make use a mythical giant cat figure (I’ve gotten this long without mentioning the predominance of cats in the series, there are a number of them) and events Akari witnesses or participates in that are only explainable as fantastical. These elements are out of place in a series that is otherwise so focused on finding the special moments in daily life.

In the end, though, I find Aria a unique and moving series. Over the course of so many pages there are many scenes that are worth rereading and Kozue is very successful at creating a rapport with the characters that she can build up to a very moving finale (which hopefully we’ll see in a real English printing some day).

—

Images from Aria v.1 are from the ADV edition. Images from Aria v.10 are from the scanlation. All other images from the Tokyopop editions. For volume and page references, the image files are named in the format TITLE_VOLUME_PAGE.

—

Addendum: Apologies if some of these points are not as clear or supported as they could be. I didn’t want to miss my deadline! And maybe some other time I’ll connect Aria’s nostalgia to the aesthetic concept of mono no aware, but that would take a lot more time (and rereading of some references).

Addendum 2: I didn’t find a good place to complain about how Tokyopop’s edition provides no translation of the sound effects. For such a quiet series, the sound effects are pretty important. For instance, not the lovely long effects in this spread:

Those characters represent the sound of a special chime that is the focus of the chapter. In many other cases I was unable to tell what the effect was supposed to represent. I’d have loved something like the notes used in English translation of Yuichi Yokoyama’s New Engineering.

Addendum 3: I also wanted to reiterate my absolute confusion at Tokyopop’s rating of this series as “Older Teen Age 16+, May include: Non-sexual nondescript nudity, mild fanservice, alcohol use.” Having read the whole series twice (and some volumes more times), and leaving aside what “nondescript nudity” could be, I didn’t see any nudity of any kind of the book. Nor would I classify anything in the book as any but the mildest of fanservice. There is one chapter at a beach with characters in bathing suits, but it is hardly exploitive. There is one chapter in a bathing house that is positively tame (everyone is in very chastely worn towels). There is some alcohol use but it is extremely subtle (you can see the wine bottles). It’s baffling.

[1] I read the scanlations after ADV stopped publishing Aria after three volumes. Aria‘s publication status in English has never seemed very secure. ADV cancelled it after three volumes and Tokyopop’s edition seems to be in a constant state of pending cancellation. It was put on hiatus on one point, and lately volumes have come out only once a year. As of right now, it’s not clear volume 7 will ever appear. Sean Gaffney gets into the publication history (including in Japan) a bit at his post.

[2] SPOILERS: There’s an alien invasion and all the girls’ gondolas turn into giant fighting robots… (that’s a joke).

In my mind, Barefoot Gen is a better comic than it is in reality. If the Holocaust is the topic guaranteed to get attention (Maus, The Pianist, Schindler’s List, Life is Beautiful), the bombing of Hiroshima is the topic mostly ignored. Barefoot Gen is the rare popular (as in pop, not as in everyone-likes-it) artwork on the topic, and it is sadly a broad caricature. Keiji Nakazawa was there, he, as his early manga on the bombing has it, “saw it”. A first hand observer and victim, he spent his life (according to accounts I’ve seen) making work about the bombing. This is the one that made it into English. Is it the best? I wonder. It’s a caricature. I couldn’t escape the caricature as I read the first 4 volumes (I gave up there because that’s where my purchasing gave out, I’d have given up after volume 2 if I hadn’t already owned copies of 3 and 4) of this 10 volumes series. Gen, our protagonist, is young and rash, yet always moral. He may steal, but it’s for the right reasons. He may beat up another kid, but it’s because the other kid is a mean asshole. His family, they all do the right thing too, they suffer and they suffer with dignity and honor. Most everyone else is an asshole. Everyone sucks. Everyone hates and discriminates. Everyone is only looking out for him/herself. God this is bleak. The attitude of all the secondary characters is more bleak than the bombing itself. The bombing is an impersonal action. The United States bombs the Japanese. They are at war. Thousands have died. Despite the horror of it, it was an impersonal action, the people on one side (those who made the bomb, those who dropped it) didn’t see those who suffered from it (the Japanese living in Hiroshima). But Barefoot Gen, as it shows the days leading up to the event and the days/months/years (time is oddly fluid as the story goes on) after, focuses on the personal, how people treated each other face-to-face. It’s bleak. Gen and his family are impoverished, starving, dying even (some of them). No one seems to care, no one wants to help, and even worse, most people actually make things worse by cursing them, stealing from then, accusing them of theft, beating them, etc. Gen manages to assert life and living and staying alive and… well, it’s tiring. How old is this kid? Really? You almost wish he’s just say “Fuck it, I give up. People suck, we should die.” But he keeps spouting his positive message.

