Regular readers of the blog may have wondered why, after 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015, there clearly was no blogpost in the 2016 ComFor (German Society for Comics Studies) meeting. There is certainly a straightforward reason behind that: we hadn’t attended year’s conference that is last. A couple of weeks ago, nonetheless, the trip was taken by me to Bonn where this year’s seminar (subject: “Comics and their Popularity”) happened. Take note that listed here records aren’t meant to acceptably summarise the particular seminar paper; alternatively they’re rather subjective and random – thus the name for this blogpost.
The meeting began on Friday, December 1 aided by the “Open Workshops”, i.e. Documents not in the seminar theme of “Comics and their Popularity”.
- The presentation that is first by Zita Husing (Bonn) on “Being and Nature: the importance of this Southern Space associated with Swamp in Alan Moore’s The Saga associated with Swamp Thing” in which she submit connections between tropes regarding the United states South and Swamp Thing, e.g. That both are difficult to kill – no matter exactly how poorly they’ve been maimed or burned down, they constantly return through the dead. Like was remarked into the conversation afterward, nevertheless, it is interesting how authors after Moore, such as for example Jeff Lemire, have actually expanded Swamp Thing’s backstory into a cosmology that shifts the main focus through the regional to your worldwide.
- Within the paper that is second “Batwing, Batflugel oder Flugel-Bat. Die onimischen Einheiten im Comic” (“onimic devices in comics” – all translations mine), Rafal Jakiel (Wroclaw) looked over the names (poetonyms) of figures in superhero comics and identified faculties such as for example their simple iconicity: for example, Killer Croc is in fact a murderous guy whom seems like a crocodile.
- Daniela Kaufmann (Graz) then offered “A Study in monochrome. Zur Signifikanz der Farben Schwarz und Wei? im Comic” (“on the value for the tints white and black in comics”). Beginning with Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square – showcased e.g. In Nicolas Mahler’s comic Lulu und das Schwarze Quadrat – she proceeded to Krazy Kat additionally the racial ambiguity of both its creator George Herriman and its particular eponymous protagonist.
- It was followed closely by Elisabeth Krieber‘s (Salzburg) paper on “Subversive feminine shows in artistic Media – Phoebe Gloeckner’s and Alison Bechdel’s Graphic Narratives” which additionally considered the musical adaptation of Fun Home and also the movie adaptation of Diary of the Teenage woman.
Unfortuitously we missed the second two speaks by Karoline M. Pohl and Sakshi Wason, correspondingly, whom shut the “Open Workshops” section after which it the documents regarding the “Popularity” theme began.
- The presentation that is next attended ended up being by Veronique Sina (Cologne / Tubingen) on “Comickeit is Judischkeit. Uber das diskursive Zusammenspiel von Comic, Popularkultur und judischer Identitat” (“on the discursive interplay of comics, popular tradition, and Jewish identity”). Her examples that are main the comics of Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Harvey Pekar, and she also talked about Jonas Engelmann’s theory of popular tradition given that dissolution of identification.
- Pnina Rosenberg (Haifa) mentioned “Mickey au camp de Gurs: governmental critique and car censorship in comics done through the Holocaust”, for which she provided three photo publications produced by Hans Rosenthal during their internment at a concentration camp in 1942.
- The keynote that is first of seminar was presented with by Julia Round (Bournemouth), en titled “Canon or popular? Sandman, Aesthetics, Intertextuality and Literariness”. She discussed the ongoing battle about the status of comics as a whole and Sandman in specific as literary works (also: high vs. Low art, “graphic novels” vs. Comic publications), just exactly how this might be suffering from the intimate author idea around Neil Gaiman (“Mr Gaiman could be the Sandman” – Clive Barker), and exactly how this discourse comes into the fore in fan talks at neilgaimanboard.com.
Saturday, December 2:
- In their talk on “Batmans queere Popularitat. Ein comicwissenschaftlicher und kulturhistorischer Annaherungsversuch” (“Batman’s queer popularity. A method through the viewpoint of comics studies and history” that is cultural, Daniel Stein (Siegen) talked about how Batman is appropriated as homosexual by some visitors, while some are gripped by ‘queer anxiety’, i.e. The fear that their beloved character might formally be homosexual.
- Laura Antola‘s (Turku) paper “Marvel’s Comics in Finland: Translation, ‘Mail-Man’ plus the interest in superheroes” portrayed the figure that is eccentric of, a real-life translator and editor whom additionally responded fan mail into the page pages of Finnish Marvel comics from 1980 forward.
- “Das Popula(e)re und das Signifikante. Der Comic als Antwort auf die Krise liberaler Erzahlungen? ” (“The popular therefore the significant. Comics as a solution into the crisis of liberal ” that is narratives by Mario Zehe (Leipzig) talked about Economix by Goodwin/Burr, Le Singe de Hartlepool by Lupano/Moreau, and fortunate Luke: Los Angeles Terre vow by Jul/Achde as samples of comics that demonstrate the limitations of cosmopolitanism.
- Stephan Packard (Cologne) mentioned “President Lex Luthor, Wakanda und der osteuropaische Schwarzwald. Zur popularen Ideologie der Fiktionalitat in Comics” (“President Lex Luthor, Wakanda in addition to Eastern European Black Forest. In the popular ideology of fictionality in comics”) therefore the often problematic connection between fictional things and their real-world counterparts. A striking instance is the current “Alien Nation” story from Captain Marvel vol. 1 (2017) which can be partly set within the “Black Forest”, albeit A black colored woodland that does not look any such thing such as the genuine one out of Southern Western Germany and it is situated, relating to a caption, in “Eastern Europe”. Packard unfolded a tight theoretical framework which included the kinds of fiction concept talked about by Marie-Laure Ryan including the ‘principle of minimal departure’, but also Theodor Adorno’s ‘categorical imperative for the tradition industry’, and others.
Lecture hallway IX at Bonn University during David Turgay’s talk. Photograph by Ronny Bittner
The next paper ended up being David Turgay‘s (Landau) very interesting “Das alternate im Popularen: Eine korpusgestutzte Analyse von Mainstream-Comics” (“the alternative when you look at the popular: a corpus-based analysis of mainstream comics”) in which he examined the panels of 150 US comic publications from 1996 and from 2016 pertaining to six requirements: politics / social critique, narrative peculiarities, creative peculiarities, metafictional elements, absence of fighting, and lack of text. The outcomes of this analysis revealed an increase that is significant of requirements with time, but general these traits (which David Turgay interpreted given that impact of separate comics) nevertheless took place less often in 2016 than anticipated.
Sunday, December 3:
- Michael Wetzel‘s (Bonn) paper ended up being en titled Auteurism‘ that is“‘Graphic Kreativitat und Copyright im Comic” (“On creativity and copyright in comics”). A fascinating theory had been that the most popular notion of a ‘Romanticist idea of authorship’ is flawed because Romanticist writers such as for example E. T. A. Hoffmann actually deconstructed authorship.