Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics

ISSN: 2150-4857 (Print) 2150-4865 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcom20

The rise and reason of comics and graphic

literature: critical essays on the form, edited by
Joyce Goggin and Dan Hassler-Forest
London, McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers, 2010, 244 pp., US$35
(softcover), ISBN 978-0-7864-4294-2

Hillary Pennell

To cite this article: Hillary Pennell (2012) The rise and reason of comics and graphic literature:
critical essays on the form, edited by Joyce Goggin and Dan Hassler-Forest, Journal of Graphic
Novels and Comics, 3:2, 233-236, DOI: 10.1080/21504857.2011.604873

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2011.604873

Published online: 21 Sep 2011.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 2078

View related articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rcom20
 Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 233

In the Foreword, Jaern writes that he started working on the woodcuts without any
thought of making them into a book. His intention was to illustrate how the occupation
affected him personally. Since he was a book illustrator by trade, he found it easier to
‘write’ of his wartime experiences through his art. He intended to send prints made from
the woodcuts to friends and family living outside of Norway. Anyone familiar with the
woodcuts of pioneering graphic artists Frans Maserell, Lynd Ward, Laurence Hyde and
Giacomo Patri will appreciate the works of Jaern.
Although he intended to reflect the strictly personal experiences of ‘me and mine’ dur-
ing the war years, Jaern’s book is much more, because it reflects the experiences suffered by
most Norwegians and probably other people who endured living under a foreign occupying
force during World War II.
By and large the book is arranged chronologically, beginning on 8 April 1940, when
the invasion began, and ending with the expulsion of the Nazis from Norway. Some of the
woodcuts, however, seem randomly placed, especially in the middle of the work. In a few
instances the narratives that accompany the woodcuts seem vague in their meaning (p. 72).
Perhaps the best way to approach the book is how one approaches a collection of short
stories or how one looks at artwork, in the same medium, by the same author. But Jaern’s
work does an excellent job of depicting the chaos during the invasion and the few weeks
immediately after. Later, the woodcuts detail how Norwegians survived the occupation as
the starkness of the woodcuts depict a growing sense of fear as the Nazis strengthen their
grip on Norway. Jaern depicts how Norwegians fought the occupation in little ways such as:
wearing a ‘teasing flower’ on the King’s birthday (p. 47) or ‘wearing a red knitted stocking
cap, a nisselvence’ (p. 55).
There is a Glossary of terms but it is too short by half. The Afterword helps to overcome
some minor problems with the text and provides a well-written and informative history of
this tragic period.
With minor quibbles aside, this is a fine book; it is history, but much more.
The woodcuts take the reader beyond a simple retelling of the facts and, in vivid
black-and-white images, evoke the emotions of the period – something mere words cannot
do. Fans of woodcut art and early graphic art(ists), and even historians will be moved by
this work. Because the book does such an excellent job of reaching out to the reader, its
audience will be impressed on several different levels.

John T. ‘Jack’ Becker

Texas Tech University Libraries
Jack.becker@ttu.edu
© 2012, John T. ‘Jack’ Becker
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2012.681387

The rise and reason of comics and graphic literature: critical essays on the form, edited
by Joyce Goggin and Dan Hassler-Forest, London, McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers,
2010, 244 pp., US$35 (softcover), ISBN 978-0-7864-4294-2

This collective of 15 critical essays on comic books and graphic novels presents readers
with new and wide-ranging perspectives in this current area of research. Unlike many other
books that focus their analysis explicitly on the history of the comic book genre, The Rise
and Reason of Comics and Graphic Literature offers a broad variety of topics from the
234 Book Reviews

