Comics and Visual Culture: Research Studies from ten Countries [Reprint 2010 ed.] 9783111652399, 9783598106040

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Comics and Visual Culture Research Studies from ten Countries

La Bande Dessinee et la culture visuelle Traveaux de recherche realises dans dix pays

Comics und visuelle Kultur Forschungsbeiträge aus zehn Ländern Edited by / Edite par / Herausgegeben von Alphons Silbermann and H.-D. Dyroff

K-G-Saur München · New York · London · Paris 1986

CIP-Kurztitelaufnahme der Deutschen Bibliothek Comics and visual culture : research studies from 10 countries = La bände dessinee et la culture visuelle = Comics und visuelle Kultur / ed. by Alphons Silbermann and H.-D. Dyroff. - München ; New York ; London ; Paris : Säur, 1986. ISBN 3-598-10604-1 NE: Silbermann, Alphons [Hrsg.]; 1. PT; 2. PT

Copyright 1986 by K. G. Säur Verlag KG, München Printed in the Federal Republic of Germany All rights reserved. No pan of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recordings, of otherwise, without permission in writing form the publisher. Phototypesetting by Photosatz Pfeifer, Germering bei München Printed by Weihert-Druck GmbH, Darmstadt Bound by Buchbinderei Schaumann, Darmstadt ISBN 3-598-10604-1

Contents Foreword Avant Propos Vorwort

7 8 9

Alpbons Silbermann The Way Toward Visual Culture: Comics and Comic Films

11

Rolf T. Wigand Toward a More Visual Culture Through Comics

28

Pierre Fresh ault-Deruelle Aspects de la Bande Dessinee en France

62

Ray Brown An Analysis of Comics in Britain and their Possible Contribution to a Visual Culture

79

Ranieri Carano Comics in Italy

96

Friedrich Knilli et al. Some Aspects of the Development Toward a Visual Culture. The Example of Comics

109

N.S. Mansttrow Children's Publications in the Soviet Union

144

Leo Loveday and Satomi Chiba Aspects of the Development toward a Visual Culture in Respect of Comics: Japan

158

Waithira Gikonyo Comics and Comic Strips in the Mass Media in Kenya

185

Marta Alcocer and Alicia Molina Mexican Comics as Culture Industry

196

O.P.Joshi Contents, Consumers and Creators of Comics in India

213

Henri Fischer Eriture phonetique et pictogrammes dans les bandes dessinees

225

Achim Schnurrer Comics and Merchandising

234

Verena Dodker-Tobler Zeichentrickfilm und Comics aus medienpädagogischer Sicht

248

Demosthenes Savramis Der moderne Mensch zwischen Tarzan und Supermann

254

Foreword Comics is one of the media least dealt with by media research. While press, film, radio, and television have been analyzed in all directions and elicited whole libraries of literature, the medium "Comics" has always been rather neglected. Since comics and comic strips have been erroneously regarded as a communication medium intended exclusively for children and youngsters people failing to realize that most comic readers are adults - comics have been examined primarily for their effects on the infantile and juvenile socialization process. Aside from that there are manifold treatises on the origin and substantial development of the comics as well as reflections on the aesthetic trend. Meanwhile, the broader framework, the overall social context, in most cases was left out of the scope. Neither the extent and the mechanisms of production, distribution, and consumption of the medium nor the role of the comics in, and their contribution toward, the development of visual culture as a socio-cultural factor met with any particular interest of research. It is thanks to an initiative of UNESCO's International Social Science Council that the Cologne Institute for Mass Communication was instructed to carry out an international survey which, sociologically devised, would seek to clarify the "state of affairs", as it were, in various countries of the world. It is intended to present a picture of a medium that so far has attracted little attention, a picture capable of showing this medium's cultural ramifications. Accordingly, a number of international experts were invited to provide an outline of the production, distribution, contents, and consumption of comics in their respective countries and to define their views on their effects. The expert reports coming from the Federal Republic, France, Great Britain, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, the Soviet Union, and the United States account for the major part of this volume. In addition it contains lectures given on the same subject at a seminar in Munich organized by the German Society for Communication Research in cooperation with the German Commission for UNESCO. The three institutions herein mentioned - the International Social Science Council of the UNESCO, the German Commission for UNESCO, and the German Society for Communication Research - deserve gratitude not only for their financial support of the project but also and above all for championing in a manner not to be underrated the scientific exploration of a worldwide cultural phenomenon. The Editors

Avant Propos La Bande Dessinee fait partie des moyens de communication de masse les moins traites dans la recherche sur les media. Alors que la presse ecrite, le cinema, la radio et la television ont etc analyses scientifiquement dans toutes les directions et ont suscite des bibliotheques entieres de litterature, le media Bande Dessinee a toujours etc traite en parent pauvre. Comme 1'on a considere, ce qui est faux, la Bande Dessinee comme un moyen de communication congu exclusivement pour les enf ants et les adolescents - oubliant ainsi le fait que la majorite des lecteurs de bandes dessinees sont des adultes - la Bande Dessinee n'a etc analysee avant tout qu'en fonction de son impact dans le processus de socialisation des enf ants et des adolescents. Par ailleurs, l'on trouve de nombreux exposes sur la creation et le developpement du contenu de la Bande Dessinee, ainsi que des reflexions de nature esthetique. Cependant, le cadre plus large, ä savoir celui du contexts de l'ensemble de la societe n'a toujours pas etc aborde. Ni l'ampleur et les mecanismes de production, de distribution et de consommation de ce media n'ont suscite l'interet particulier de la recherche, ni le röle et la contribution que joue dans son aspect socio-culturel la Bande Dessinee dans le developpement de la culture visuelle. C'est ä l'initiative de 1'International Social Science Council de l'UNESCO que 1'on doit le fait que l'Institut de Cologne pour la Communication de Masse ait regu pour mission de mener une enquete internationale, qui tente, sociologiquement, de definir pour ainsi dire »ou en sont les choses« dans les differents pays du monde. Le tableau d'un media jusqu'ici trop peu considere doit etre presente, qui soit en mesure d'indiquer les ramifications culturelles. En consequence de quoi, un certain nombre d'experts internationaux ont ete pries de donner une vue d'ensemble de la production, de la distribution, des contenus et de la consommation de Bandes Dessinees dans leurs pays et de prendre position sur son impact. Les rapports d'experts d'Allemagne federale, de France, de Grande-Bretagne, d'Inde, d'Italie, du Japon, du Kenya, du Mexique, d'Union Sovietique et des Etats-Unis constituent la partie principale de ce volume. En plus, ont ete repris les exposes faits sur le meme sujet lors d'un seminaire ä Munich organise par la Societe Allemande de Recherche sur la Communication, en cooperation avec la Commission allemande pour l'UNESCO. Les remerciements vont aux trois institutions citees dans ces lignes - ä savoir le Conseil international des sciences sociales de l'UNESCO, la Commission allemande de l'UNESCO et la Societe Allemande de Recherche sur la Communication - non seulement pour 1'aide financiere apportee au projet, mais aussi et surtout pour leur engagement, qu'il ne faut pas sous-estimer, en faveur de 1'investigation scientifique d'un phenomene culturel mondial. Les editeurs

Vorwort Zu den in der Medienforschung am wenigsten abgehandelten Massenkommunikationsmitteln gehören die Comics. Während Presse, Film, Radio und Fernsehen nach allen Richtungen hin wissenschaftlich durchforscht worden sind und ganze Bibliotheken von Literatur hervorgerufen haben, wurde das Medium „Comics" stets recht stiefmütterlich behandelt. Da man fälschlicherweise Comics und Comic-Strips als ein ausschließlich für Kinder und Jugendliche gedachtes Kommunikationsmittel ansah - nicht erkennend, daß die Mehrzahl der Comics-Leserschaft sich aus Erwachsenen zusammensetzt-, wurden Comics in erster Linie nur auf ihre Wirkungen im kindlichen oder jugendlichen Sozialisationsprozeß hin untersucht. Nebenbei finden sich mannigfache Abhandlungen über Entstehen und inhaltliche Entwicklung der Comics sowie Reflexionen ästhetischer Ausrichtung. Indes blieb der breitere Rahmen, nämlich der gesamtgesellschaftliche Kontext, meist unberührt. Weder Ausmaß und Mechanismen von Produktion, Verbreitung und Aufnahme des Mediums fanden das besondere Interesse der Forschung noch Rolle und Beitrag, den die Comics als eine sozio-kulturelle Gegebenheit in der Entwicklung der visuellen Kultur spielen. Es ist einer Initiative des International Social Science Council der UNESCO zu verdanken, daß dem Kölner Institut für Massenkommunikation der Auftrag erteilt wurde, eine internationale Umfrage durchzuführen, die, soziologisch ausgerichtet, sozusagen den „Stand der Dinge" in verschiedenen Ländern der Welt zu klären versucht. Ein Bild eines bisher zu wenig beachteten Mediums soll vorgelegt werden, welches dessen kulturelle Verzweigungen aufzuzeigen in der Lage ist. Dementsprechend wurde eine Anzahl internationaler Experten gebeten, einen Überblick über Produktion, Verbreitung, Inhalte, Aufnahme von Comics in ihrem Land zu geben und zu deren Wirkungen Stellung zu nehmen. Die aus den Ländern Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Frankreich, Großbritannien, Indien, Mexiko, Japan, Kenia, Sowjetunion und Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika kommenden Experten-Berichte bilden den Hauptteil des vorliegenden Bandes. Zusätzlich finden sich Vorträge, die zur gleichen Thematik auf einem von der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Kommunikationsforschung in Zusammenarbeit mit der Deutschen UNESCO-Kommission veranstalteten Seminar in München gehalten wurden. Den drei in diesen Zeilen erwähnten Institutionen - dem Internationalen Sozialwissenschaftlichen Rat der UNESCO, der Deutschen UNESCO-Kommission und der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Kommunikationsforschung - ist nicht nur für die finanzielle Unterstützung des Projekts zu danken, sondern vordringlich für ihren nicht zu unterschätzenden Einsatz für die wissenschaftliche Erforschung eines weltweiten kulturellen Phänomens. Die Herausgeber

Alpbons Silbermann

The Way Toward Visual Culture: Comics and Comic Films I. The Technological Constituent The relationship between the arts and technology has been discussed endlessly since the beginning of the industrial age. Mostly, those have been rather arbitrary arguments, predicting - with the help of unspecified slogans - the end of Occidental culture. Far from reality, these arguments prejudice the creative power of the artist by piling up in front of him all those overall social, economic and cultural misgivings, misgivings that are supposed to have their origin in a "technological age" of whatever kind it might be. The arguments deny the integrational process between art producer, work and art consumer, a process that - besides being based on an historical and organizational-economical constituentis also based on a technological one. But those arguments consider the arts only as a cultural element but not technology-however technology might manifest herself. Under the technological constituent, we understand all those technological means through which groups of artists bring about and put in order both work and art experience and, above all, adjust this work and experience by way of integration to their time and their society. In other words, it is the means that binds artists and consumers to time and society. A pressing consideration of this constituent, as an element capable of integration, leads - from an historical point of view - over supposed divergencies between art and technology to a direct connection with the realities of the present. It also leads to a relation with the future. In view of the obvious relevance of the technological constituent to the artistic creative process, it is hardly necessary to deal with the stereotyped and unrealistic charges that are often brought forward concerning that relation about "the corroding and degrading influence of machine technology", "mechanization of the arts" or the dictum full of prejudice that speaks of the "technical possibility of the reproduction of the work of art". And all this only because art producers and art consumers use technological arrangements which, like the print and electronic media, have become integral parts of our society. Let's say it candidly, that the frequent attacks on the technological constituent are no more and no less than a strategy of obscuration. That means that the blame for the incapabilities of producing artistic contents - contents that lead to artistic experiences and do not just consist of skill, diligence, precision and sweat - is thrown upon the technologies adapted and institutionalized by society.

