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Underground > Comic Books >

Thesis on Comics

The Prince of All Lies

16:01 / 14.09.05

Ok, here's the deal. I decided to make comics the subject for my Communication Sciences thesis. The thing is, I can't decide which approach should I take. Comics as a narrative genre? Do a case study to show the storytelling structures? Maybe comics as a modern form of mythology? The big icons in comics and the archetypes or values they represent? Cultural significance, maybe a study of comic consumers?
(I would mostly focus on U.S. comics, maybe some analysis of manga for comparative purposes)
The thing is, I haven't found any serious theoretical study on comics to help me along the way. So I'm asking YOU to help me, point me in the right direction or provide constructive opinions.
Thanks already.

The Natural Way

16:13 / 14.09.05

Before anyone else chimes in w/ it: Scott McLeod's 'Understanding Comics'....

miss wonderstarr

16:21 / 14.09.05

As an ex-Communications prof I kind of think it's your job to come up with the basic topic at least, if only because you should be writing and researching something you are personally interested in, and prepared to invest considerable time and energy in.

Having said that, a really good theoretical approach to comics can be found in Geoff Klock's book How to Read Superhero Comics And Why. Scott Bukatman's Matters of Gravity, a collection of essays some of which are about superheroes, is also intellectually high-powered although I found it a bit disjointed as a whole.

Depending on what approach you (YOU!) choose to take, there is solid work by Roger Sabin (mostly general but academic overview of the comic book form) and Martin Barker (mostly audience and censorship). I believe MIT heavyweight Henry Jenkins is currently working on a book about how it affects the comic book medium to be dominated by the single genre of superheroes, which sounds promising.

I wrote a book on Batman but though it uses the character's first 60 years as a case study about wider issues of interpretation, an icon's meanings, debate over who controls those meanings in a given cultural moment and so on, it is centred on the one figure and so is pretty narrow. The 1991 collection The Many Lives of the Batman, now probably quite dated, seemed inspirational to me ten years ago.

miss wonderstarr

16:22 / 14.09.05

I have asked for moderation on the above, but I meant Martin Barker, not David.

18:48 / 14.09.05

I haven't read it, but this book sounds interesting.

Superheroes And Philosophy: Truth, Justice, And The Socratic Way

I know Umberto Eco wrote some essays about comics, and I own that book in spanish, but I can't find an english version in Amazon.

That reminds me I should really start reading that darn book.

20:00 / 14.09.05

I took a class in Romantic Poetry from Donald Ault at University of Florida. He had a Donald Duck belt buckle and has organized comics symposia there. I'm pretty sure he's published comics theory as well, but haven't really read any. The speakers at the symposia should be good for starters, though.

20:24 / 14.09.05

There are two pretty fantastic volumes on the early evolution of comics by David Kunzle here.

As for advice - don't be afraid to focus in a particular comic that interests you, but I wouldn't be too obvious If I were you. There are already 1001 Batman and superman dissertations out there...

20:32 / 14.09.05

My half-arsed attempt at a dissertation which went out the window when I got a job (I will do it some day) threw up a few suggestions here

20:57 / 14.09.05

I think the Eco was republished in a collection of essays by Penguin in the mid-90s. I recall having a stripped copy that got lost somewhere because it was a bit too wanky. As usual when talking about comics academia, it's a good idea to see if you can get in touch with Paul Gravett (nice man, very clever). Also, if you want something on the prehistory of comics, you can't do better than the sagacious tall hairy obsessive known as Andy Konkykru.

06:55 / 15.09.05

kovacs - what was your batman book called?

miss wonderstarr

07:24 / 15.09.05

Ehh, I don't like to talk about it much but it was called Batman Unmasked.

miss wonderstarr

07:30 / 15.09.05

Eco's "The Myth of Superman" is reprinted in The Role of the Reader. Browsing about I found a book on Amazon just now called Comics and Ideology edited by McAllister et al, which apparently revisits and updates Eco's essay. On the same page you will find a list of potentially-useful academic volumes on comics:

The Language of Comics: Word and Image by Robin Varnum
The Aesthetics of Comics by David Carrier
Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers (Studies in Popular Culture) by Matthew Pustz
How to Read Superhero Comics and Why by Geoff Klock
Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society by Stan Lee
Arguing Comics: Literary Masters On A Popular Medium (Studies in Popular Culture) by Jeet Heer

12:19 / 15.09.05

Um, I think the 'Superman on the Couch' book is by Danny Fingeroth, with an intro from Stan the Man.
Sorry, I know, I AM a pedant.

miss wonderstarr

15:56 / 15.09.05

That seemed odd to me, too. I just copied and pasted the list from Amazon. Don't plagiarise, kids!