Nakazawa has a message, he’s not afraid to say so. He shoves it down your throat every chance he gets. It’s not enough that we see people being selfish and caring only for themselves, he has to tell us that they are selfish and care only for themselves. It’s not enough that people die and lose loved ones and starve and have their skin melted off. No, we have to see everyone (except Gen and his family) go crazy from loss. It’s not enough that the poor artist was in the bomb’s path, got radiation sickness and burns and has maggots living on him and diarrhea and that his family wants nothing to do with him except wishing that he die. No, he also has to die while he’s trying to paint the corpses of the dead victims as their bodies are burned. And no he doesn’t even die then, he has to come back to life after he has been put in a coffin by his relatives, and he has to beg them for food at the door while they ignore him, so they he can really die this time and now they’ve really abused him by ignoring his last wishes.

This is melodrama. Damn it is melodrama.

And it suffers for it. It’s too much; it’s over the top; it’s ridiculous. Even before the bomb it’s too much with the Japanese berating Gen and his family for being “traitors” because their father speaks out against the war. Apparently he is the only one, as he seems to have no symphatizers. He is the lone protester, victim exceptionalism. By the time the bomb hits it’s already too much. Over said, over shown, and over played. Get me out of here.

The only decent person is the Korean neighbor. Korean’s were conquered and enslaved by the Japanese. The Korean neighbor is the one nice guy, despite how horrible he has been treated, he’s nice to Gen and his family. But not any of the Japanese. No one else is nice. God, was Nakazawa this pessimistic about his countrymen? Could it really have been that horrible? I don’t know, but it doesn’t work as fiction. This isn’t reportage or autobiography. It is fictionalized. And as fiction it doesn’t work. It overburdens. It paints with so broad a brush.

After posting a brief negative comment on Twitter/Facebook, Marc Sobel engaged me a bit on the comic in Facebook comments. He’s much more positive about the manga, and he made me realize that part of my issue with Gen is that I’m not the target audience. The series is meant for kids. It’s not supposed to be subtle or nuanced (I should note this is my point, not Marc’s). Last Gasp’s publication design avoids any age group signs. The design is very plain, has no age ratings, has no explicit target audience. I think, based on their catalog (particularly the other manga they’ve published), I expected something a little more grown up. What I got was not so. I imagine other bloggers participating in the MMF will have something more positive to say, if that’s what you’re looking for.

In no particular order, and each deserving of further analysis/description/commentary:

Roughly putting a French translation back into English: My line constantly brings to mind it's existence as ink. I call on the complicity of my reader who transforms the line into meaning, using our common well of culture, history, and poetry. - Saul Steinberg.

1) Quadrilogues by Pascal Tessier (Grandpapier) – For a few months I delighted in finding this series in my feed reader each day. Tessier structured the series as single pages mixing quotations from (mostly) famous thinkers, writers, and artists with his own evocative black and white imagery. It’s a shame the text is all in French so that most of my readers can’t get the full effect of the comic. The combination of thoughtful words and beautiful imagery makes for pages that are worth contemplating rather than just reading/viewing. More on comics from Grandpapier here, here, and here.

2) Puke Force by Brian Chippendale (Picturebox) – I have yet to write about Chippendale’s big book from this year, If ‘N Oof, but I’ve enjoyed this webcomic series much more. Puke Force seems more quintessentially Chippendale, with snaking panel sequences, frenetic mark-making, genre pastiche, and social commentary, in the vein of the latter parts of Ninja. The humor is often very dark, but also quite funny. Chippendale juggles a number of simultaneous lines of action with skill. The whole sequence in the weird valley is just crazy with it’s background textures (see above).