11

//. Relations of Effects Between Art and Technological-Media-Induced Mass Communications It seems to be necessary to talk about these technologies, called "mass media", within the framework of my subject. The reason for this is that the arts (understood as part of culture) and mass communications (enabled by technological means) are put into a relationship with each other. Yet, a search for philosophically abstract "absolute values" may easily make us forget to realize that behind art (culture) as well as behind technology (mass communications) human beings are placed. Hence, the subjects we have to deal with can be understood and analyzed-in their relation to each other - neither in the abstract nor floating free in the scientific sphere. Here, a noological approach must fail in order to allow room for a psychological and sociological approach, i.e. for an investigation of the question how the human being succeeds in grasping and appropriating intellectual contents. This procedure, if it is to be seized empirically, leads inevitably and directly toward a total social phenomenon (as conceived by Marcel Mauss1), based on the triangle relation: person - society - culture. If we are asked which of those in this context could be the said total phenomenon that can be recorded in an observable way, we find ourselves confronted with that actuality generally designated as effect. Indeed, a penetrating analysis of the effects will provide us with information about the relationship between art and mass communications. Most of the rather endless series of publications studying the effects of mass communications on the individual, on groups or on masses - whether they refer to attitudes, motives, habitualization, manipulation, consistency, predisposition, propaganda, conviction or exposure to stimuli - are based on psychological and/or sociopsychological cognitions with the purpose of understanding the mental treatment of communications after reception of a message. But this is by far not all. It is a fact that impacts and retroactions that come from mass communications proceed into so many directions that a one-sided view can lead to confusion and wrong analyses. Therefore the individual relations of effects are to be laid open and to be separated from each other. Such a procedure may seem very dogmatic and artifical. But if one wants to become aware of the different levers in order to clarify the relationship between art and those mass communications induced through technological media, or the other way around, it is inevitable to go this way. It just does not suffice to talk in this context simply about intellectual, moral, social or psychological effects or to summarize eye-catching impacts under those headlines. While circumscribing on the following pages the main circles of investigation referring to the relationship between art and the mass communications that are brought about by technological media, we expose at the same time the relationships within the communication system as those relations affect absolute values. First, we refer to the function of certain artistic contents in relation to the media. This is a question of serviceableness, in which artistic contents of all kinds serve the media for the purpose of mass dissemination. The contents, whether on a high or a medium level, whether ephemeral or trivial, fulfill the function of a commodity 12

that is demanded and bought, a commodity that the media produce or have produced and which is used and processed according to the present-day conditions demanded by film, press, television or comics. On the one hand, one does not like to refer to this relation because it is thought that such an interpretation would pollute the "holy" field of art. On the other hand, it is taken as a pretext for cultural criticism on the basis of materialistic ideologies. Next, we see thefunction of the media in relation to certain artistic contents. Here the problem is the artistically correct utilization of contents for the purposes of the media. If in this context cultural criticism comes to the fore, then, it is in the first place, in order to preserve the unfalsified sociopsychological unity evoked by art experience. The point of departure of this criticism is the immanent meaning of art works and consequently—in view of their popularity and popularization—the fear that the media and the people behind them deliberately produce specific Kitschexperiences. To be sure, the media personnel themselves don't like Kitsch, and they promote, in passing - if they are in the mood to do so - what they think is art; but they actually produce Kitsch. Whoever makes such a statement could, if necessary, present the evidence of a changing or decaying culture, but could produce neither the postulate of an intended general validity nor of an innovation. If we connect both of the functions already mentioned with each other, then we are among those who want above all to save the mass media through the arts or the arts through the media. In this context the rather embarrassing inability of the television screen to replace communicative symbols by non-communicative ones is too easily overlooked, i. e. a sociopsychological process which, in the first place, is to be attributed to the traditional constituent of the collective memory2. Here, two groups confront each other like two hostile brothers. While the one says: "Hands off the art, you degrade it through the technology of your media to a penny gaff", the other insists on seeing the media as the art of today and tomorrow. Both views are untenable, in so far as their argumentation overlooks the reality of the relations between media producer and media consumer, that is to say, the levels on which these relations take place. It has to be pointed out over and over again that what is true for the sociopsychological functions of the arts in general is also true for the art disseminated by technical means, namely that the members of the societies look upon the arts on an aesthetic or a respectively social and sociopsychological level. These elements of thinking and feeling are inherent in the individual as well as in whole aggregates. They are impediments to all those people who are responsible for artistic programs. For once those people realize (consciously or unconsciously) that they disseminate cultural ingredients or aspects, they like to be regarded as cultural experts. This produces an attitude that elevates the technology they deal with (under whatever circumstances and in all its configurations) to culture. If a member of one of the various media organizations is a person who is deliberately concerned with the progress of political, moral, economic, social, religious or artistic culture, then he has to try topreservehisexpertstatus. Now, if weaddtothe "genuine" expert the "bogus" expert as well as all those who are only intersted in the material side of the media, then we are faced with a collective consciousness that makes all of them behave like artists. As it would be degrading for a "genuine" artist 13

to admit that he does not serve real art (whatever this might be), he nominates the media as an art. And as the " bogus " artist has to give proof of his right to exist more than anyone else, he proclaims the same even more vehemently. This sociopsychological reaction brings us close to another moment in the relationship between art and mass communications, that is the accomplishment of ^process of identification. Born out of the close connection between the function of artistic contents in relation to the media based on technology and the function of the media in relation to artistic contents - having always in mind that behind every content, forks production, its interpretation or its explanation, are human beings the media themselves together with their technologies become producers of art. If, for instance, radio and television act in respect of the content "music" as entertainer, maecenas, educator and impresario, it would be wrong to speak of an usurpation of this form of art. Rather, we should speak of a shifting of functions, a consequence of the social change which animates frequently a so-called "cultural revolution". This leads to the fact that the persons responsible for the artistic content "music" within socio-cultural institutions like radio or television identify themselves on the one hand with the institutions and on the other hand with the music they handle. This process of identification and, combined with it, the institutionalization of artistic contents by the responsible persons and by the socio-cultural institution itself creates the basis from which it is possible to analyze the effects of the means of mass communication in relation to the arts and to culture in general. The contents can now be regarded from various points of view: from the point of view of the communication process, the message, the feedback, the diffusion, the innovation and many other things. Not all of these cultural complexes can be dealt with in the framework of this paper. We confine ourselves to two very important frames of references: mass and popular culture and the system of perception.

III. Mass and Popular Culture Mass and popular culture, two related and often combined terms, represent measures for worthiness and unworthiness of respectively cultural artistic contents. The negative arguments uttered in this connection are directed in the first place against the manufacturers of artistic values, and especially against those who are in a position to diffuse those values with the support of the mass media. In other words, a process of distribution has come between art and communication and interferes in the process of communication. It is fundamentally different from the process of distribution of that time when society entered the age of industrialization. This new procedure, covering the entire production (i.e. also the cultural goods), was primarily not profit oriented; it was primarily need oriented. Needs, desires and aspirations of individuals and aggregates exerted a pressure on production, which led at the same time to the development of a mass society. One speaks reluctantly about mass culture. This is not only because it is assumed that mass culture was something despisable, but moreover, because it is said that it would serve to suppress, to ruin, even to make individuality, individual 14

production and individual culture disappear and together with this taste and the formation of taste. The term "cultural industry" came up as a way of representing seeing in this way and summing-up the entire set of problems in one 'expression. The social philosopher Th. W. Adorno claimed3 that this expression was used the first time by him and Max Horkheimer in their book Dialektik der Aufklärung.4 But this is not true. For, already in the middle of the 19th century, at the time of the great world exhibition, writers on aesthetics under the leadership oijohn Ruskin (1819-1900) and his follower William Morris (\ 834-1896) climbed the barricades and called for a clear separation between culture, on the one hand - with which they evoked the ideal of an artist (of an exceptional being, adreamer, an artistic artisan)-and, on the other hand, the industry with all its ingredients like collectivism, standardization, mechanization and oppression of personal liberties5. What was then refused for aesthetic reasons is now discriminated on a socio-cultural and a sociopsychological level with slogans like "cultural industry" or "industrialized culture". By these means, the attack is directed against mass and popular culture and their producers, as well as against the "uniformed" members of a mass society. Especially in this context, different phases of influence of the mass media are underlined, phases which reach from influence on taste via formation of taste, to organization of taste or even to dictatorship of taste. Yet, already at the moment the attempt is made to define the effects according to term and content of taste, we are confronted with views that differ depending on their ideological approach to the matter. Those who are preoccupied with the relations between technology and society, as well as with the relations between technology and art, cannot and must notmake inferences from the assumption that taste is a mystic or absolute phenomenon. It is an error to cling to an opinion according to which the arts exist in a world of the absolute, and to assume on that basis that the tastes of producers as well as of consumers are independent of psychological and social forces. On the contrary, we find that the forces leading to the formation of interconnectd norms in respect to taste are socially and psychologically determinated and consist of social heritage, of social, psychological, biological and technological elements as well as the creative contribution of individual personalities. Hence, the fact that taste can be influenced and controlled by means of mass media technology is to be seen with respect to all those forces just mentioned above: they exert their effects in interaction. If the relations between art and mass communications are to be kept in a cultural balance that serves society, the arts and the mass media, then means have to be found to guard against an undesired taste dictatorship. For this purpose, those pseudo-sociopsychological arguments are to be eliminated that are not only of the opinion that taste eo ipso could be measured statistically, but what is more, insist on being able to recognize, with the aid of philosophical analysis of a cultural item, the state of a society and its art consumers. Those alluring thoughts are to be eliminated in order to see clearly that the whole relationship between art and mass communications - as well as the one between art and mass media, i.e. the distributors - rests on the problem of the connecting of the control with regard to 15

the access to the art by production and the consumption and the control with regard to preferential treatment in questions of distribution and mediation. The popularization of the arts brought about through technological means is above all a question of the separation of the control over preferential treatment in questions of distribution and mediation. For the media of mass communications and the people behind them do not create the taste of their consumers - they only reflect it interactionally. Let us not overlook the fact that permanent, temporary and ephemeral art expressions are in the first place expressions of the activities of culture; in the second place mobile cultural changes; third, up to date circles of cultural effects that, fourth, lead in their totality to the worthwhile objective of making the individual consumer become a member of smaller or bigger groups of society through the binding power of the arts. Thus, we realize that in the relationship between art and technologically determined mass communications, the logical end, i.e. the end of control over access and distribution, is confronted with a psychologico-emotional end that must not be overlooked and for which there is no rule of control apart from synchronization and social agreement.

IV. The System of Perception Up to here, we have looked at the set of problems from the point of view of production. By turning now to the side of the consumers, we intend to observe and analyze their behavior in view of the relations between art and technology and their effects. The frame of reference which will serve us for this purpose will briefly be called "the system of perception". The passage of an artistic message to the recipient comes about via a process of communication which, temporally speaking, occurs after the creation, but before the effect of a cultural item embedded in technological means. Hence, this process reaches the recipient at a point where perception and meaning of a cultural item occur. For a long time, scholars have been interested in perception and meaning in occurrences where these two stand closely connected, a situation in which the comprehension of the material and the immaterial environment played a most important role. According to our subject, we shall only deal with those technologies and their handling where the visual determines the artistic reality. Already Leibniz, following the doctrine of Descartes about clear apprehension and thinking, was concerned with the phenomenon of perception and with realization of sensations and stimuli within the consciousness of men. From there onwards, a number of theories with reference to perception have been developed, theories which - guided in the first place by psychological knowledge - analyze the relation between associations of sensation and substantiality. Proceeding from the postulate that perception is due to the sensibility and the intelligence of men, it is held (stating the view briefly) that external objects and realities put into motion the totality of those faculties of the nervous system of men. By this, sensations and imaginations are evoked, which man, thanks to his intelligence, is in a position to 16

interpret, to adjoin to an object, to place within his environment, to understand-in brief: to perceive. Perception is obviously a psychical fact and the question is, to what extent should sociologically-based contemplations and analyses take it into consideration. The answer to this question is that the sociologist will be interested in regarding uieprocess of visual transmission of culture through perception in so far as this relation between the visual message and its consumers is established. This problem - a problem that includes questions of distribution, pedagogics, listening, viewing, reading and images of the mass media- has been examined from many sides; historians, philosophers, psychologists and natural scientists have each in their way taken exception to the fact that what is presented to perception and is connected with a centralized sensation never coincides with the object of perception, for instance with the environment. Therefore it is frequently proclaimed that things that are to be seen visually in perception are never completely the things that are meant. This attitude, however plausible it may be in its simplicity, never convinced the sociologist. Sociology and social psychology have not for nothing been trying to grasp the "meaning of meaning"6 and to conduct experiments to measure meaning7. The meaning of a visual communication as a step following perception is based on the fact that contents and forms of an object or an expression can be understood in their peculiarities. These peculiarities can be pursued by different approaches. If, for instance, we consider that words and musics develop their effects in time, and paintings and their effects in space - in other words, if we not only try to trace out the essence of words, musics or paintings, but also to seize their existences as an operating force - then this approach leads necessarily via a phenomenology to the facts themselves. Indeed, through a phenomenological approach-used as an aid in returning from the "transcendental" and its power to the substantial-the character of perception and meaning, as well as its direct presence in the process of visual cultural transmission, can be elucidated; it is the conversion of the perceived object and its meaning into a permanent property of consciousness. Existentialist thinking, brought about by phenomenology, also tries to grasp the realities of the living and active being and to assess this being in its relation to the absolute being, in other words, to lead it back to its essence - another modality for the return from perception and meaning to the substantial, i. e. to the process of transmission of a message referring to an environment, constituted by art. Another way to pursue the understanding of contents and forms of the expression in their peculiarities is the analysis of symbolic forms and symbolic thinking, of which Ernst Cassirer was already aware8. Erwin Panofsky followed the same direction; he tried to prove the identification of the symbolic function of an image with the deeper layer of its meaning, about which, according to his opinion, the entire constitution of time gives ingenious proof9. While the followers of this school of thinking examine the symbols and the symbolic meaning of a visual message, the psychological school, headed by Rudolf Arnheim comes to the conclusion that the symbolic meaning is only indirectly expressing what intelligence and experience tell us about the content of an image10. From an epistemological point of view, opinions of this kind refer us back to the 17

impossibility of getting close to visual communication, its reception and its decoding on the basis of logical discussions and empirical findings. This led to an abundance of pamphlets all to the debit of the so-called "lecture culture!" of artistic realities using technological means. The sociologist is less interested in deciphering contents and in the demystification of the relations between art and technologies, but more interested in the welfare of mankind in its visual and cultural being. He wants to comprehend perception, meaning and their consequences as topical human behavior. With this (with or without inclusion of historical, anthropological, psychological, structural or linguistic knowledge) we turn to the consumer in so far as he is dependent on a cultural process of diffusion to obtain a gratification of some kind from the visual message. To get close to this process and with it close to the behavior of men, we will have to turn to observable patterns of behavior. In this respect, there are, from the point of view of the recipient of the visual message, three central patterns of behavior at our disposal which are methodologically seizable. First, there is the procedure of seeing, which is the first contact between producer and consumer. It puts in motion certain neuralgic factors that bring about, apart from acceptance or refusal, structural elements of the personality. Many studies have already dealt with this physio-psychological problem in order to find an answer to the question what the onlooker sees in an image and how he sees it. On a politico-cultural level, this leads to a very well exploited field of education that tries to explain to the onlookers of objects what they have to see, i.e. what it means to see in the "right way". All those attempts are similar to that "science of the soul" which tries to lead the procedure of seeing into the field of action, known as consciousness. After seeing follows a second pattern of behavior, namely the understanding of a visual performance. Now, a procedure is set in motion by the observer with which he tries to enter into the eye and the brain, even into the souls of those who produced the representation. The message, as it is said, is to be grasped in this way, i.e. the observer participates directly, but mostly indirectly, unconsciously, quasiautomatically in the genesis of the visual performance. This is a behavioral pattern which stands in the center of all those considerations that try to assist in the interpretation of reality. The third behavioral phase is that of appreciation, of estimation. Starting from the optic material - elevated by systematic work of thinking and intuition to the level of an analysis of meaning - individual value judgments are established which are finally meant to be axiomatic. Never mind whether it is about reading, listening or seeing; in relation with understanding and judgment, aesthetic and social elements are never to be confused. An exact separation of the two levels on which perception can take place allows us to realize that the three phases of visual communication mentioned above are in a dialectic relation of tension with each other. On the other hand, this makes us recognize that possibility of communication and receptiveness of communication are two opposite poles which have to be brought together for the aims of perception - they level out the embarrassing inability of visual media based on technologies to transmit a completely different world from their own. 18

