Distinctive Styles and Authorship in Alternative Comics

228 Pages·2020·24.033 MB·English

by  Lukas Etter

LukasEtter
DistinctiveStylesandAuthorshipinAlternativeComics
Buchreihe der Anglia/
ANGLIA Book Series
Edited by
Lucia Kornexl, Ursula Lenker, Martin Middeke,
Gabriele Rippl, Daniel Stein
AdvisoryBoard
LaurelBrinton,PhilipDurkin,OlgaFischer,SusanIrvine,
AndrewJamesJohnston,ChristopherA.Jones,TerttuNevalainen,
DerekAttridge,ElisabethBronfen,UrsulaK.Heise,VerenaLobsien,
LauraMarcus,J.HillisMiller,MartinPuchner
Volume 70
Lukas Etter
Distinctive Styles
and Authorship in
Alternative Comics
ISBN978-3-11-069352-2
e-ISBN(PDF)978-3-11-069368-3
e-ISBN(EPUB)978-3-11-069379-9
ISSN0340-5435
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2020949255
BibliographicinformationpublishedbytheDeutscheNationalbibliothek
TheDeutscheNationalbibliothekliststhispublicationintheDeutscheNationalbibliografie;
detailedbibliographicdataareavailableontheInternetathttp://dnb.dnb.de.
©2021WalterdeGruyterGmbH,Berlin/Boston
Typesetting:IntegraSoftwareServicesPvt.Ltd.
Printingandbinding:CPIbooksGmbH,Leck
www.degruyter.com
Contents
Acknowledgments VII
1 Introduction 1
2 AlternativeComicsandArtisticStyles 9
2.1 AcknowledgingthePast–AcknowledgingNewVistas 10
2.2 Auteurs,Autography,Auteurgraphy 19
2.3 ElementsofStyle 26
2.4 DistinctivenessEmbeddedintheFieldofStudy 40
3 (Un)characteristicTraitsandLinesinArtSpiegelman’sMaus
(1980–1991) 48
3.1 MausContextualized 49
3.2 (Un)characteristicVisualCharacterTraits 59
3.3 (Un)characteristicLines 76
3.4 IconicStatus:TheMousebeyondMaus 86
4 CommunicatingbeyondPanelsandPages:AlisonBechdel’sDykesto
WatchOutFor(1983–2008) 94
4.1 DrawingStyleandLetteringinDtWOF 95
4.2 VisibleandOutspokenCommunities 108
4.3 StylisticallyEngagingwithComicsandTheirReaders 121
4.4 BetweenFictionandSelf-Portraiture 129
5 JasonLutes’Berlin(1996–2018)asaStylisticShowroom 140
5.1 TheCriticalReceptionofBerlin 141
5.2 PlayingwithBimediality:EncountersofTextandPicture 145
5.3 Lutes’Renditionoftheligneclaire 158
5.4 CreativeLaborinandbeyondBerlin 174
6 OngoingConversations 184
WorksCited 191
IndexofArtists 219

Acknowledgments
Ihope for thisbook to be a smallcontribution toa larger discourse on style and
cartooning.While flawsand mistakes are myown responsibility, any partof this
book that readers may find useful is certainly, indirectly or directly, the result of
conversationsinabroadsenseoftheterm.Ihaveengagedwithandtakenmyin-
spirationfromthewritingsofmanypeople,butthereisalsoalonglistofpersons
with whom I had the chance to converse personally and/or who personally
provided help in various forms. The list includes but is not restricted to Cuno
Affolter, Carole Ammann, Romina Beermann, Birgit Brüggemeier and Christoph
Brüggemeier, Jane Cheng, Tahmid Chowdhury, Benoît Crucifix, Adam Delgado,
Sophie Dubus, Jared Gardner and Elizabeth Hewitt, Léonard Graf and Anne-
Laurence Graf, Servan Grüninger, Kamilla Hassen, Henry Jenkins, Hoor Jangda,
IrmtraudHuber,MirayaJun,KerenKatz,IngeKochandHelmutKoch,JoshKopin,
Phil Kuert, Sabine Kuert, Michael Kühni, Karin Kukkonen, Stephen Langenthal,
Maral Majlesain, Caitlin McGurk,JohnMiers, ThomasNehrlich, Joanna Nowotny,
Stephan Probst, Patricio Provitina, Roger Sabin, Kathrin Scheuchzer, Elisabeth
SchmidigerandToniSchmidiger,CharlotteSchmiegel,NiaStephens-Metcalfe,Bill
StranbergandNicoleJuppe,MatthewSpellberg,JuliaStraub,EszterSzép,JanNoël
Thon, Christoph Weber and Jennifer Jenkins. I also express my gratitude to De
GruyterBerlin,particularlyUlrikeKrauss,KatjaLehming,ChristineHenschel,and
MervinEbenezer,aswellastheANGLIABookSerieseditors.