21:19 / 15.09.05

I just thought I ought to reiterate that no-one knows more about early comics than Andy. His speech at Caption last year was a revelation. Whatever you do, do not fall into the trap that says the Yellow Kid was the start of comics. It's a fib. Even Topffer is deabatable.

21:53 / 15.09.05

It suprises me, though sadly not that much, that so many people seem to think that comics started with The Yellow Kid...

miss wonderstarr

06:23 / 16.09.05

Doesn't that depend how you define comics? I'm pretty sure Perry and Aldridge's classic Penguin Book of Comics begins with cave paintings.

07:22 / 16.09.05

That Perry & Aldridge book is amazing. I first read it as a kid, though why my parents had it I have no idea, skipping the history and going straight to the super heroes and missing the whole point of the book.
I re-read it a couple of years ago and learnt an awful lot about comics and was impressed by both the style & content.

miss wonderstarr

10:16 / 16.09.05

Me too, me too! My dad gave it to my mum, with the mysterious, romantic inscription "It was '69", and after I'd curled up with it for most of the late 70s they let me keep it. I learned a great deal about comics from that book -- I would never have seen the first Batman stories or a Will Eisner page without it.

The Prince of All Lies

21:09 / 16.09.05

thanks for all the replies, guys. I'll look into the books you suggested, maybe order the ones that seem more useful..I think I'm leaning towards "comics as a narrative genre" or something like that, analysing the medium itself, probably doing a case study (here I could use some suggestions..I thought of using Watchmen, that's the first thing that came to my head)
. I'll probably steer away from both a historical analysis and the cultural studies angle.
Thanks for the all the help.

18:36 / 19.09.05

Watchmen is overdone; do The Filth or Promethea (or Grendel!) instead.

Something with a fragmented narrator -- I think comics do this better than other media.

miss wonderstarr

19:19 / 19.09.05

I don't know... isn't using one comic, any comic, to study comics as a narrative form like using, say, Martin Amis' Money to study the novel as narrative form? Watchmen was very influential over the way mainstream superhero comics were told, at least for a while (though not necessarily in an entirely positive way) but at best it only shows one way comics can be done. In fact, part of its success and impact was due to it not being like previous comics (or not like the comics most people had read.) You could hold it as fairly typical of a certain type of superhero comic from a certain period -- or perhaps the best example of that specific type of comic -- but I don't know if it, or any other title, could be a case study for comics as narrative form.

06:45 / 20.09.05

Yeah i would, and did, avoid Watchmen - Like Jane Austin and Charles Dickens, it's kind of been done to death - You don't want to re-write every sophomoronic 'comics-are-great-and-a-legitimate-artform-too' thesis out there. It's been said so many times before. If comics are such a great artform then there should be more than 3 key books worth studying (again and again).

Having said which Kovac's comment did make me think of an interesting and potentially 'new' way of looking at, say, Watchmen. Yeah, People don't attempt to learn about Lit/the novel from the single example of MArtin Amis's Money, but this IS something they try to do from the random sampling of plays from Ancient Greece. (the random sampling being the plays that actually surive). Umberto Eco (comic fan and lit critic) wondered aloud in his essay what a future civilization would make of our own based on a single episode of Columbo... I wonder what future civilization would make of comics if Watchmen was their only example...

...Then again, perhaps this is actually in effect that same Watchmen thesis that keeps getting (re)-written...

miss wonderstarr

08:59 / 20.09.05

One thing I'd be fairly interested to read is an account of whether we've moved on, in the superhero genre, from the "Modern Age", or "Dark Age". In 1999 I frequently came across, and indeed I tried to explore, the argument that we were seeing a response to "Grim'N'Gritty" and a return to simpler, nobler, brighter values in superhero comics (Morrison's JLA and Aztek, and the Batman Adventures, seemed relevant examples at the time). I wonder if, six years on, there's any further evidence of this shift into a "new age" of superhero representation.

vanishinghitchhiker

17:38 / 20.09.05

I know I'm chiming in a bit late here, but just in case Prince of All Lies checks back...

If you're focusing on comics as a narrative medium, the following article might help (I really remember nothing about it, just found it in my bibliography from a paper I wrote a couple years ago):

Abbott, Lawrence L. "Comic Art: Characteristics and Potentialities of a Narrative Medium." Journal of Popular Culture 19.4 (1986): 155-76.

If you're thinking of looking at comics in graphic novel form, it might not hurt to read Lukacs's Theory of the Novel. It's not terribly terribly relevant but it did give me some things to think about.