With this I want to point out finally that the mechanisms of visual communication - from their reception until their effects - are the results of a sociocultural phenomenon that is to be ascertained in its identity. It is precisely this socio-cultural phenomenon we deal with here if the role and the consequences of the relationships between art and technology are to be discussed within the framework of interdisciplinary research. "Interdisciplinary" means to me not only that the different disciplines of art can make use of the existence of mass media technology for their research work, but - for the scientist interested in the behavior of men, and especially the society - above all that the existing socio-cultural phenomenon can be approached and explained theoretically, practically and methodologically from various points of view. Without establishing a hierarchy, we present as a first and often-used way of analysis the one showing that visual representations do not come into existence ex nihilo. This approach, however, is often wrongly applied for all when extended into ideologies. In this case, mechanistic causality becomes a method against which the sociology of knowledge has protested since the days of Karl Mannheim. The empirical sociological analysis goes exactly the opposite methodological way and tries to grasp the situationary, i.e. it examines the influence of society on the role of mass media technology along with its socio-cultural phenomena. - Another orientation proceeds from the creation of visual performances in their various forms of expression and thereby derives questions of general character that refer to the social, moral, economic or cultural ideas of a certain class or stratum of society. - Or there is an attempt to prove on the basis of socio-cultural phenomena that man is to be seen in the environment of a spirito-social existence. - Or the socio-cultural phenomena are put into relating to social change, to politico-cultural developments or the web of social organization. — Completely different from this is the approach that pursues the social fundamentals of the creation of a visual presentation as well as the aesthetic enjoyment obtained by it. - Another approach to the socio-cultural phenomena interests itself only in questions concerning the general validity and the constancy of the concretized visual phenomenon. - A broader approach seeks to find out the possibilities of expression within the individual and collective discussion between the specific realities: e.g. environment, visual presentation and society. With this, we are in the midst of the theoretical and practico-methodical approach called environmental studies. The origin of this approach of registrating environment, and from there the uncovering of circumstances, is generally attributed to Hippolyte Taine11. Yet, other scholars also, devoted to sociological thinking, have already recognized, before Taine, the "milieu" as a factor of influence on creation and behavior. We only have to think of Alexis de Tocqueville who, in his well known work De la Democratie en Amerique, found, like Taine, that every situation, every environment, creates a mental state that takes effect on perception and reception. 19

Certainly, with this reference to the environment (also referred to as "sociocultural" or "apperceptive background"), a lot of analytical possibilities of the phenomenon discussed here are revealed. But they can easily lead to an apriorism when they are used to prove that it is or was the aim of some visual representation to disclose, according to the opinion of the researcher or the producer, more clear and complete than would be possible by factual reality, an idea that is important for society. We must prevent our becoming the victim of that false reasoning which attempts to understand society as an essentially total unit. After all, the many aspects of society are not just manifestations of a primary spirit whose origins they all are tending toward. To solve the set of problems raised, it seems to me that the means nearest at hand is to pursue a line of inquiry which will show the role of visual technology in respect to perception and meaning of the presented matter, i.e. the relation between art and identity within the environment of symbols. However, we do not want to investigate .symbols as such, but the dependence of the perceiving beings on their environment of symbols and the creation of this environment by the perceiving person as producer and consumer. The study of the milieu presents itself as a sociological theory of action; a (objective and subjective) human approach, implicating the actions of individuals, groups or collectives, allows us not only to centralize human actualities like love, hatred, humor, fertility, aggression, etc., but also culture and cultures as "total social phenomena". When well understood, the total phenomena of which I speak are not just simple juxtapositions of various cultural aspects in society, but are to be considered as their incorporation into individual or collective experiences. Indeed the study of the environment of symbols provides us with the possibility of comprehending those mechanisms that easily can lead to a wrong socio-cultural perception of human relations to art and technology. Herewith we join the knowledge that every agreement in human communication — also the one between art producer and art consumer — makes demands for cognition and for meaning of symbols. They have to be learned and diffused for the production of technologically transmitted socio-cultural interactions. Only in this way can they be used effectively and contribute to the creation and maintenance of a viable environment of symbols. It would mean closing our eyes toward reality if we do not realize that nowadays it is, in the first place, the task of the technologies of diffusion to bring about the common possession of symbols. It has been said with good reason, "Symbols are the stuff out of which cultures and societies are made"12. V. The Comics in the System of Perception The epistemological design pronounced up to this point, as it is no more than a rough outline, has now to be completed through a thinking at the object. And if we turn for this purpose to comics and comic films (we shall refer to them together on the following pages as "comics") it is for the following reasons. Over the years, when book printing developed, the so-called picture-sheets appeared on the market. They were the ancestors of the comics and served elevating, entertaining 20

and informative purposes. Without dealing here with the development and contents of comics, comic strips and comic film 13 , we can say that comics, whether as printed products or as films, are to be considered nowadays as mass media. In view of their production in masses for masses, as well as in view of their effects, they are as a socio-cultural institution in no way inferior to the other mass media. It is all the more astonishing that scientific research hardly dealt with this medium. While press, radio and television have been scientifically examined in all their aspects, with regard to comics (apart from historical and aesthetic reflections) we find only a few empirical studies and no specialized research institutes. This lamentable state of affairs caused us to make comics the subject of our reflections, whereby we are also fully aware of the enormous economic importance of this medium. But finally also, we made this the subject of our study because the comics became, as an artistic creation incorporating the technological constituent, an integrating component of the system of perception affecting people of all ages and social strata. However, before we deal with this central question, we deem it necessary to submit, at least in key-words, some characteristics of the material we are dealing with, in order to avoid possible misunderstandings in respect to the nature, the importance and the influence of the matter called "comics". The following points are to be made: - Comics get their topics out of the socio-cultural environment from which they originate and for which they are produced. Accordingly, they are also of importance for the creative sector, even if they are, on account of their figurativeness, classified as "phantasy killers" or on account of their value as entertainer as "rubbish ", " Kitsch" or in brief as " trivial". — The mutual dependence of picture and text is a characteristic mark of comics. - Comics tell a story both on different levels of the pictures and different levels of time. Hence, something also happens between the pictures, and the consumer is called upon to discover the development of actions within the individual picture. - To render action as an essential ingredient of comics, intelligible short forms of expressions are used to describe atmosphere and character. They enable the interpretation of the pictorial information. - Comics mediate, even as pure entertainment, certain mental values. Since the fact is that entertainment and information do not exclude each other, comics are latently or overtly open to any ideology. - By means of speaking-bubbles, comic pictures talk. For that reason, the reception implies two processes of reading that go parallel, intersect or complete or support each other. - As far as entertaining action-comics are concerned, they are based in their graphic presentation on often-changing perspectives, frequent cuts, bright colors, pictorial symbols, noise imitations and onomatopoeia. Among the main possibilities of picture adjustment are (as in feature films) the total or semi-total, whereby the figures are, in almost all cases, shown from the front. Very rarely, the contents of the picture are shown from a bird's-eye or a worm's-eye view. After this short survey we can now take up our issue, in pursuit of our previous explanations, by discussing the example of the comics as an integrating component 21

of the system of perception, the present trend toward visual culture through the function of art and technology.

VI. The Trend Toward Visual Culture Nowadays comics are used mainly in the following sections of cultural life: in entertainment, information, learning, education and publicity. Specific types of contents and forms of presentation have been developed for each of these over the years. These different forms show that the same performance of perception can be taken over by completely different cultural processes. It is in this sense that the assertion is to be understood that, at the moment, a lot of people - whether little ones or grown-ups - learn more relevant things about culture via comics and comic films than by pure seeing with their eyes. This shows that whatever is said for or against the cultural contribution brought about through the symbiosis of art and technology within the ramifications of that part of the mass media called comics, refers to function - to respectively functional or dysfunctional effects, those being the consequences of functions. It should be understood well that, if we talk here about functions, then we refer to cultural elements that contribute to the continuance and/or development of socio-cultural configurations. In this respect, the function is direct if a specific need is satisfied by it; it is indirect if it contributes to the possibility that other cultural elements can become functional. Speaking of socio-cultural configurations, with this we refer on the one hand to the relationship between art and technology, and on the other hand to a system of perception bound to visual culture. Both are connected with each other in view of the needs that people try to satisfy. If this is to be made comprehensible, not only in an epistemological way but also close to the actual state of reality, then it will be necessary to show for whom and for what the above mentioned socio-cultural configurations, serving as a basis for "Comics", are functional. As far as the usage of comics within the socialization process of children is concerned, we know (speaking grosso modo) of three stages, corresponding to the various stages of childhood development 14 . At the first stage of early needs of presentation, there are the animal-comics as objects of perception. At the second stage of development the need germinates for the fulfillment of the search for reality, and is satisfied through the realistic appearance both of the physical scene and of heroes who are invulnerable or almost invulnerable. Only at a later stage, about the 12th year, does the need to become confronted visually with the real world grow and demand satisfaction, and real stories and facts that are close to reality are then on the agenda. Social norms and relations, age, sex, and mental abilities come to the fore - as integrating components of the cultural system of perception - when the confrontation with the visual, evoked through the relations between art and technology, takes place; the relations between comics, child and visual culture are polarized. Whether the visual offers possibilities for experiences of phantasy or reality, the contribution of the child to the system of perception that is to be 22

satisfied consists of internalized social norms as well as of the positive or negative socio-cultural relations, which, respectively, either demand a confirmation of reality or an escape from reality, for a substitution of it. As far as adults are concerned, the analyses show that they form a big if not the biggest part of comic consumers; their funcional satisfaction of needs is mostly done away with by arguments like semi-education, distraction or evasion. Going deeper into the matter, it is stated that a great number of the adult comic readers identify themselves with the hero of one or the other comic type created by the artist: an energetic personality who, led by a vision of reality, dares to think and to act independently. The heroic qualities are transformed into visually recognizable actions, and by this the vision of an ideal is created which indeed is always and everywhere present, but becomes by visualization an ingredient of the everyday moral. The foundation of this everyday moral, as far as it is relevant for society as a whole, has always been layed by situationary elements or phases that manifest themselves by social trends that also include, of course, cultural elements. They determine the creative side of the comics, i.e. that of producers and their consumers, and they are as little static as a society and its cultural phenomena. Producers and consumers, just as anyone of us, are subjected to social change which finds expression in typical trends o{ a society. These typical trends form the basis of any social judgment and by this also the position of comics in societies of today. While some time ago there was talk about the trend of "marketingorientation", then of "other-direction", then of "identity crisis" and aphoristically of the "permissive society", we can talk today about a trend toward visual culture. We have to reckon with socio-cultural trends of this sort above all because the stipulation of trends is not personal and the term has no inevitable moral implications. " Inevitability" means in this context that neither an individual nor an institution can be successful in changing the direction of a socio-cultural trend by personal or institutional efforts. No individual and no group or institution can detain the current trend toward a visual culture. Let us look at some examples taken from different cultural sectors: schoolbooks for various subjects are enriched by comic drawings; Third World Comics are used for educational purposes; Bible workshops use comic booklets for the preaching of the gospel; the life of Pope John Paul II is distributed as comic biography; UNESCO publishes the history of Africa in the form of comics; political comics with titles like "Marx for Beginners" appear on the market; television programs regularly use comic drawings for the explanation of economic, social and scientific information; youths are informed about professional chances with the aid of brochures with comic drawings, e.g. about the building trade, with indications concerning training, risks, difficulties, places of information and many others. Wherever we look and in whatever stage of the socialization process, we find ourselves constantly confronted with "comic art" as an expression of visual culture - regardless of whether we consider it to be trivial or to be a subculture. Moreover, we also have to mention the use of comics in the publicity that is always present in everyday life - whether that publicity is intended to be informative, competitive or persuading. And it goes without saying that certain 23

