THE PASSIONS OF EVERYDAY URBAN LIFE

Abstract

This chapter continues to explore the comics depiction of life on the modern city streets. Discussion concentrates on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and is carried out through the lens of the human passions. First, the wordless novels by Belgian artist Frans Masereel serve as yet another paradigmatic example of the urban legacy of early comics. Will Eisner’s trilogy uses tenement life as a stage for the Jewish American urban experience of New York. My New York Diary (1993-98) by Julie Doucet blends the artist’s feminist commitment with themes of urban alienation and entrapment. In twenty-first-century Madrid, Spain, Raquel Córcoles Moncusí a.k.a. ‘Moderna de pueblo’ and Rafael Martínez Castellanos explore romantic and sexual passions as they line up with the social identities of women and gay urbanites. Finally, contemporary artist Daishu Ma’s Leaf returns to hallmark aspects of Frans Masereel’s style nearly one-hundred years later.