Someone mentioned McCloud's book earlier, and to be honest, I didn't find it helpful at all, but it does seem to be the ubiquitous source. Whether or not it's helpful probably depends what direction you're going. Mine was more toward the comics as myth approach...

miss wonderstarr

18:03 / 20.09.05

I found McCloud's book intelligent, inventive and interesting, but whether it's a scholarly, academic source might be a different matter. Is it advancing a coherent theory of comics, referenced in a way that'd be accepted in academia? My impression of it is that you have a bright creator with a wide knowledge of the field, trying to figure some things out and illustrating them with nice examples. Its accessibility is one of its strengths, but I wouldn't hold it up by any means as the most important scholarly work on comic books. (I don't know what I would hold up as a single example, though).

21:46 / 20.09.05

Is it advancing a coherent theory of comics?

I'd argue that McCloud is at great pains to avoid advancing any single theory of comics. In this sense it isn't so much an essay with a direct expository point as it is an attempt at a broad survey to the extent and possible extend of comics. It's format.

Its format also demonstrates the key stengths of comics as a form for non-fiction as much as fiction. Any essay or thesis on comics can talk the talk about what medium does well - Understanding Comics actually walks the walk aswell...

vanishinghitchhiker

23:35 / 20.09.05

I'd argue that McCloud is at great pains to avoid advancing any single theory of comics. In this sense it isn't so much an essay with a direct expository point as it is an attempt at a broad survey to the extent and possible extend of comics.

Well said.

I think the reason it struck me as unhelpful for my own purposes was that it seemed more instructional than theoretical. Rather than simply "this is what can be done with comics," I got a sense of a more directed "this is what you can do with comics." Not that the latter should be any less relevant than the former, necessarily... In any case, that may well have been a misreading, based on my skimming a lot of sources in a very little time.

It certainly wouldn't hurt to read it...

Kovacs, as to whether it's scholarly or would be accepted as academic... I think McCloud's intentions likely weren't focused on academia, but it is at least popularly accepted as an important source, and I wouldn't expect any objections to using it academically. I had no such trouble, but then, my school was the most liberal of liberal, so I might not be the best judge.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

23:39 / 20.09.05

I'd also suggest Will Eisner's "Comics and Sequential Art" which goes into the storytelling reasons behind artistic choices. As good as McCloud's two essay books are, I learned more from Eisner and in fewer pages.

miss wonderstarr

06:42 / 21.09.05

I'd argue that McCloud is at great pains to avoid advancing any single theory of comics. In this sense it isn't so much an essay with a direct expository point as it is an attempt at a broad survey to the extent and possible extend of comics. It's format.

Yes, I can't disagree with that. I suppose all I was questioning was the idea that anyone might see McCloud's book as the most important scholarly work on comics, "the ubiquitous source" (I'm not saying Vanishinghitchhiker believes this, but ze suggests others might see it as the first point of research). McCloud's first book is important and excellent for just the reasons you state, and I think you're right, it doesn't claim to do any more than that.

I haven't read Reinventing Comics though -- somehow, loooking at it in shops, I almost felt it was already out of date, seeming hung up on the idea of online comics; something McCloud was involved in, but which didn't seem to me to really tap into the current state of the medium or convincingly suggest its future trajectory. But this was just a quick skim.

06:56 / 21.09.05

Rather than simply "this is what can be done with comics," I got a sense of a more directed "this is what you can do with comics."

I'm not entire convinced that there is much difference between these two propositions...

And yeah, Will Eisner's books, Comics and Sequential Art and Graphic Storytelling, are also worth reading, not sure if i'd be directly helpful to your specific thesis. To me, McCloud's book has an edge over Eisner's book simply for having the courage of its conviction and exploring the almost limitless potential of the medium in the form of comics. But there is still a lot of valuable stuff in Eisner's book and it needs to be remembered that Without Eisner's book McCloud's would never have existed...

vanishinghitchhiker

03:16 / 22.09.05

I suppose all I was questioning was the idea that anyone might see McCloud's book as the most important scholarly work on comics, "the ubiquitous source" (I'm not saying Vanishinghitchhiker believes this, but ze suggests others might see it as the first point of research).

I hope it's not seen as the most important scholarly work on comics. I think there's a lot better scholarship out there (which is not to criticize McCloud, who, as said, I don't think intended to have a scholarly focus). I definitely just meant (as you say) that I think it's often the first suggestion for, at very least, a starting point on comics research.

I'm not entire convinced that there is much difference between these two propositions...

I think what I mean is that, to me, it had more of a motivational feel to it, rather than theoretical or even really explanatory (I'm fumbling a bit with those terms there, I know). But you're right that there might not be much difference in the result either way, and my feeling certainly might be based on careless reading.

17:18 / 22.09.05

Googled Don Ault for you:

Comics at UF resource -- links will do you right.

ImageTexT -- academic journal (online) of comics theory.