comic figures have become objects of worship and are used for advertising series of products. Indeed, if publicity uses the comic-form and the comic-style, this publicity follows and sustains the trend toward visual culture entering into the system of perception. At this point, we have to stop, in order not to produce the impression that comics and comic films, in the framework of our multi-media society, are the only thing that is responsible for the way toward visual culture. Also, we should pause lest we lose ourselves in details, and neglect consideration of the relation between visual cultural phenomena and the people who are creating and supporting these phenomena. This central, even commanding relation is immersed in invariable dialectic tensions which determine finally the nature of visual culture. And these dialectic tensions (because of their variety only a few prototypes can be mentioned here) lead—consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly—the way toward visual culture embedded in actions and behavior of people. 1. Dialectic tension between the individual and the mass The interhuman nature of the communication of visual cultural items demands, in the first place, that there be an individual face to face approach, i.e. a communication process where any communicator meets with any recipient under his own specific conditions. That means, although mass media using visual culture are meant for an anonymous mass of people, every member of this mass is to be reached by the visual message. Hereby a tension arises that is at the basis of the questions: Is the message destined for anyone or nobody? Are certain persons addressed or just the impersonal abstraction of the so-called average citizen ? 2. Dialectic tension between two-way and one-way communication The tension arises from the question whether a two-way communication is evoked and corroborated by means of visual culture or does it remain a one-way communication process, whereby an alternating effect between communicator and recipient is not possible and desired feedback is missing. 3. Dialectic tension between instantaneity and absorption This tension refers to the demand for immediate instantaneous communication by means of visual culture in contrast to the demand for absorption of the message. After all, the constantly growing complexity of our society, the technological development as well as the enormous volume of information in all fields of human activities make it more and more difficult to understand the real meaning of an event or an invention without the necessary references to the background. 4. Dialectic tension between subjectivity and objectivity This tension is the most discussed one in reference to cultural utterances. For although we know that both these criteria are unattainable in absolute perfection, subjectivity and objectivity attract each other like magic poles as far as visual culture is concerned. Thus, communications, based on the visual, vacillate 24

between the demand for absolute truth and the justified want for personal interpretation, whereby the question arises where the right emphasis would be. 5. Dialectic tension between private and public interest This tension (whether it is based on political, economic, cultural, social, moral or religious interests) is equally noticeable on the side of the producer as well as on the side of the consumer of visual messages. 6. Dialectic tension between independence and compulsion With regard to this tension it may be sufficient to point to the dependence of producers and consumers of visual culture on tradition, cultural heritage or pressure groups, whether they be called church, state or political parties. Personal integrity and vested interests are inevitable contrasts. Inherent dangers for our entire cultural life are attributed to any of those relations of tensions with regard to a progressive development of visual culture. Whoever holds that these tensions are inherently dangerous insists on the duration of absolute values, refuses to acknowledge a dynamic and evolutionary change of attitudes, and overlooks or wants to ignore the basic attitude that governs any change of attitudes, that is to say, the integration of a dynamic view on the rapidly proceeding socio-cultural change. The artist as well as the technologist has to behold the practical actions of everyday work in the light of the dynamic tendencies of the socio-cultural change. It is to be understood that any new state of affairs demands a solution, and that an adjustment has to be found between the dialectic powers of opposite poles of tension, an adjustment that represents a positive contribution to improved conditions of living. We hope to have clearly expounded that - in relation to the socio-cultural change - only the acknowledgement of a mutation of cultural communication together with a dynamic and progressive attitude, can lead on a leveled out way toward visual culture and, in this way, reduce to a minimum the formation of a most undesirable cultural lag.

Notes 1 Essai sur le don, in: Annee Sociologique, Vol., I, 1923/24. 2 SeeA/. Halbwachs, Lamemoire collective, Paris 1950. 3 See Th. W. Adorno, Resume über Kulturindustrie, in: Ohne Leitbild, Frankfurt/M. 1967. 4 Amsterdam 1947. 5 SeeJohnRuskin, Selections and Essays, New York, Chicago, Boston 1918, Chapter IV. 6 For instance: C. K. Ogden and 1. A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning, New York 1945. 7 For instance: Ch. E. Osgood, C. ]. Suciand P. H. Tannenbaum, The Measurement of Meaning, Urbana, 111., 1957. 8 E. Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, 3 Vol., Berlin 1923-1929. See W. Nutz, in: A. Silbermann (Ed.), Klassiker der Kunstsoziologie, München 1979. 9 E. Panowsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts, New York 1955. See A. Hänseroth, in: A. Silbermann ( E d . ) , Klassiker der Kunstsoziologie, München 1979.

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10 SeeR.Amkeim, Art and Visual Perception, Berkeley 1954. 11 H. Taine, Philosophie de l'art, 2 Vol., Paris 1882. See L. Kofler, in: A. Silbermann (Ed.), Klassiker der Kunstsoziologie, München 1979. 12 H. R. Zetterberg, On Theory and Verification in Sociology, Totowa, N.J., 1965,p. 1. 13 See A. Silbermann, Handwörterbuch der Massenkommunikation und Medienforschung, Berlin 1982, p. 49ff. 14 K.M. Wolf and M. Fiske, The Children talk about Comics, in: P. F. LazarsfeldandF. N. Stanton (Ed.), Communications Research 1948-1949, New York 1949, p. 3ff.

English Summary Proceeding from a concept of art which comprises a social, a cultural, and a technological component, the author looks into the effects of mass media. In so doing he emphasizes as an especially important framework of reference the system of perception, apart from the mass and popular culture. Comics mark the irresistible trend within a society toward a visual culture — a development which is determined by manifold tensions to which the author draws attention. A dynamic approach to the phenomena alone can live up to these sociocultural transformations. The author substantiates this finding from various angles; for instance, when he correlates the functions of specific artistic contents with the media or, conversely, the functions of the media with specific artistic contents. In this respect technology and art do not rule each other out but are both integral parts of the sociocultural transformation effected by man living in his field of social tension.

Resume franqais En partant d'un concept artistique, constitue d'une composante sociale, d'une culturelle et d'une autre technologique, I'auteur analyse les repercussions des mass-media. II souligne ä ce propos le Systeme de la perception, qu'il considere comme un cadre de reference particulierement important a cote de la culture de masse et de la culture populaire. La Bande Dessinee caracterise la tendance irresistible, au sein de la societe, vers une culture visuelle - une evolution, qui est marquee par des tensions diverses, que note I'auteur. Seule une observation dynamique des phenomenes peut tenir compte de ces modifications socio-culturelles. L 'auteur etaie cet enseignement a partir de divers angles d'observation; par exemple en mettant les functions de certains contenusartistiques en rapport avecles media, ou au contraire les functions des media en rapport aveccertains contenusartistiques. En I'occurence, la technique et l'art ne s'excluent pas, mais sont tous deux les parties integrantes de la modification socio-culturelle, que I'etre vivant suscite dans son milieu de tension social.

Deutsche Zusammenfassung Ausgehend von einem Kunstbegriff, der sich aus einer sozialen, einer kulturellen und einer technologischen Komponente zusammensetzt, untersucht der Autor die Wirkungen von Massenmedien. Als besonders wichtigen Bezugsrahmen stellt er hierbei neben der Massenund Popularkultur das System der Perzeption heraus. Comics kennzeichnen den unaufhalt-

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samen Trend innerhalb der Gesellschaft zu einer visuellen Kultur —eine Entwicklung, die bestimmt ist durch mannigfaltige, vom Autor aufgezeigte Spannungen. Diesen sozio-kulturellen Veränderungen kann nur eine dynamische Betrachtungsweise der Phänomene gerecht werden. Diese Erkenntnis untermauert der Autor aus verschiedenen Betrachtungswinkeln; so wenn er z. B. die Funktionen bestimmter künstlerischer Inhalte in bezug zu den Medien bringt oder umgekehrt die Funktionen der Medien zu bestimmten künstlerischen Inhalten. Dabei schließen sich Technik und Kunst nicht aus, sondern sind beide Integrate der soziokulturellen Veränderung, die der in seinem sozialen Spannungsfeld lebende Mensch bewirkt.

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Rolf T. Wiganä

Toward a More Visual Culture Through Comics Introduction Comics have become basic to American life in less than a century. Comics can be found in newspapers, books, on television, in advertising, on packages of products or on products themselves and numerous other places and devices. Comics as a particular mode of communication cutting across several media have survived their test of durability. They have been serialized, their originators added color, they have been animated, they have become their own medium in some cases, they have become manipulatable in the form of videogames and they have gone underground. Comics have crossed national boundaries and they have been utilized effectively by governments as propaganda channels. Concerned parents, other citizens and politicians have viewed the role of comics and cartoons with alarm because of their peculiar potency. It is interesting to note that in the United States comics received their initial impetus from a newspaper war between William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer in the mid-1890s. Colored supplements to the Sunday issues of the New York journal and the New York World vied with each other to build circulation (Mains, 1945). A significant part of this rivalry was played by funny drawings involving a character who came to be known as "The Yellow Kid". This sketch achieved popularity quickly and increased the circulation of Pulitzer's New York World. Within six months, Hearst came out with a new comic section: "... eight pages of iridescent polychromous effulgences that make the rainbow look like a piece of lead pipe (Waugh, 1947, p. 6)." Hearst headlined his cast of characters "The Yellow Kid", for Hearst had hired the original artist and his creation away from the World. Pulitzer promptly bought him back, but was again outbid by Hearst. Consequently Pulitzer hired another artist and for some time both papers tried to outdo each other with independent versions of the vulgar, raucous " Kid". The yellow color of the strip and the notoriety arising from the contest between the two newspapers gave rise to the term "yellow journalism". Very quickly other newspapers created their own comics. By the end of 1902, "Buster Brown" and "The Katzenjammer Kids" had appeared. "The Katzenjammer Kids" celebrated in 1982 their 85th anniversary and the strip is the longest-running of all comics. The artist behind this strip is the seventh since it first appeared on December 12, 1897 in the New York Journal (Schwartz, 1982). The original artist, German-born Rudolph Dirks, was asked to draw a comic strip based on the work of another German cartoonist, Wilhelm Busch. The names of Max and Moritz were replaced with Hans and Fritz. The strip was an immediate success. After about ten years, Dirks decided to work for Hearst's competition, the New York World. A much publicized court fight ensued and in 1914 Dirks was allowed to take his characters to the World, but the title "The Katzenjammer Kids" 28

was awarded to Hearst. Hearst hired another cartoonist, Harold Knerr, to do his paper's strip while Dirks drew the World's strip, which was titled "Hans and Fritz". Both papers featured the same characters doing the same kinds of mischief. With the rise of anti-German sentiment during World War I, the boys changed nationality - to Dutch - and both strips changed names. Knerr's strip became the "Shenanigan Kids", reverting to the original title years later; the other strip became "The Captain and the Kids", a title that remained until the strip ended in the 1970s. Hearst's King Features still distributes this strip. At one time it went to more than 200 newspapers, although King Features officials will not admit what its circulation is today. They admit, however, that its circulation has dwindled and there seems to be some speculation that Hearst holds on to "The Katzenjammer Kids" for nostalgic reasons. The comic book came into prominence in the mid-1930s. The lag between the successful commercial acceptance of the comic strip and the appearance of comic books on a large scale is puzzling, for early versions of the comic book had been used successfully as premiums in promotional campaigns as early as 1911. Once the idea caught on, however, comic books developed rapidly into big business. It is important to point out that the initial purpose of comics was to increase newspaper circulation. In this process comics became firmly embedded in the reading behavior, taste and preferences of the American public. Today's comics still have a commercial purpose primarily, although there are some indications that they can stand their own ground. Estimates have placed the readers of comics in the United States at nearly 100,000,000. In 1964, some 36,500,000 comic books were being published on a weekly, biweekly or monthly basis in the United States and Canada (McCollister, 1965). Briefly, a distinction between cartoon and comic should be made. A cartoon is a pictorial representation or caricature of a person, idea, or situation that is designed to influence public opinion. Comics may be defined as a form of cartooning in which a cast of characters enacts a story in a sequence of closely related drawings designed to educate or entertain the reader. A cartoon depends primarily upon a single visual impact, whereas comics consist of continuing story situations in which reading plays an important role. Throughout the literature on comics and cartoons, however, it is quite frequent that both terms are used interchangeably. For additional information about definitions and related issues, the interested reader should review Harrison (1981, p. 16 ff.). It is surprising, however, that in spite of the comics' and cartoons' ubiquity, extremely little research on the subject has been conducted by social scientists and the subject remains a blind spot within academic study. This may be explained in part by recognizing that comics and cartoons can be found in many media, but within a particular medium they do not play a major role per se. Comics—as already indicated — can be encountered on a daily basis almost everywhere in the modern world of communication. The comic strip "Blondie", e. g., created in 1930 and the most successful comic strip of the King Features Syndicate, is printed daily in nearly 1,200 newspapers in 53 countries. This implies that "Blondie" appears in almost 60 million daily copies of newspapers, not including weekly and Sunday newspapers or magazines. In 1975 more than 400 million comic books were sold in 29

the United States, mostly to children and teenagers (Ayer Directory of Publications, 1975). Thompson and Lupoff (1973) estimated that approximately 90 % of American children are regular readers of comic books. Some readership studies have found that the comic strip is one of the best read items in the daily newspaper (Stevens, 1973; Swanson, 1966). Some researchers have found that about one half of the audience reads comics on a regular basis (Stempel III, 1956). Haskins and Jones (1955) reported in their study on newspaper reading trends between 1949 and 1954 a strong tendency by readers to read all comics or none. Luther (1979) reports from a national readership study, conducted by Audits & Surveys, Inc. in 1971 for the Newspaper Advertising Bureau, that comics were read daily by 77 % of male and 90 % of female readers or 84 % of all readers. Several scholars have conducted studies producing classifiying schemes for comics, i. e. presenting content categories (e.g., Barcus, 1961; Baize, 1971; Van Tubergen & Friedland, 1972). Much of the research on comics is dated, contradictory, sometimes anecdotal and lacks the application of advanced empirical research design and methods. It is the purpose of this research to review and explore how comics have made a contribution to a more visually oriented culture. The comics industry and market are analyzed to the extent that data are available. Research on cognition and learning through or via comics is reviewed. Research on readership as it relates to content, distribution, consumption and preferences of comics is reviewed and analyzed. Particular attention is given to the status of comics and violence research. Lastly, several newer trends are considered. Among them are the potential of comics in Spanish for Spanish-reading Americans, a discussion of comics and cartoon spin-offs as they appeared successfully on television, on the theater stage and in the movies. Of particular future importance may be the entree of comics and cartoon characters in video games that are fully manipulatable at various levels of complexity requiring the user to think, to interact and to decide creatively within a scenario (script) of his or her choice.