DistinctiveStylesandAuthorshipinAlternativeComicsistherevisedversion
ofaPhDthesisdefendedattheUniversityofBern,whichinturnresultedfrom
a research project (100015_126581/1, 2011–2014) funded by the Swiss National
Science Foundation (SNSF). During the research project and after its comple-
tion,Ihadtheopportunitytodiscussandco-authortextsoncartooningand/or
styleinworkshops,summerschools,colloquia,andpublicationprojects,andI
appreciate the multifarious ways in which these collaborations informed the
book’sfinalformaswell.Asforinstitutionalandfinancialsupportinaddition
to that provided by the SNSF, credit is due to the IASH Graduate School (now
Walter Benjamin Kolleg) and English Department, University of Bern; Swiss
Study Foundation; Fondation Boninchi; Schweizerische Akademie der Geistes-
undSozialwissenschaften(SAGW);EuropeanAssociationforAmericanStudies
(EAAS); Central Saint Martins College, University of the Arts London; Dr.
Joséphine de Kármán Foundation; Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum
and OSU’s Department of English; English Department, University of Siegen;
VolkswagenFoundation;GermanAssociationforAmericanStudies(GAAS);John
W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress; Gesellschaft für Comicforschung
(ComFor)andAGComicforschungGfM;thejuriesoftheResearchAward2014of
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110693683-203
VIII Acknowledgments
theSwissAssociationforNorthAmericanStudies(SANAS)andoftheUniversity
ofBern’sFacultyofHumanitiesDoctoralDissertationPrize2015.
Gabriele Rippl initiated and chaired the SNSF research project. She nur-
tured the progress of my PhD thesis with inspiration and academic expertise.
Sheconjuredupsideprojectsandfollow-upprojects.Ithankherforallofthis
and,mostimportantly,forherunfailingsupport.Chapterdraftswentbackand
forth between me and Stephanie Hoppeler, my fellow SNSF project collabora-
tor, co-teacher, and workshop co-organizer.Daniel Stein invited me to present
excerpts of my research, offered constructive feedback, helped initiate follow-
upprojects–andeventuallyprovidedanewinstitutionalhomeformyworkon
comics and literature at the University of Siegen. For all of this, I thank them
wholeheartedly.
I would be remiss not to express how much I appreciate the cartoonists
mentionedinthismonograph–especiallyArtSpiegelman,AlisonBechdel,and
Jason Lutes– forenriching theworldwith theirartand storytelling. Thougha
few comics artists have seen their books become bestsellers, for many others
cartooning remains a precarious career. I acknowledge that it is a privilege to
readtheseworksandfreelyengagewiththem.Relatedtothisisapointworth
mentioning regarding the illustrations in Distinctive Styles. While processing
my PhD thesis into the monograph manuscript, I substantially reduced the
numberoffigures.Incollaborationwiththepublisherandtheproductionteam,
we then ensured that the remaining ones would not surpass a certain standard
height,soastoallowthemonographtoremainwithinFairUsepolicy.Inorder
tosupportcontemporarycartoonistsandinordertofullyappreciatethestylistic
detailsoftheimagesreproducedhereinsmallsize,Iencouragereaderstogoout
andpurchasetheseandotherqualitycomicswheneverandwherevertheycan.
Finally, I thank Romy Etter, Ueli Etter, Jonas Etter, and Rebecca Etter for
inspiration, assistance, love, and laughter. Christina Maria Koch inspired and
supported this project with her brilliance, expertise, and affection. I am im-
menselygrateful.
1 Introduction
When readers, reviewers, artists, and academics discuss comics and carica-
tures,thetopicofstyleoftenappearsatthemargins.Superherofansmaycher-
ishthestyleofSilverAgecomicbooks.Areviewermaypraisesomealternative
comics’aestheticcharacteristics.Ascholarmaymentiontheevolutionofapar-
ticularwriter’sstyleovertheyears.Sometimestheinfluenceofparticularartists
andschoolsisputondisplayininterviewsandpublicconversations,asinthe
caseofcartoonistNaraWalker,who,asDeborahElizabethWhaleyreports,de-
veloped her style as a result of her fascination with French academic art and
manga(Whaley2016:162).Sometimestheconnectionsbetweensimilarstylesis
brought up by readers, reviewers, and fellow artists, as was the case when
Robin Enrico, writing in The Tiny Report, compared November Garcia’s vi-
gnettes to the drawings of fellow Bay Area cartoonists Julia Wertz and Janelle
Hessig(Enrico2018:56).