origins and development of the genre to the theory and terminology within the medium,
adaptations of comic texts and the superhero paradigm, and nonfiction in comics. In this
versatile book each author speaks as a cultural critic and gives the reader an engaging
examination of this popular media in a variety of nuanced ways, thus pulling comics and
graphic novels from the proverbial cultural ‘gutter’ (p. 1).
Playing both editors and authors of this book, Goggin and Hassler-Forest, both profes-
sors at the University of Amsterdam, enjoy related interests in studying popular culture.
Although Hassler-Forest has done much work in the area of comics and graphic litera-
ture and is currently finishing his dissertation on superheroes in post-9/11 popular culture,
Goggin’s primary research has focused on gambling and its representation in the media, so
it may seem surprising to see her as an editor on this book. However, her expertise in film
and literary criticism prove fruitful and pertinent in the review and authorship of this crit-
ical text. It is evident that both editors were not just simply interested in the conventional
historical approach to comics and graphic novels, but more importantly how this medium
has impacted culture.
The course of the book’s analysis is broken down into five sections. The first section
initially focuses on the history and development of the genre from the comic innovations
of eighteenth-century English artist William Hogarth. Goggin argues that it was Hogarth’s
conscious decision to make not only high art, but commercial art that was mass distributed
but also seen as beautiful, which was a conflicting concept for the time; it was this sim-
ple gesture by Hogarth that allows readers to recognize the aesthetic value of comic art.
Next, Yezbick examines George L. Carlson’s unconventional handling of lingual codes
and argues that it was Carlson’s ability to deconstruct the logic of the comic framework
through unconventional transitions that produced ‘rebellious’ (p. 40) hierarchies of narra-
tive that confused, yet pleased readers. Finally, Wullner discusses the history of serialized
storytelling and suggests that these continuing storylines can only be correctly analyzed if
one takes into account their serialized beginnings.
The following section focuses on theory and terminology leading with an analysis on
the visuals of comic balloons. Forceville, Veale, and Feyaerts offer a ‘blueprint’ (p. 70) of
the comic balloons by identifying a number of variables like stylistic features, visual infor-
mation, and ‘embodied-accultured’ continuum which can help provide insight into readers’
perceptions about a comic. Next, Mikkonen analyzes narrative temporality in comic strips
through remediation and states, ‘Remediation . . . allows artists to visually encompass
and include different temporal spaces – past, present, or future – or histories within one
panel, and to produce multiple layering of time planes, without violating the conventions
of plausibility’ (p. 84). Finally, Szczepaniak describes comic artist Chris Ware’s archi-
tecture metaphor that establishes the readings of comics as a dynamic construction. Each
comic panel is a brick in the whole construction site and all are integral to the formation
of the structure; Ware saw this architectural metaphor as a way to re-conceptualize comics
and allow readers to play a more active role in the design space rather than simply arriving
passively at the end of a piece.
The third segment of the book critiques the adaptation of comics and graphic nov-
els. Vanderbeke takes a look at the less popular adaptation of comic books into novels.
While many believe adaptations should hold true to the original text as much as possible,
Vanderbeke argues that the ‘very difference between the original and the adaptation allows
for a new encounter, a tension that leads to an interaction between the two works of art’
(p. 117). This theory and critique that adaptations must stay true to their origins will always
have to be dealt with in comic adaptations. Similarly, Hassler-Forest analyzes the debate
surrounding the comic book adaptations of the popular film 300. Hassler-Forest argues that
 Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 235

while many literary critics focus on the degree to which a film stays true to the source text,
what about political storylines that have been added to the film narrative by screenwrit-
ers? Whether the film was seen as a metaphorical embodiment of America reigning in on
the war on terror, the film shows how strongly our readings of such texts are defined and
shaped by the historical contexts in which they are produced.
The forth section looks at the superhero paradigm and its reconfiguration of the genre
through new storylines, celebrity culture, and self-reflexivity. By using the exemplars of
Batman and Watchmen, Rauscher argues that by integrating stylistically aspiring elements
like the canonization of the author, ‘what if’ scenarios, alternate takes on well-known
situation franchises, and adding exceptional dramatic situations within a franchise’s sto-
ryline, one can add body to the idle men-in-tights formula. Goldman examines the series
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to show how it places the superhero genre as
a device of celebrity, thus addressing the implications of celebrity with our current con-
ceptions of the individual’s place in mass society. In doing so, Goldman reflects on the
effort to legitimize comics and reminds us that superheroes, like celebrities in our culture,
exist beyond the text, which is what comics accomplish best. Lastly, Kukkonen focuses on
Warren Ellis’s series Planetary. Using Foucault’s theoretical digest The Archaeology of
Knowledge, Kukkonen shows how Planetary takes modern myths and reinserts them into
the master narrative of twentieth-century popular fiction by connecting superheroes to their
cultural roots; in this way, the text is self-reflexive and fascinating.
The final section of the book examines nonfiction in comics and their link to our cul-
ture and history. Interested in the idea of comic journalism, Woo compares and contrasts
journalism and documentary in order to distinguish the reporting of information to the
communicating of experience. Using the example of Joe Sacco’s Palestine, Woo argues it
is because Sacco strays from journalistic objectivity, that he is able to communicate the
experience of Israel to his readers thus giving them a better chance of making sense of the
events that fill our newspapers. Likewise, Dony and Van Linthout, using the exemplar of
9/11, explore how and to what extent the comic medium represents the historical/cultural
memory of traumatic events. They suggest that comics are most appropriate for capturing
the essence of traumatic experiences through a fractured sequential format or single pain
images that can represent iconic events of that day. Next, Round considers elements of
the Barthesian narrative model (atemporality, image, and active/passive reader) applied to
Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell to illustrate that the comic medium is per-
fectly appropriate to conveying historical faction. To conclude the book, Peterson utilizes
theories of comics and narrative in order to uncover a historic (re)engagement with Black
Nationalist themes in Frank Miller’s Give Me Liberty; Aaron McGruder, Reginald Hudlin,
and Kyle Baker’s Birth of a Nation; Kyle Baker’s Nat Turner; and Reginald Huldlin’s
Black Panther. Peterson argues that ‘. . . it is ultimately the extraordinary potential of
these places, real and imagined, to interact with history that signals the political valance of
nationalist ideology with the graphic novel genre’ (p. 220).
While this text does offer contributions on comic and graphic novels from a dynamic
group of international scholars in a variety of areas, it does suffer from flaws. First, though
each essay provides a distinct look into comics and graphic novels that many comic fans
might appreciate, overall the writing and subject matter is intended for academic audiences,
thus limiting the range of its readership. Second, and more importantly, the significance of
this book must be questioned. Goggins and Hassler-Forest argue in the introduction of the
book that the comic medium ‘. . . no matter how much energy is poured into efforts aimed
at improving comics reputations both inside and outside of academic circles, they have so
far remained firmly situated in the gutter of Western culture’ (p. 2). Thus the purpose of
236 Book Reviews