3) House of Five Leaves by Natsume Ono (Viz SigIkki) – This is one title from Viz’s SigIkki line that I’ve kept up with, I even went so far as to watch the anime series which is free on Hulu. A quiet story in historical Japan (not sure what time period exactly) starring a failed samurai and a gang of kidnappers. It’s unusual, and much different than other manga period pieces like Vagabond or Lone Wolf and Cub in that it features very little violence. This is primarily a character-based story, even the majority of the shady dealings of the kidnappers occur off-panel. Ono has a fairly simple drawing style that manages to be very expressive. I often find I must pay very close attention to keep up with the narrative. Looking forward to rereading this in the print edition.

4) The ongoing output of Jason Overby – If you been reading this site you’re probably already familiar with my love for Jason’s work. He’s constantly posting single page and short comics as well as other images that are visually and intellectually thought provoking. The sidebar of his site has a number of minicomics you can read online. Reviews of his minicomics here, here, and here

5) Trains Are… Mint #7 by Oliver East – I read a few comics by East this year, including his latest books Berlin and That (Blank Slate), but, as he keeps getting better, this is the latest. East’s style is so unusual for comics, an blending of naive (he’s new to making and reading comics) and sophisticated (he’s created his own unique style). From it’s amazing abstract first page to a long sequence showing the same house from the same viewpoint for (if I counted correctly) 87 panels without geting boring, this is great comic. More on East’s work: here, here, and here.

6) Carnivale by Nick Mullins – Mullins has been serializing this story online for years. I’m not sure how long I’ve been following it serially, but after recently rereading a large portion of it in minicomic format (you can order them here) I gained a renewed appreciation for it as a larger whole. Even out of the larger context, just looking at a few pages should give you an appreciation for his fine line work, his skill creating wordless dialogue, and his mix of the normal, the fantastic, and the grotesque.

7) Bonus shout out to the What Things Do site for its online reprinting of King-Cat issues and early Ron Regé Jr. Yeast Hoist issues.

8) Extra shout out to my favorite webcomics that are almost never updated at Western Park by Timothy Kidd.

from Cross Game chapter 14.

Mitsuru Adachi’s Cross Game isn’t my normal fair, but during my baseball comics series I really enjoyed his H2. When I saw Viz was serializing this other baseball manga at their Shonen Sunday site (print volumes soon), I started following it.

It’s pages like the above that really get me. Adachi uses a lot of these pages that are more about scenery, weather, and seasons than any particular narrative plot or scene setting. They are very much like the “pillow shots” used by Ozu in his films. There is an excess to them that is refreshing, not excess as in visual excess or thematic excess, but an excess of narrative concision. Adachi doesn’t need to include these pages (or sometimes just a few panels), but they add to the atmosphere in an intriguing way.

So it felt like a victory to get these final volumes of Mushishi. I even ordered it the same week it came out because I was so excited to read them. But now that I’ve read them, I’m let down.

In my last post on the series I noted:

On this most recent read through the series I did notice more plot threads that connect different stories in the series. I’m not sure they amount to any sort of overarching plot, but maybe, in the end, Urushibara goes somewhere with it.

Alas, in the end, she didn’t go anywhere at all. Perhaps it would have been better if the series had been cancelled, then I could imagine those missing volumes as some improvement on what came before. Instead, these last volumes feel like Urushibara was stuck in a rut. She never abandons the strict episodic nature of the series, which could be fine except she never finds anywhere new to go with the stories. The metaphorical and emotional underpinnings of the mushi stories are not expanded on any by the addition of these volumes. The protagonist, Ginko, is not grown in any way. The art does not improve or change.

Aria provides a good comparison in this respect. It is similarly a work that is not primarily concerned with an overarching narrative (beyond the protagonist’s professional schooling/advancement), but over the course of the series there are new characters and the old characters change some, and stories call back to previous ones. There is forward movement rather than a standstill.

Mushishi makes a great case for the idea that some series need to be short.

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.