The Economics of Comics It is virtually impossible to locate reliable figures depicting some sort of descriptive make-up of the U. S. comics and cartoon industry. Most industry-wide data are subsumed in other categories such as total advertising expenditures, overall production costs for newspapers, etc. Isolating the economic impact of comics and cartoons in books, magazines, various forms of advertising and packaging becomes even more impossible. In general, newspapers are rather secretive to reveal specific data about comics. Given this unsatisfactory situation, an attempt is made, however, to provide some insight on a case by case basis for newspapers where such economic information was available. Economics of the comics were discussed at the fall meeting of the Newspaper Comics Council in 1976 (Williamson, 1976). At this meeting the editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer reported about a study his newspaper had conducted to measure cost against the value of the 30

comics. Discussion participants at this meeting went on record by stating that this was the first time they had heard such figures released by a newspaper. Luke Feck, editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer, stated also that his newspaper buys rights to 18 strips and five panels daily for $ 614.46 a week and spends $ 740.11 on Sunday rights, amounting to a total of $ 70,437.64 for one year. The Enquirer spent about $ 2,424 a week for newsprint, $ 42 for ink, amounting to an annual total of $ 128,232 for both expense categories. Paste-up, handling, press room, mail room and similar labor-related expenses were given at $ 1,380 a week. Negatives, plates, etc. amounted to $ 71,718 a year. Editorial supervision costs were reported at $ 468 a year. In 1975 the payment to Greater Buffalo Press for the Sunday comics was $ 275,947. Negatives were reclaimed at a savings of about $ 6,000 a year. Overall costs for a one year period for daily and Sunday comics were reported as $ 546,845, i. e. $ 270,898 for the daily comics and $ 275,947 for the Sunday comics or 49.5 % and 50.5 % of the overall figure, respectively Feck stated that, based upon a recent reader poll, the Enquirer decided to increase its comics size on the daily comics page by killing one and moving one. Top favorites among the readers were "Hi and Lois" in the strips and "Dennis the Menace" in the panels. Five percent of the daily newshole goes to comics, three percent to Sunday. Feck admitted that it has become increasingly difficult to make judgments on choice of comics. At the same meeting, John Osenenko, manager of the New York Times Special Features Syndicate, stated that years ago a syndicate felt that it cost about $ 25,000 to launch a new comic and that it took about two years to establish it. He was quoted as saying that "now it has to be done for much less. Comics are not chiseled in granite as in old times ... you have no idea of the fickleness of readers today". With one particular comic strip, "Don Q", the New York Special Features Syndicate invested $ 15,000 and Osenenko stated that among other problems, it is a little too sophisticated and one is not sure where it fits, on the editorial page or the comics page. He raised also the question of what actually is a comic today, what is an editorial cartoon? Osenenko stressed that comics as a medium need to be analyzed and explored further. Another problem newspapers are facing today, he stated, is that they feel pressed to attract young readers and the newspaper tend to take the route of experimental shopping and dropping. At the same time, comics have to be given a chance to develop and most newspapers are in too much of a hurry today, according to Osenenko. Artist Milton Caniff of "Steve Canyon" fame estimated that production costs of about $ 1,000 per week are necessary to get a comic strip in the mail (Williamson, 1976). He included a good assistant at $ 500 a week, lettering at $ 70 or $ 80, a studio assistant at $ 100, mailing the originals and copies, as well as other incidentals. Caniff operates a separate studio at a rental cost of $ 300 a month. Williamson (1976) reports John W. Koessler, president of Greater Buffalo Press, Inc., stating that the cost of a comics section to a newspaper is $ 0.02 a copy and six years ago (about 1970) this cost was $ 0.01 a copy. With newspapers having reduced the size and number of pages of comics, Koessler thought that the comics section is at an "irreducible minimum". The cost difference by advertising in a non-comics section vs. the comics section of a newspaper is not substantial. E.g., the Chicago Tribune charges for a one-half 31

page, black and white, local retail advertisement $ 5,598 during weekdays for Chicago-area circulation; a one-half page Sunday comics local retail advertisement costs $ 5,169 (with no extra charges for color) for the same circulation. In terms of dollars, this difference is rather small, but is the difference still the same when one considers the impact of the added advantage of four colors at no extra cost, plus additional circulation resulting in a reduced cost per thousand while visibility goes up? Carvell (1976) cites a study on Sunday comics claiming that Sunday comics complement the coverage of the better educated, upper income and 18 to 34 age groups delivered by television. Furthermore, the study claims that comics pick up where television leaves off. This is explained by the statement that peak television viewing among children is between the ages of two and four, whereas comics start to show their influence at about age six. Comics sustain, according to this study, their peak readership at age 14 while television viewing decreases at that age considerably. Gray (1977a) quotes Luis Citro, sales director for Metro Sunday Comics, stating that comics are not only for children. Citro claims that 52 percent of the advertisements that appeared in 1975 and 1976 in Sunday comics were directed toward adults. Thirtysix percent were intended for adults and children, and only 12 percent were directed toward children exclusively. Sunday newspapers, supposedly, provide an excellent vehicle because they offer deep market penetration and a leisure atmosphere. Sunday comics are said to be a preferred medium for mail-order, cents-off coupons, premium offers and contests. Sunday comics offer one of the lowest cost per thousand figures for four color advertising. In addition, they offer added flexibility through staggered schedules, copy changes, 12 different standard-size space units and four different tabloid space units, as well as local dealer listings on a market-by-market basis. Additional strengths are the direct response of readers and that comics function well as a place for special announcements. At the same time, one should realize that Sunday comics sections fall somewhat short with regard to selective target audience reach. Among the advertisers using Sunday comics are Wrigley's, Ralston Purina, Dr. Pepper, Burger Chef, J. R. Reynolds Foods and Chun King. These advertisers invest in Sunday comics by using their advertisements in small and specialized ways to broaden a media mix and reach a large and child audience. A major role in the comics and cartoon industry plays labor. Since the late 1970's the animation cartoonist union has made headlines. Animation work artists who draw television and movie cartoons are organized in the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Local 839 in Hollywood went on a work strike in 1979. At issue was the practice by some studios to send their animation work overseas. That strike was resolved when some studios agreed for the first time to language limiting so-called runaway production, i. e. to send animation work abroad. Union leaders claim the companies want to send work overseas to take advantage of low wages, while the companies contend there are too few domestic animators to handle the heavy workload. A similar strike was called by the union on August 5,1982 when 1,600 members walked out against 45 studios. Most of the studios, however, have small animation staffs and the union's efforts were targeted against the major studios such as 32

Filmation, Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera and Disney. During the strike, one innovative settlement was reached with Don Bluth Production. The agreement called for a wage cut in exchange for a profit sharing plan, a first in the animation industry. Details of the profit sharing plan were not revealed. The union also reached an agreement with Filmation, i. e. the studio accepted a new contract language that forbids work from being subcontracted outside the "Hollywood labor pool" while local cartoonists are unemployed. The industry-wide strike was finally settled on October 9, 1982 when the 1,600 members of the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Local 839 voted by a two-to-one ratio to go back to work. Union spokespersons indicated that the producers' ability to get Korean and Taiwanese cartoonists to complete programs during the strike convinced the artists they could not win the fight. Union representatives admitted of losing the battle. They predicted that many Hollywood cartoonists would lose their jobs because foreign competition works so much cheaper. Union animators earn nearly $ 600 per week, compared with artists in Korea and Taiwan who earn about $ 50 a week. Local 839 officials criticized the networks for not only accepting "inferior work" submitted during the strike by the foreign artists, but for allowing the producers extra time to complete their shows. Wages for the cartoonists are set by the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees Union and were not a major issue during the strike.

Cognition, Learning and the Comics For the researcher, educator, newspaper editor and advertising executive alike, it is important to have a solid understanding abouthow children and adults process and perceive the comics. If we want to utilize the comics effectively for educational, learning, persuasive or other attempts, we must have an understanding of underlying cognitive and learning issues and processes. Due to rather limited research, we have to rely, in part, on findings from related fields. General Cognitive Issues. The total meaning of a particular portion of a communication is not conveyed by its content alone. It is affected by the context in which it is positioned. Of particular importance is the interpretive contribution made by the cognitive implications of the preceding units. This observation has been documented by research on the effects of prior scenes on subjects' judgments of the emotions in posed photographs (Bruner & Tagiuri, 1954; Goldberg, 1951). The significance of a unit then not only depends on its content, but also on its unique contribution to and place within the whole communication. This implies that when the main features of a communication are known and familiar or can be expected, an interpretive cognitive schema may be produced. This cognitive schema, in turn, allows the individual to give meaning to the various parts and to link them cognitively such that they have a sensible relationship. Such a schema can be detailed and relatively complex or can be no more than an understanding of a rather simple situation such as boy-sees-dog setting. Cognitive research has demonstrated that the interpretative function of schemata operates when 33

individuals attempt to make sense of communications that deviate substantially from past experience patterns. Studies in information processing, remembering, learning of complex skills, cognitive connections and others suggest that schemata are significant for the subjects' responses to an overall pattern (Mandler, 1962; Sheffield, 1961; DeSoto, 1960; DeSoto & Kuethe, 1958, 1959; Abelson & Rosenberg, 1958; Heider, 1958;Bartlett, 1932). Attneave (1959) found that the amount of "information" contained in a type of communication will be reduced to the extent that expectancies generated by a schema are borne out repeatedly. Wolfe and Fiske (1949), e.g., found that changes in type of comic books appear among children as they grow older. This finding may be due to this effect and not due to changes in the children's interests and needs. Emotional disturbance should be minimized when the comics hero is placed in dangerous and threatening situations, since the young reader has an awareness that the hero in most stories, and always in a series, will survive or succeed at the end. Nevertheless, one ought to note that cognitive schemata must be developed by the child and require a certain level of conceptual ability and cognitive complexity. This implies that there are differences among various age groups of children. Younger children are likely to utilize fewer and less salient schemata when compared to older children or adults. This generalization is supported by findings that children below the ages of ten to eleven are likely to respond to isolated scenes and specific events rather than a communication or story in its entirety (Himmelweit, Oppenheim & Vince, 1958; Dysinger & Ruckmick, 1933). These younger children seem to perceive a movie as a series of isolated and unconnected incidents. Wolfe and Fiske (1949) found that children up to the age of twelve about one third was not able to predict how the story in a comic book would turn out. Starting with the age of 13 on, merely one in 20 stated that they did not know what the outcome would be. This same research by Wolfe and Fiske (1949) suggests that children's preferences for types of comic books may be directly associated with the particular identification with a type of hero and psychological gratifications derived from the story's content. They argued that the young child chooses, e.g., the free, rulebreaking animal. The somewhat older child, in turn, chooses the powerful Superman and will then progress to admire an extraordinary human such as Batman. Lastly, the youngster in this progression will select real or realistic heroes to serve as identificands, i. e. they tend to select comics reflective of true stories or classic fiction. Bailyn (1959) found that aggressive hero content in radio, television and comic books was chosen at a substantially higher rate by children who were highly exposed to these three media and, at the same time, were "rebelliously independent" or had numerous personal problems or scored high on a measure of extrapunitiveness. Among boys who were well-behaved in school, those who exhibited high extrapunitive tendencies preferred aggressive-hero content more than did the other boys. No relation between extrapunitive and content preferences among the less well-behaved boys was found. Bailyn interpreted these findings to suggest that the well-behaved, but extrapunitive boy may be using such content as a fantasy-like expression of antisocial behavior. 34

Undoubtedly, considerably more systematic research is needed to understand schemata and factors that may produce the reader's identification with comics heroes. Similarly, we know rather little still about the reader's motives and values as determinants of the choice of identificands. Learning Via and From the Comics. Communication research has demonstrated early that pictures gain attention and enhance receiver enjoyment when used in slide presentations (Baker & Popham, 1965), traditional classroom teaching (Spaulding, 1955) and newspapers (Swanson, 1955). Generally it has been found that a visual presentation is superior to an auditory presentation; an audiovisual presentation is not significantly superior to a visual presentation, but it is better than an auditory presentation alone (Dwyer, 1978; Hsia, 1971). The major finding that cuts across all these studies suggests that pictures will often be evaluated favorably as part of an accompanying message. In addition, these and other researchers found also that evaluation is an intricate part of message and source assessment, and photos and drawings have led to more effective paired-associate learning than have word stimuli alone (Culbertson, 1974; Tannenbaum 6t McLeod, 1963; Tannenbaum & Lynch, 1960). Media research in the past has treated media too much as invariant systems. This assumption, consequently, has led to the comparison of media that predict one to be superior to another. Unfortunately, such traditional research fails to recognize that separate attributes or symbols of media stimuli, as well as the interaction among these are at work and that these then jointly characterize a given medium. It should be noted that differences within a medium could conceivably be as important as the differences between two media. It becomes of considerable importance how one structures and presents information within a given medium, i. e. a medium's symbol system becomes its most important attribute in the learning and cognition situation (Salomon, 1979, p. 216). Goodman (1976) defined a symbol system in terms of certain semantic and syntactic features. One distinguishes linguistic symbol systems which are language-based. One can also find iconic systems that include pictorial presentations such as drawings and photographs. Such iconic systems show a large amount of semantic ambiguity. Past research has demonstrated the effectiveness of pictures in use with expository text (Rasco, Tennyson & Boutwell, 1975; Koenke & Otto, 1969), stories (Peeck, 1974), and materials teaching concepts and rules (Tennyson, 1978). Research by Haring and Fry (1979) showed that pictures tend to increase recall of ideas in stories, but this was not the case with nonessential details and descriptions. In contrast, Goldberg (1974) demonstrated that pictures could increase learning of material not central to objectives of the teaching lesson. When combining information processing types of media, research has shown that typically materials using pictures and audio produce superior learning as compared to using audio and print (Peng & Levin, 1979; Rohwer & Harris, 1975; Rohwer & Matz, 1975). Nugent (1982) presents research confirming the importance of considering media symbol systems and their influence on learning. Her results support the theoretical position that learners process pictorial and linguistic information through functionally independent, although interconnected, cognitive systems. 35