this text was born. However, many would argue that comics and graphic novels have most
recently found mainstream legitimacy. Williams and Lyons (2010) argue in The Rise of the
American Comics Artist, that comic artists like Frank Miller (Batman: The Dark Knight
Returns) and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (Watchmen) have revolutionized the genre
by introducing adult sensibilities and aesthetics to the superhero comics gaining critical
acclaim and media attention. Also Palumbo et al. (2010) in Comics as a Nexus of Cultures
look at how comics and graphic narratives have helped merge youth and adult cultures,
as well as popular and high art. So the question is: are comics and graphic novels still
in the ‘gutter’? Rather than sticking with the trite history and development of the genre,
examining the resurrection and cultural boom of comics in both text and film may have
provided a more interesting modern perspective on the current state of comics.

References
Williams, P. and Lyons, J., eds, 2010. The rise of the American comics artist: creators and contexts.
University Press of Mississippi.
Palumbo, D., Sullivan, C., Berninger, M., Ecke, J., and Haberkorn, G., 2010. Comics as a nexus of
cultures: essays on the interplay of media, disciplines and international perspectives: critical
explorations in science fiction and fantasy. McFarland.

Hillary Pennell
University of Missouri
Hdp9b7@mail.mizzou.edu
© 2012, Hillary Pennell
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2012.604873

The comics of Chris Ware: drawing as a way of thinking, edited by David M. Ball
and Martha B. Kuhlman, Jackson, MS, University Press of Mississippi, 2010, xxiii +
238 pp., US$55.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-60473-442-3, US$28.00 (paperback), ISBN
978-1-604734-43-0

Chris Ware’s iconoclastic style is perhaps best characterized as a cartography of space and
time, nowhere better illustrated than in his ‘Building Stories’ series for The ACME Novelty
Library. The series explores the intersecting lives of generations of tenants in a Chicago
townhouse, these patterned networks of cutaways and connections mapping a history of
place that frustrates linear modes of reading and interpretation. The over determined status
of Ware’s texts, the foregrounded self-conscious ‘difficulty’ of reading his comics, is some-
thing picked up by this timely collection’s editors in their introduction. As they remark,
encountering ‘Ware’s comics for the first time can be a disorientating experience’ (p. ix).
The Comics of Chris Ware: Drawing as a Way of Thinking (that evocative subtitle comes
from a remark Ware made in an interview) marks an ambitious attempt at orientating the
scholarly reader to Ware’s already extensive oeuvre.
It seems only fitting, given the multilinear strategies that Ware deploys in his work,
that an anthology is the most appropriate venue for conducting a multidisciplinary explo-
ration of Ware’s comics. A compilation of essays possesses an advantage over the more
limited purview of the monograph in not being tied to a single organizing thesis; as such