Considerations of artistic style have been of importance for the entire his-
tory of comics. Tim Jackson exemplifies this with artists who develop (2016:
79), solidify (2016: 68), or altogether evade (2016: 129) a specific style. It is
equally important with a view towards the future; in a joint interview, Scott
Bukatmanopinesthatweshouldbeintentondevelopingatypeofscholarship
that “parsesdifferentartistic styles”(qtd.inAndraeetal.2011: 142).Yetwhile
author-artists’ stylistic choices are on everyone’s lips (cf. Groensteen 2012b),
thesefeaturesoftenseemtobethoughtofasself-evidentorintuitivelydiscern-
iblebyanaestheticallytrained“goodeye,”asIritRogofflabelsitinadifferent
yetsimilarcontext(1998:17).
True, it is important not to overstate things. Distinctive Styles and
Authorship in Alternative Comics is by no means the first extended reflection
on style in comics. Nor will it be the last one. I will come back to some of
theseotherreflectionsinthenextchapter.Nevertheless,giventheboomthat
theacademicstudyofgraphicnarrativeshasexperienced,onemighthaveex-
pected there to be entire bookshelves of writings on style in comics.
Scholarshipongraphicstorytelling–evenifoneallowsforafocusonjustthe
Anglophone part – consists of at least some three decades of writings on the
medium in all its varieties. Ever since Joseph Witek’s 1989 monograph Comic
Books as History: The Narrative Art of Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman, and
Harvey Pekar, graphic narratives have increasingly enjoyed critical attention
in the fields of academia and the ‘feuilleton,’ with a vast number of articles,
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110693683-001
2 1 Introduction
books, and edited volumes published on the form in the 1990s, 2000s, and
2010salone.1
In recent years, several Anglophone and Francophone scholarly publica-
tions – to name but two languages of scholarship – have touched upon the
topicofstyleincomics.TheseincludechaptersandlongerpassagesinTahneer
Oksman’s ‘How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?’: Women and Jewish
American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs (2016), Jan Baetens’ and
Hugo Frey’s The Graphic Novel: An Introduction (2014), and Charles Hatfield’s
Hand of Fire (2012). Style is also prominently incorporated into analyses by
Hillary Chute (Graphic Women, 2010; Disaster Drawn, 2016), Katherine Roeder
(Wide Awake in Slumberland, 2014), and Aarnoud Rommens (“Allegories of
Graphiation,” 2015). Jacques Dürrenmatt had already presented Francophone
writings on stylistic analyses of the bande dessinée; he recently followed up
with a collected volume on the topic, edited in collaboration with Benoît
Berthou(2019).2InComicsandLanguage:ReimaginingCriticalDiscourseonthe
Form(2013),HannahMiodragreflectsonstyleaspartofherargumentthatitis
simplistic to flatten or simply ignore distinctions between the verbal and the
visual elements that constitute graphic narrative.3These and many other texts
offer insightful close readings and helpful tools. But there is still territory that
isworthexploringanddiscussing;Bukatman’s2011statementremainstopical.
Distinctive Styles and Authorship in Alternative Comics aims to combine a
(first and foremost aesthetic) interest in the notion of style with a (both aes-
thetic and culturally embedded) interest in the construction of a singular
oeuvreincriticaldiscoursewherevercharacteristicmarksorthe‘style’ofsome-
one’s work is described and detected. The ensemble of these two elements is
whatIaimtodiscussasthephenomenonofauteurgraphy:aphenomenonthat
mayhaveresiduesofanachronismandsimplismbutthecompleteavoidanceof
which appears to be a difficult task. Trying to make transparent these aspects
of the method of formal analysis may lead us to a reflection on the method’s
benefitsanditslimits.
I will examine such aspects in case studies of graphic narratives by Art
Spiegelman (Maus), Alison Bechdel (Dykes to Watch Out For), and Jason Lutes
(Berlin),allofwhomareregularlycountedamongcontemporarycreatorsofso-
called alternative (as opposed to mainstream) comics (Hatfield 2005; Williams
1 Thearchivesofpertinentjournalsandbibliographies(seeEtterandStein2015foralist)give
animpressionofsuchactivityinrecentyears.
2 SeealsoEtter(2020).
3 The chapter in Miodrag’s monograph is called “Style, Expressivity, and Impressionistic
Evaluation”;Iwilldiscussitinchapter2.