We may then ask ourselves how do we actually process visual information ? Over the years there has been considerable debate about the ways in which we process and store information in our memory. Frequently this discussion has centered around the question of "imagery". Specifically, researchers asked themselves: Do people think and remember in picture-like propositions? An image is not just a picture in the head of the receiver (Fleming, 1977;Paivo, 1976). Neitheris an image a percept, i. e. that which is experienced during the act of perception. An image, however, is an artefact of memory (Fleming, 1977;Neisser, 1967). When an image is experienced, one should note, it is not seen by the eye, but is constructed from memory by the "mind's eye". Winn (1980) defines image as "a sensory (visual) experience in which there is some similarity between what is sensed by the 'mind's eye' and corresponding percepts, derived from the real world experience, by the physical eye (pp. 121-122)". The experience of the image then, is constructed from stored information in the memory and resembles perceptual experience. Furthermore, the two can be matched on such features as the spatial relationships among elements, form and color. ^proposition is somewhat less difficult to define. The most important feature of a proposition is that it is a highly abstract presentation of information (Anderson, 1978; Pylyshyn, 1973). Propositions encode concepts and the relationships among them at a level even more abstract than linguistic deep structure (Kintsch, 1974). Norman and Rumelhart (1975) state that psychologists define propositions in terms of "predicates" and "arguments". A proposition, according to Pylyshyn (1973, p. 3), is not just a string of words, but rather "what a string of words may assert". Another important feature of propositions is that they are either true or false (Anderson, 1978; Pylyshyn, 1973). Evidence has been presented by numerous researchers for each one of these possibilities, i. e. that we think and remember in picture-like images vs. languagelike propositions (Anderson, 1978; Horowitz, 1978; Shephard, 1978; Kosslyn & Pomerantz, 1977; Bobrow & Collins, 1975; Kintsch, 1974; Chase, 1973; Pylyshyn, 1973;Sheehan, 1972;Paivo, 1971). Winn (1980) provided evidence that pictures are sometimes encoded by the visual-spatial information processing system, sometimes by the verbal-sequential systems, and sometimes as propositions. He found that one determinant of whether visual information is encoded as images, words, or propositions is the use to which the learner expects to put the information. More specifically, the nature of the learning task at hand is closely related to the way in which pictures render information, i. e. the realism of their elements, the patterns between the elements and the order in which they appear to be interconnected. He reports furthermore that recall and manipulation tasks, while depending heavily on a realistic representation of the elements in a picture and on the patterns among them, tend to cause visual information to be coded as images. Information tends to be encoded in word-like sequences when the task requires the learning of semantic distances between concepts presented in a logical picture. Lastly, Winn concludes that when comparison between visual information and information presented in other modes are required, or when learners are required to solve complex problems on the basis of information 36

presented to them in visual displays, then the information tends to be encoded as propositions. This brief and by no means exhaustive review of visual stimuli in learning-type information processing settings indicates how complex and wide-ranging this research is. Given that comics or cartoons employed for learning purposes fall within this category and considering that they constitute just one form (with an unlimited amount of possibilities within this form) of the above reviewed literature, one can readily imagine plenty of research and resulting strategies from which much useful and needed information can be derived. What do we know then about the effects of the addition of comics and cartoons on the comprehension and evaluation of information in a learning situation? Schaff er (1930) reports of a study of children's interpretation of social and political cartoons in which children, one the average, begin to interpret cartoons abstractly at about age 13. The range of greatest interest in percentage of abstract response to symbolic drawings occurs between grades six and eight. An analysis of the language of the comics by Thorndike (1941) indicated several points of interest. Perhaps the most important of these is the result that a child who reads one comic book per month will read approximately twice as many words per year as his reading books contain. Thorndike concluded that both the amount and the character of the vocabulary provided valuable experience and practice in reading for the younger reader. Sones (1944) in an exploratory study with 400 sixth- and ninth-graders used the comic magazine Wonder Woman as one approach to the life and work of Clara Barton. A printed text was used for his control groups. He found that mean scores among the picture groups ran from 10 to 30 % higher than on the first test. When the control groups were given the picture story, their scores on the second test improved significantly more than did the scores of the picture groups who were given the printed text. In summary Sones states: "In other words, the picture groups seemed to have learned almost as much as they were capable of learning from their first reading while the groups reading the printed texts first had not reached the saturation point, but did so by a second reading in the picture form." Other researchers, however, report different results. Heisler (1947) found no relationship between educational achievement and comic book reading. Similarly, Lumsdaine and Gladstone (1958) utilized cartoons and humorous auditory material in a slide-film technique to teach students the phonetic alphabet symbols. The researchers found that the use of the cartoons and auditory humor resulted in decreased learning. Baker and Popham (1965) and Popham (1969) found no differences in comprehension between presentations with and without cartoons in slide-tape presentations. Popham (1969), however, reports that he observed a more favorable affective response to the cartoon presentations. Kauffman and Dwyer (1974) used cartoons and photographs in an inservice training context. They found cartoons to be more effective than photographs in facilitating both immediate and delayed recall of information. Furthermore, they report that most subjects felt they learned more from the cartoon presentation and would prefer to receive cartoon-embellished rather than photographic-embellished instruction. Freisinger (1976) reports no differences on either skill performance or affective 37

response while using a programmed instructional package with one version including cartoon supplements. Sewell and Moore (1980) report that if comprehension is the only goal of instruction, a less expensive printed text is just as effective as the more-expensive cartoon-embellished text or audiovisual presentation. On the other hand, if the instructor is also concerned about the student's enjoyment or self-reported helpfulness of the presentation while learning the information, these researchers found that there is some support for the value of the cartoon-embellished text or audiovisual presentation. Lastly, they state that the overall quality of the printed text, cartoon-embellished text, and audiovisual presentation would seem to make final decisions about which direction to take, largely a matter of personal preference, time and budget limitations. This review of the literature indicates that a considerable amount of additional research is necessary. Much of the early work is of questionable rigor and caliber and was not reported here. Numerous findings have crept into the literature that can at best be described as dated teacher in-classroom experiences and anecdotes rather than empirical and controlled research. The appropriate use of cartoons in instructional situations from the researcher's perspective is still not fully understood and the overall effect of cartoons is ambiguous. We know relatively little how learners process cartoons and comic strips and, to this end, we know little how they add precisely to the learning process. Today's comic book suitable for educational use may be less a comic book in the traditional sense that it is an illustrated story book using comic-book techniques. The instructional comic capitalizes on the familiar and popular comic book format to transmit useful ideas and information. Teachers using comics will hopefully be aware of the need for applying sound principles of utilization. The teacher will be expected, e. g., to exploit the motivating potential of comic presentation in getting lessons off to a good start, but he should not stop there. Once interest has been aroused, the picture story can be suplemented by other reading materials, films, two-dimensional pictures, models, as well as creative activities. The major merit of the comic book in instruction may be its capacity to create interest. Such interest, as teachers know well, is essential to effective learning. If properly selected and incorporated in teaching methods, the comic can become an effective teaching tool. The following section describes and reviews research on how we read or otherwise consume the comics in non-educational settings.

Comics Readership Research The comics are perceived as an integral part of the daily newspaper in the United States. This becomes quickly obvious once they are missed or discontinued. Reading the comics has the characteristics of habit: the comic characters take on the role of old friends whose adventures the reader may have followed since childhood. Comics may constitute for the adult reader an intimate linkage to the past. This may explain why new comic strips find resistance with adult readers. The essential elements of a strip's formula continue to be predictable and remain fixed. 38

In spite of this, comic strips seem to alleviate for some readers some of the daily tensions that we all encounter in our lives. Gray (1977b) interviewed Bill Sexton, associate editor with Newsday in Garden City, NY, about the comics and their audience. Sexton was asked why newspapers carry the comics in the first place. He responded that there is a three-fold reason: 1. The comics serve as an inviting entry point for the newspaper's newest readers the child, i. e. the child finds in the comics something that he can handle in the newspaper. 2. Comics are an entry point for families new to the area, i. e. the newspaper may be different, but the comics are the same. 3. Comics provide readers with a little lift and entertainment, no matter how bad the day's news happens to be and they serve as an old and trusted friend to the reader. Most comics readership studies fall into two categories: either they present analyses of content or they study the effect of comics or cartoons on children. Content analysis type studies show comics and cartoons to contain a high degree of ethnocentrism, conservatism, violence, crime and sex. It is generally assumed that children's reading of the comics satisfies normal emotional needs for fantasy. Comics readership declines with age and, generally, is highest in the lower middleeducational and socioeconomic range. Continuity strips have been in serious decline for the last 35 years and in recent years, coinciding with this trend, humor strips are more popular than adventure strips. Males, generally, tend to read more comics than females. There is little agreement about whether a given strip is amusing. Males and females generally differ only in amount of comics reading, not on which strips they like. Readership studies have shown that the comic strip is one of the best read items in the daily newspaper (Swanson, 1955). About 50 % of the audience read comics regularly (Stempel III, 1956) and there is a considerable tendency for a reader to either read all comics or none (Haskins & Jones, 1955). Witty and Sizemore (1954) report in their summary of research findings that boys, on the average, read more comic books and comic strips than girls, and slow learners devote more time to comics than do rapid learners. They claim also that the combination of word and picture gives many children a boost toward better reading ability, although comic magazines seldomly lure them into book reading. Children of preschool age in these 1950's and earlier studies prefer comics about animals acting like human beings; in the early school years boys like action and adventure stories, simple science fiction, and Superman-like heroes, as well as humorous characters. Girls, on the other hand, preferred in those days stories about nurses, children and animals. Older boys were attracted to masculine stories of danger and crime, as well as sports and athletics. Older girls tended sometimes to read the same comic books as boys, but more often sought out stories about dating, romance, and the antics of teenagers. Robinson and White (1963) report that more than 100 million Americans read one or more comic strips in their Sunday newspaper and, of these, 90 million are regular readers. Previous and later research has shown that Sunday comics readers 39

are also those who read the strips daily, although that proportion tends to be somewhat smaller. One should be aware that a popular comic strip running in the largest Sunday circulation papers can easily be read by 40 to 50 million people every Sunday. This implies that during the course of a year, the strip's readership exposure is about 2.5 billion. Comparing such a figure to other mass media, it becomes quickly obvious that there is no other mass medium, not even popular movies or television shows, that can claim to attract such a huge mass audience. A goodly number of comics readership studies has been conducted since the 1940's. Unfortunately, most of these are rather dated, i. e. most of them were conducted in the 1950's. It seems to this writer that it is not very meaningful to review these studies in great detail here since media consumption patterns have changed considerable since those days. One suspected major influence, television, was largely still in a developmental phase during the 1950's. In the meantime, comic strip characters have appeared on regular television shows, television specials and movie theater films. For this reason, readership studies since the 1960's are presented here to provide some major findings. A large number of newspapers conduct their own readership studies. Unfortunately, most of these data are considered proprietary and are, therefore, unavailable. Occasionally, however, such data are reported. For example, Editor & Publisher (1978) reports that a 1977 survey of the Pittsburgh Press shows that 64 % of all men over 18 years of age read the comics, that is more than those who read the financial pages or the entertainment section. 67 % of the women readers over the age of 18 in the same study read the comics, that is more than those who read the women pages. Different results among the sexes are reported in a study by Stevens (1973) conducted among 172 university students. Males read more comics than females. More than half (52 %) of the males read five or more strips regularly, compared to merely 35 % of the women. 21 % of each sex read no comics at all. Males and females varied only in amount of comics reading, not on which strips they liked. The most comprehensive and nationally generalizable study was conducted by Ted Bates & Company (1980). This advertising agency's findings are presented in Table 1. Several researchers have offered rather subjective schemes for classifying comics into content categories (e. g., Barcus, 1961), although Baize (1971) has presented a content category scheme based on audience responses while R-factor analyzing readership data. Van Tubergen and Friedland (1972) identified in their studies readers' overall preference patterns among a set of comic strips. Teenagers were asked to read through 30 chosen comic strips and then to Q-sort the set. A Q-f actor analysis yielded four factors accounting for 73 % of the total variance. One factor was bi-polar and split into its components. This resulted in five types of teenagers, meaning that each of these five groups had similar comics preferences to each other while their preferences were markedly different from those in the other four groups. One strip, "Rex Morgan", among the 30 used in this study was strongly rejected by all subjects regardless of type. All respondents felt neutral in their ratings toward three strips: "Beetle Bailey", "Nancy" and "Half Hitch". The remaining 40

26 strips were preferred or rejected differentially by the subjects. Following is a brief description of each preference type (Van Tubergen & Friedland, 1972): Type 1. Four subjects, all females, high school seniors, aged 17 or 18, comprise this type. The pattern is characterized by apreference for strips containing light-hearted social commentary, such as "B. C." and "Pogo". The type rejects serial adventures, such as "Steve Roper" and "Dateline Danger". Type 1 also seems to prefer strips with characters drawn in an unrealistic or distorted way, suchas"L'il Abner" and "Miss Peach". The preferences of the type are apparently dominated by strips that tend to comment with humor on contemporary social problems and the nature of existence. These young women are not terribly concerned with strips which deal with problems of personal relations and, to that extent, probably do not seek self-identification from the comics. Type 2. All five subjects who cluster in this type are also female, but aged 14 and 15. During the interviews, these teens were slower readers than their peers and seemed less perceptive. Their

Tab. 1: Characteristics of Comics Readership Index of Readership Men

Women

Average for each characteristic in total United States

100

100

Age 18-34 35-49 50+ 25-54

99 108 95 100

103 108 92 109

Household Income Under $10,000 $10,000-514,999 $15,000+ $20,000+

69 '99 133 141

79 96 134 151

Household Size 1-2 Persons 3-4 Persons 5+ Persons

90 102 111

89 108 105

Education Graduated College Attended College Graduated High School Did Not Graduate High School

144 134 101 68

132 136 110 67

Occupation Professional/Managerial Clerical/Sales Craftsmen/Foremen Other Employed

120 121 93 87

128 124 166 89

Excerpted from -.Instant Media Facts 1980. New York, NY: Ted Bates & Company, Inc., 1981.

