{"title":"The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging by Rebecca Wanzo (review)","authors":"Maite Urcaregui","doi":"10.1353/INK.2021.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/INK.2021.0006","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122004096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction: Migration in Twenty-First-Century Documentary Comics","authors":"Benjamin Bigelow, Rüdiger Singer","doi":"10.1353/INK.2021.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/INK.2021.0000","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This introduction discusses the remarkable capacity of the graphic novel as a medium to engage with migration in the twenty-first century—not just its ability to tell stories about migration, but also to comment on the traditions, routines, and politics of depicting migration in visual culture. We introduce and situate this special issue's five contributions, which analyze graphic novels and online comics published in Europe and the US between 2009 and 2017, with particular attention to the ways these works engage in intermedial critique and use empathetic images to inform, challenge, and move their readers. We adopt the term \"documentary comics\" from Nina Mickwitz to designate comics that, like film documentaries, combine aesthetic techniques and symbolic systems of signification with compelling representations of the actual world. In order to contextualize the works that the articles in this issue analyze, our introduction also discusses Parsua Bashi's \"graphic novella\" Nylon Road (2006), Simon Schwartz's The Other Side of the Wall (2009), and Gaby von Borstel and Peter Eickmeyer's Liebe deinen Nächsten (2017), and concludes with a \"coda\" on contemporary examples of the codex, a form that originated in pre-Hispanic Latin America.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126641483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tying Up Loose Ends: The Fabric of Panel Borders in Kate Evans' Threads","authors":"E. Nijdam","doi":"10.1353/INK.2021.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/INK.2021.0004","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In her graphic novel Threads: From the Refugee Crisis (2017), Kate Evans uses the symbolism and leitmotif of threads to recount her experience volunteering in the Calais Jungle, Europe's largest refugee encampment, which operated from January 2015 to October 2016. However, with the incorporation of lace imagery into the front matter and formal characteristics of the comics form, the threads of Threads are more than simply an analogy for the intertwining factors and complex relationships that emerged in Calais. With every panel border constructed by a lace frame, lacework is also a fundamental structuring principle in Evans' text that engages with the region's history of lacemaking and refugee experience simultaneously. This essay unravels some of the many threads of Threads to understand Evans' mobilization of Calais' most essential industry, evaluating the role of lace in Threads' overarching representation of the refugee experience and a larger critique of the global refugee experience.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"150 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114475671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Comics Studies: A Guidebook ed. by Charles Hatfield and Bart Beaty (review)","authors":"Adrienne Resha","doi":"10.1353/INK.2021.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/INK.2021.0009","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134540893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Wretched of the Sea: Clandestine Immigration and Graphic Artistry in Bessora and Barroux's Alpha: Abidjan to Gare du Nord","authors":"Agnès Schaffauser","doi":"10.1353/INK.2021.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/INK.2021.0005","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Migrants are often represented in political and social discourse as \"invaders\" that threaten the body of a nation. They are stripped of their identities, considered as anonymous and potentially violent invaders, especially men. This article contests this dehumanizing narrative of \"illegal\" migration from Africa to Europe. More specifically, it examines how Bessora and Barroux's graphic novel Alpha: Abidjan to Paris (2014) not only contributes to giving voices to migrants but also lends specificity to the migrant experience. It demonstrates how graphic novels can unveil the complex layers of migrants' objectification and dispossession and restore subjecthood to those reduced to mere numbers. Thus, this article posits the political and social urgency of clandestine migration and provides an analysis of the ethics and politics of aesthetic depictions of migrants. It highlights the singularity of individuals or marginal constituencies within the anonymized group of migrants, focusing on two West African men.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128918313","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Vis-à-Vis: Interview Encounters in Four Recent Comic Reportages","authors":"J. Ludewig","doi":"10.1353/INK.2021.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/INK.2021.0002","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article presents a close reading of interviews and interview-like scenes in four recent comic reportages about refugees. Guided by the assumption that these face-to-face encounters provide a significant, yet understudied look into both the topic of refugees and the genre, comics journalism, I compare the (dis)similar ways in which the four artists approach their task. The comparison rests on quantitative criteria such as the extension of interview moments as well as qualitative details including the verbal division of labor, the drawing style, if and how the journalist appears in the picture, if and how translation is addressed, how the background or environment looks, and what kind of experience the monstrator shows. Ultimately, I take stock of a range of artistic decisions within interview(-like) situations and outline three different ethical categories or poetics of how comics artists represent the interview with pen and paper.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121803356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Monstrous Women in Comics ed. by Samantha Langsdale and Elizabeth Rae Coody (review)","authors":"Candida Rifkind","doi":"10.1353/INK.2021.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/INK.2021.0008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"799 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133137510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Presenting Absence: Migration and Dislocation in Lene Ask's Dear Rikard (2014)","authors":"B. Bigelow","doi":"10.1353/INK.2021.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/INK.2021.0001","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article analyzes Lene Ask's historical graphic novel Kjære Rikard (Dear Rikard, 2014), the text of which is taken entirely from an epistolary exchange between a Norwegian missionary living in Madagascar and his young son, Rikard, whom he has left behind in Norway at a boarding school. The narrative transports readers to the late nineteenth century, clearly foregrounding its reliance on its archival source texts. However, this apparently intimate connection between Dear Rikard and its documentary sources is unsettled by the images Ask combines with the text. Ask's drawings reveal the elisions, ambiguities, and omissions of the letters themselves. In Dear Rikard, Ask develops a visual poetics in which images always exceed and enliven the written word, making visible the experiences of separation, loss, and displacement that are conspicuously absent in the historical documents. Ask's drawings present us in particular with two conspicuous absences in the historical documents: first, the many far-flung locations and experiences of displacement implicit in global migration; and second, the vital bodies of the historical letter-writers—bodies that were marked by the loss, longing, and violence that accompanies parental separations.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130955089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Uncanny Bodies: Superhero Comics and Disability ed. by Scott T. Smith and José Alaniz (review)","authors":"Jenny Blenk","doi":"10.1353/INK.2021.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/INK.2021.0007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132748306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lateral Moves and Ghostly Gay Children: Queer Spatial Metaphors in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home","authors":"Jocelyn Sakal Froese","doi":"10.1353/ink.2020.0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2020.0020","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This piece thinks through Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic through salient spatial metaphors proffered by contemporary queer theorists. Specifically, I think through the work of Kathryn Bond-Stockton, J. Halberstam, and Sara Ahmed, and mobilize ideas about lateral lines of connectivity inherent to the lived experience of queers, about ghostly gay children, and about real and metaphorical tables.","PeriodicalId":392545,"journal":{"name":"Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society","volume":"125 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132834597","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}