Someone Else's Icon: Complicating Comics and Identification

ABSTRACT:Scott McCloud's conception of iconicity has gone a long way toward explaining the power of simplified comic art. He argues that simplified images help readers see themselves in the characters, because they are broad enough representations of people to cover a broad span of humanity. Therefore, readers' investment isn't only emotional investment, but self-identification. However, while this concept explains much of comic art, there are notable exceptions. Artists choose which features to preserve when simplifying the appearance of a character. In McCloud's example, the icon retains the features which the broadest range of people might relate to—two eyes, a simple mouth, dark hair. But not all simplified art does this. For instance, comic characters with unrealistically large breasts have them not as a way to encourage iden-tification, but to encourage objectif cation. They are there not to represent women as people, but the concept of female sex objects. Iconicity also goes astray when racial signifiers are brought into play—the perennial argument about whether manga characters are white or Japanese is a result of this. In this essay, I will complicate McCloud's ideas about iconicity, arguing that while the core idea holds, there are critical flaws that should be re-examined.