41

pattern is characterized by strong preferences for strips with female central characters ("Nancy", "Tiffany Jones", "Dotty", "Brenda Starr") and a rejection of "masculine" strips ("L'il Abner", "Joe Palooka", "Andy Capp"). More than the other types, Type 2 showed a tendency to prefer serialized stories and reject onetime strips. Type 2 is the most distinctive of the five types. These younger females seem to focus on those strips which might offer them models or ideals (or fantasies) for behavior as they enter adolescence and face a growing awareness of their sexual identity. While we have no longitudinal data to support this (indeed, a fascinating study could be designed to investigate the possibility), the contrast between Type 1 and 2 suggests developmental stages in comic strip preference related to personality development. Type 3. Five teens, four male and one female, aged 16 to 19, are in Type 3. The type accepts a mixture which includes: "Joe Palooka" (the only type to accept this strip), "Wizard Of Id", "Andy Capp", "Donald Duck", and "Henry". These tend to be humorous strips with strong central characters who face working out personal problems. There exists a rather care-free attitude in these strips, which contrasts with the serious and tormented lives of "Brenda Starr", "L'il Orphan Annie" and "Tiffany Jones" which are among the strips rejected by Type 3. The mixed tastes of this type include an unusual blend of traditional and modern strips. As with the girls in Type 2, this predominantly male type shows a sex preference: all accepted strips which show male as central characters (though not necessarily strong ones) while they rejected strips with female features. A mixture of adult-oriented strips ("Andy Capp") with children's strips ("Donald Duck") might suggest transition in taste patterns to an adult identity. The emergence of new adult tastes from tastes modeled on those of parents and grandparents is also suggested by the mixture of traditional ("Henry") and modern ("Wizard of Id") strips. Of course, the mixed Type 3 pattern may also be seen as simply "well rounded". Type 4. Six teens, three male and three female, aged 14 to 18, made up Type 4. The type is as diffuse in its comic preferences as it is in its demography. Type 4 accepts such varied fare as "Peanuts", "Mutt and Jeff", "Pogo", "Barney Google", "Abbie 'N' Slats", "Batman and Robin", and "Miss Peach". These teens dislike "Tiffany Jones", "Bringing Up Father", "Brenda Starr", and "Donald Duck". No element seems to dominate the tastes displayed in this pattern. Except that neither the tastes nor the demography of this type favors one sex, much of the speculation made regarding Type 3 might apply here. The difference in preference between these two "diffuse taste"-types might - if modeling theory is favored - be attributable to the different models (i. e., difference preference patterns) available from parents, grandparents and peers. Type 5. Four subjects, three male and one female, aged 14 to 18, grouped into this final type. "Peanuts", "Freddy", "B. C.", "Andy Capp", "Miss Peach", "Wizard of Id" and "Tiger" were among the preferences of Type 5. All of these tend to comment on human relations; many present as central characters children who seem wise beyond their years. Much of the humor in many of these strips is based on a fundamental cruelty or meanness of characters to one another. Type 5 rejects many of the serial adventures as well as "Pogo", "L'il Abner", and "L'il Orphan Annie" (also serials). The wise little children featured in the strips preferred by Type 5 seemed apt when we recall our interviews with these four teens: we had felt that they themselves were the most alert and perceptive of our subjects - one for example had just been accepted by a major medical school. Perhaps an unconscious identification with the central characters would explain the Type 5 preferences; however, these were articulate subjects who generally explained their choices as a preferences for simplicity in art and/or dialogue — an interpretation which fits the data equally well.

42

A Pearson correlation matrix shows the intercorrelations among the five Qtypes in Table 2. Tab. 2: Intercorrelations Among Q-Types

Typel Type 2 Type 3 Type 4

Type 2

Type 3

Type 4

.17

.59 -.03

-.05

.73 .62

Type 5 .67 .34 .80 .76

As the low correlation of. 17 in Table 2 might suggest, theType 1 pattern is in sharp contrast with the Type 2 pattern. Type 2 is the most distinctive of the five types, having no correlation above .34 with any other type. The female sex preference of Type 2 and male preference of Type 3 may partly account for the slightly negative correlation between these two types. Despite the similarity of interpretive speculation with Type 3, Type 4 is less correlated with that type than with Type 1 and 5. Type 5 may contain the elements of some general pattern. Its correlations with the other types are modest to good. Notably, Type 2 - the most independent type to emerge-has its highest correlation (.34) with Type 5. It is important to know how comic strip readingor cartoon viewingon television compares to other reading or viewing habits. We may ask ourselves, how does comic strip reading fare with reading of other sections in the newspaper? Lastly, how does cartoon viewing in television fare with other types of television viewing, and how does television viewing relate to newspaper reading? Once again, most non-proprietary studies that give attention to the comics date back to the 1950's (e.g., White & Abel, 1963). Mauro (1979), however, conducted a fairly recent study of newspaper readership and television viewing patterns of 1,048 randomly selected public school children in Richmond, Virginia, in grades seven through twelve. It should be noted that these results of newspaper reading and television viewing habits may not represent those of school children elsewhere, but the findings should present a fairly good understanding and indication of these youngster's newspaper and television consumption behaviors. The results are highlighted here, since this study is among the very few recent, non-proprietary studies that even bother to look at the role of the comics and cartoons within the overall media consumption patterns of newspaper readers and television viewers, respectively. In this study, Mauro asked each student to complete a self-administered questionnaire under supervision of the homeroom teacher. The response rate was 95 % representing a total of 1,048 respondents. 547 of the children were morning newspaper readers and 501 said they were not. 47 % were boys, 52 % were girls and 1 % did not specify. 90 % of the students were exposed to one or more newspapers regularly. 50 % read the morning newspaper at least twice weekly. There was no increase in newspaper exposure or readership as grade levels go up. In other words, seventh graders read the newspaper as much as twelfth graders do. The amount or frequency of daily newspaper reading has little bearing on television viewing 43

behavior. Mauro found that the heavy newspaper reading student does as much or as little television viewing as does the light or non-newspaper reader. Age, or in this study grade level, influences frequency of and amount of time spent viewing television. As grade levels increase, television viewing time and frequency decrease. The study found also that the intensity of newspaper reading has little effect on the types of programs students usually watch, with the exception of sports. A larger proportion of readers usually watch sports programs than nonreaders. Table 3 indicates that movies by far are the most popular of all other types of programs usually watched. Next in line are comedy shows, followed by sports. In contrast to 12th graders, Table 3 indicates that seventh graders prefer game shows and cartoons. Students in higher grades show greater preference for news programs and documentaries, i. e. the percentage of seventh graders watching television documentaries is approximately half of that of the 12th graders.

Tab. 3: Types of Programs Usually Watched Viewing Index for All Grades/Each Grade, Respectively Program Type Cartoons Movies Comedy Sports Game Police Soap Operas Song and Dance News Documentaries N of Students Interviewed =

All Grades 7th

8th

9th

10th

llth

12th

104 170 163 119 113 104 78 61 61 33

139 99 98 98 120 120 83 112 82 100

116 99 102 105 103 104 100 109 82 56

109 102 102 98 115 114 102 103 103 72

93 98 103 103 95 98 110 103 91 89

75 104 97 94 93 88 117 85 94 94

70 101 98 97 77 80 90 97 142 200

1,006

182

197

157

161

178

173

Note: Average all grades for each program type = 100.

Male and female students, typically, spend 21 minutes reading the newspaper. The least amount of time, i. e. ISminutes, reading the newspaper for both sexes can be found with the tenth graders. Twelfth graders, on the other hand, spend the highest amount of time with their newspapers, i. e. 23 minutes for boys and 24 minutes for girls. 70 % of all respondents reading the morning newspaper first turn to a specific section or page. Mauro reports that grade levels show little variation for this behavior. This figure breaks downs as follows: 74 % of the boys and 66 % of the girls turn to a specific section. 25 % of both boys and girls start with the front page and go straight through the paper, or 22 % for boys and 29 % of the girls engage in this pattern, respectively. As Table 4 indicates, boys typically turn to the sports page while girls turn to comics and entertainment pages in that order. As grade levels increase, girls tend to show a higher interest in sports. In support with 44

previous findings, interest in comics decreases over time as girls and boys grow older.

Tab. 4: Page or Section Turned To First (Among Those Who First Turn To Section) Grade

Boys

Sports Girls

7th 8 9 10 11 12 All Grades

55% 63 82 75 74 75 71

6% 12 10 17 24 31 16

Comics Boys Girls

Entertainment Boys Girls

Boys

Other Girls

28% 14 9 11 8 19 15

3% 6 -

12% 21 24 21 19 19 19

14% 17 9 14 13 3 11

24% 24 10 14 38 19 21

58% 43 56 48 19 31 44

5 3

3

N of all Boys = 212 N of all Girls = 171

Mauro reports some specific information about the comics readership among the students. He found some variation of readership of specific comics among grade levels, although no particular trends could be identified. The same general reading pattern could be found across all grade levels. As already suggested earlier, girls seem to be more comics-oriented than boys and leading the boys in percent reading in seven out of 13 comic strips. It should be noted also that whenever girls led the boys in comics reading, they lead them by a considerable wider margin than when the boys lead them. Table 5 shows that "Dennis the Menace", "Blondie", "Marmaduke", as well as "Beetle Bailey" are the top favorite comic strips and cartoons for both boys and girls.

Tab. 5: Comics Read Regularly (Percent of Those Reading Morning Times-Dispatch Cartoons/Comic Strips Dennis the Menace Blondie Marmaduke Beetle Bailey Snuffy Smith Funky Winkerbean Nancy Andy Capp Mark Trail Dr. Smock Gil Thorp Judge Parker Best Seller Showcase Students Interviewed =

All Boy s and Girls 72% 71 64 62 45 41 39 32 27 26 19 15 12 547

AU Boy s

All Girls

67% 65 62 63 43 42 33 31 29 27 20 8 14

79% 79 66 61 47 40 45 33 24 26 17 22 10

287

258 45

The particular position of a cartoon or comic strip within the newspaper can, in part, determine its readership. Some strips appear on the editorial or the op-ed page, some may appear in the sports section or the women's pages, whereas others appear regularly on the comics page only. This pattern may vary from newspaper to newspaper. Numerous newspapers have conducted studies to find out the readership frequency of a particular comic strip or cartoon and, in doing so, they often vary the position of a given strip on a page or move it to different sections entirely. Some newspapers omit a given cartoon or strip for a few days to find out their readers' reactions. This research is always of a proprietary nature and no published accounts of such efforts could be identified. A good case in point is the comic strip "Doonesbury " created by Gary Trudeau, the only recipient of the Pulitzer prize for a comic strip. "Doonesbury" appears in 720 newspapers daily and is distributed by the Universal Press Syndicate. Trudeau and Universal Press Syndicate must have conducted some research on the readership patterns of their strip's readers and announced in 1979 to restrict placement, maximum size reduction, content edition, and area exclusivity of the comic strip (Gloede, 1979). These provisions of Trudeau's contract with Universal Press Syndicate will force clients who have been running "Doonesbury" on their editorial pages to move it to their comics sections, unless other pages can be proven to have higher readership levels. Supposedly, only a small number of newspapers used the comic as an editorial page feature prior to September 1979. Universal announced that the reason for these changes is readership. The strip, the syndicate and Trudeau were seeking young, new readership and, "it is generally understood that most new young readers don't read the editorial pages" (Gloede, 1979, p. 10). These restrictions include also specifications on the size of the strip in print. Under this agreement, newspapers must run the strip at full delivered scale (44 pica width). In the past, some newspapers had reduced the size of the entire comics page to save space. A third provision prohibited any alteration of the original product by the client. If a newspaper does not like what the day's strip says, Universal is advising that the newspaper drop the feature out of that edition. Otherwise, the comics page editor took Trudeau's creative work, changed it and, consequently, changed the creator's intended meaning. In the past, editors who refused to let words like "hell" and "damn" into their newspapers, would routinely edit them out of "Doonesbury". The Universal Press Syndicate announced on September 8, 1982 that beginning January 1,1983 Gary Trudeau will start a 20-months sabbatical leave. Hundreds of "Doonesbury"-fans have deluged the Universal Press Syndicate with letters and phone calls bemoaning its temporary disappearance. By September 15, 1982 Universal had received over 300 phone calls and 200 letters bemoaning Trudeau's decision and inquiring about future events and likely actions of the strip's characters. According to a Universal spokesperson, half of the callers asked the same question about one of the strip's major characters, Joanie Caucus, that beloved feminist who totters on the brink of cheerful gloom (Wigand, 1982). In the strip she was last observable as an expectant mother. That one question in the mind of many readers is, "Will Joanie Caucus have her baby ?" Some added, " She is due in 46

January, isn't she?" With Trudeau's sabbatical leave, this may turn out to be the longest pregnancy in history. An industry-wide project to reattract younger readers to the Sunday comics and broaden comics readership among all age levels was launched in June 1982 by the 21st Century Comics, a comics industry association. Organization and planning for the project got underway earlier in 1982 after recognizing that it is time to reexamine and up-date the Sunday comics package to attract a younger reader base and, at the same time, establish an advertising position as a logical adjunct to enormous children-television-expenditures. The industry recognized that efforts to crack television budgets and attract more advertisers to comics have been set aside over the years since television began to garner most of the existing revenues in the mid-1950's. The down trend in adult readership is traceable also, falling from 70 % in 1955 to 58 % in 1980 (Williamson, 1982). The same source states that on a reader-per-copy basis, teenagers now rank 35th among 35 major media measured by W. R. Simmons, and Metropolitan Sunday Newspapers believes the fall-off among younger children is even more abrupt. Williamson (1982) reports that comics have been promoted as an adult advertising medium because the vast majority of strips now appeal to readers in their 20s or older. This is a change in editorial form over earlier days when more juvenile features were favored and youngsters were learning to read via the comics. The 21st Century Comics project sees itself charged with designing and field testing redesign of sections so as not to lose the adult audience while bringingback young readers. The research committee of the project will try to determine why Sunday newspaper comics readership among youngsters and teenagers is diminishing and what changes should be made to make the sections more appealing to those age groups. This research will be conducted by nationally known research teams. The creative talent will include consultants, agencies, comics creators, newspaper editorial staffs, manufacturers, syndicates and associations, working on format guidelines and feature selection. Research teams will pilot-test the new ideas in cooperating Sunday newspapers. A final prototype will be produced for newspaper usage and a promotion kit prepared for all newspapers wanting to participate. Once the new format is tested, a nationwide sales effort will follow to sell package to newspapers. The total budget of $ 350,000 funding covers activities through the summer of 1984. The research budget alone is earmarked at $ 75,000 and research target dates call for completion of various focus group studies by October 1982 and completion of field pilot tests by April 1983.

Comics and Violence Research Since the inception of comics, violence has been a recurring topic in comic strips and books. Since the early 1960's, much concern has been expressed over the apparent increase in violence in the United States. This led, quite naturally, to an examination of the mass media, especially television, and researchers questioned themselves about a possible causal relationship between violence portrayed in the 47

media and actual violent acts. Very few studies, however, bothered to investigate the comics' potential role in this important research area. Hutchison (1969) reviewed comic strip violence within the Baltimore Sun between 1911 and 1966. He took a random sample of seven days, one for each day of the week includingSunday and selected for each year. In this fashion, Hutchison sampled a total of 5,238 separate strips. He grouped his 56 sample years into five year-periods, except for the years during which the United States was involved in major military conflicts. The concept of violence was subdivided into two classifications: "Actual violence" was defined as "any action which, were it actually to occur, would cause obvious physical pain or injury to the receiver of such action and/or the malicious destruction of property". The second classification, "Threatened violence", was defined as "any action which expresses the intention to hurt or to destroy and from which 'actual violence' might be logically expected to follow". In addition, he developed four content categories of violence: comic violence, actual; comic violence, threatened; serious violence, actual; serious violence, threatened. Lastly, he distinguished for his study three comic strip types: war strips, crime-cowboy strips, and comedy strips. A little less than one third (29 %) of all strips appearing between 1911 and 1966 included one or more pictures considered either violent or threatening violence. This figure, however, varied near the 90 % mark prior to 1918 and to a low of 15 % in 1966. Individual pictures with actual or threatened violence amounted to 13 % of the entire sample. Comedy strip types in Hutchison's study lost ground gradually since 1911 to the serious strip after its introduction in 1924. In the late 1940's, merely 41 % of the comic strips were identified as the comedy variety. Since that time, they have risen in influence and are reported to amount to about 70 % in the middle 1960's. From 1924 on, the serious strip (29 %) showed violence whereas the comedy strip showed 22 % violent acts. The ratio of violent-actual frames to the frames that only threatened violence was almost twice as great for comic strips (2.6:1) than for serious (1.4:1). Hutchison reports that World War II appears to be the only military conflict in which the comics actually took a major interest. Between 1939 and 1945, about 12 % of all comics published included some war connected material. Among the crime/cowboy strips, first appearing in the early 1930s, yieled 18 % of the total strip themes during the 1940 war years. 36 % of all the Sunday strips in the entire study were of a violent nature comparedtomerely21 % for weekdays. Since Hutchison's study was only conducted for one newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, he selected four additional major newspapers on a random basis to conduct a validity check for his findings. Of the comparisons made, only two cases with differences were found that amounted to merely 5 %. When comparing these data with Federal Bureau of Investigations Statistics (Uniform Crime Reports for the United States, 1966) it can be reported that the crime rate (number of crimes per 100,000 population) has been increasing since the 1940s. For example, the 1966 crime rate is about 110 % greater than the 1941 rate. Hutchison's study indicated that comic strip violence has been declining during these years. Specifically, from 1939 to 1966, the percentage of total strips with violent content has decreased from 29 to 16 %, a loss of 45 %. Expressed differently, there was almost an inverse 48

relationship between crime rates and violent comic strips. When partialingout the seven components of the crime rate, the homicide rate component has actually decreased during the same time period even though the overall crime rate was rising. Graalfs (1954) reported that 27 % of all available comic books dealt with crime themes. One in seven frames within her entire sample portrayed a violent physical act. Di Fazio (1974) analyzed comic books during 1946 to 1950 and 1966 to 1970 to identify treatment differences of 14 American values. Among his findings were that "peaceful resolution of conflict" was one of the values least often depicted in both time periods. Wolfe and Fiske (1949) report that habitual reading of superhero and action comic books are more often found among neurotic than among normal or psychotic children. These authors state, however, that comic book reading was not the cause of neurosis, but was a condition before the child became an avid comic book reader. Hoult (1949) studied comic book reading habits of 10 to 17-year old delinquents and non-delinquents and found that delinquents read significantly more comic books than non-delinquents. In addition, these two groups did not differ in their reading habits of other comic book materials. This researcher pointed out correctly that the causal relationship in his findings is quite unclear. It may be the case that the reading of comic books among 10 to 17-year olds does not at all lead to delinquent behavior, but that delinquency may lead to a preference for crime comics. Wertham (1954), on the other hand, interpreted his findings in a study of juvenile delinquents with similar results to mean that comic books are a major contributor to juvenile delinquency. Various other researchers found no differences in antisocial behaviors of heavy and light readers of the comics (e.g., Klapper, 1960;Karp, 1954). One problem with these early studies is the lack of control in the research design. Tan and Scruggs (1980) use a rigorous research design that the earlier studies lacked. Subjects were 95 children enrolled in two schools and their ages ranged from 9 to 12 years. A preliminary questionnaire showed that 48 % of all respondents read one to five comic books per month, 18 % read five to ten comic books per month, 17 % read ten or more, and 17 % did not read any comic books at all. Boys read more comic books than girls; boys preferred action-type characters whereas girls favored "kiddie" and "teen scene" characters. In each class, about one half of the children were handed a violent comic book, the other half received a non-violent comic book. Comic books were rated prior to the experiment for their content violence by a panel of trained raters. The comic book Daredevil was chosen for the violent category and Betty and Veronica was chosen for the nonviolent category. The children were then informed that they had 25 minutes to read their books. Then the questionnaires were distributed. The final measure in this study was an aggression response hierarchy utilized from previous studies of television violence and aggression (Leifer & Roberts, 1972). Tan and Scruggs computed physical aggression, verbal aggression and physical plus verbal aggression scores for each child. An analysis of variance yielded no main effects of comic books reading on subsequent physical, verbal or physical plus verbal aggression of children. No significant interactions between subject, sex and comic book reading were found either. There was, however, a significant main effect of 49

sex for phyiscal aggression (F = 41.98, p. H .Sw> -Cs

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Fig. 7 A scene from the documentary-style gekiga genre depicting a teacher's rape of a student. This appeared in a current adult comic magazine of a milder kind.

175

Fig. 9

Fig. 8/9 The typical depiction of women as a sex object to be dominated in Japanese men's comics 176

Fig. 10 Scenes from the gekiga genre glorifying the lower social levels for adult male consumers.

177

SANWARI-KUN

By Yoihiji Suiuki

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Fig.11

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By YoWiili Suzuki

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Fig. 13

Fig. 11/12/13 Typical newspaper cartoon strips centering on family banalities: the yonkomamono genre. The cultural-specificity is clear.

178

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Fig. 14 Pages from a recently published history textbook for children. Here they learn about early Chinese events.

179

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Rg. 15 Piges from a recently published history textbook for children. Here they learn about early Chinese events.

180

Fig.16

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Chief Artist

Dialogue Writers

Assistants

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Readers

Visual Characteristics India's popular artists have developed a particular style of drawings in their creation which is generally known as the "calendar style". Calendars are used for interior decoration in the Indian middle class homes. Thedrawings are stereotyped and mostly of the religious sort. Artists who design calendars and comics draw their ideas and inspirations often from films. They observe a scene in a religious film and create comics in accordance with the idealized actors and actresses. Figures are flat, two-dimensional and static. In comics produced by these artists importance is given to the human figures whilst the environment becomes 216

secondary. Even in detective comics the human figures gain so much of importance that necessary symbols of action, i.e., planes, steamers, pistols, guns and actions are discarded. Sometimes the dialogues become unusually lengthy and occupy a large space. In general, the dialogues and scenes in comics correspond much with the film scenes. Sometimes a writer hopes that his comic story will be bought by some film producer. Indian comics have created their own characters and symbols which people recognise without difficulty. It is risky for a producer to create a comic based on new symbols, as he is likely to lose readers. Hence, generally accepted symbols are repeatedly used.

Typology The following typology of comics is based on size and style of the creation and its influence and system of publication. 1. Small Compact Strips based on an Incident The daily newspapers publish strips of three to four frames with two or three dialogues. In the first frame they present a character with a serious dialogue, in the second and third action takes place involving the second or third dominating character and in the third the climax or anti-climax is created by a dialogue, and lastly the seriousness is converted into humour. An example would be "Chandu" created by Ahmed. Mostly his entire satires are on political incidents. "Mutt and Jeff" is also of this type in which Jeff creates the humourous aspects. In such strips the characters are permanent; actions and themes are new. Readers remain aware about the characteristics of the personality of the characters and can easily grasp the idea. "Hurbert" is a strip in which this person constantly troubled by his motherin-law. But this does not represent a real Indian context for it is the bride who remains under constant tension due to her mother-in-law and not the husband. 2. Continuous Series in Dailies The sports pages of daily newspapers bring strips of two to three frames in continuous series of a comic story. "Mandrake the Magician" is such a strip which is read by its fans daily. "Garth" is also such an example. Most of the popular strips pursue a continuing course, with each day's episode left in a state of partial irresolution or suspense. 3. Large Strips based on a Theme Such strips are created on the basis of a theme which ends with a complete story. Many such strips have been created on the stories prevalent about Akbar, the Great Mughal Emperor, and his court jester Birbal. Even new imaginative themes and stories are created with these two famous characters. MusibatHai a popular strip in a reputed weekly is depicting the day-to-day problems of middle class office goers. "Blonde" and "Bringing up Father" are comics of this category. 217

4. Comic Books Phantom and Flash Gordon are published in the form of comic books or as strips in the newspapers. It is an unending comic series published all over the world. In India also many new comic books have emerged recently which have gained popularity very quick. A few of these popular comics are the "Diamond Comics", "NutanChitraKatha", "Chandamama Comics", "Madhumuskan Comics", etc. Contents Varied and rather versatile subjects have been chosen for the visual display in the form of comics in India. There are different comic producing companies which are specialized in different subjects. The following table will show the varieties of comics published by one publisher in one year:

S.NO.

Subjects

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Detective stories Adventures Humour Fairy tales Folk tales Classical tales Historical tales Religious tales Horror Romantic tales

%

20 5 9 9 12 10 5 10 5 5 100

However, this is by no means the general trend, as there are also publishers who publish comics based on religious stories only, whilst others specialize in detective stories, humourous themes or educative subjects. In the following pages we shall discuss the themes of some comics so as to indicate the general trend.

Adventure and Detective Series There are many publishers of "adventure" and "detective" comic books of which "Indrajal Comics" are the most popular series. They are distributed by "Kings Features Syndicate" through "Benett Coleman & Co. Ltd.", a powerful publishing group of newspapers in India. This series includes a large number of comics having different heroes, viz., The Phantom, Mandrake, Flash Gordon, and new heroes like Buz Shayar, Mike Nomade, Garth, Carry Drake, Rip Kirbi and Indian heroes like Bahadur. 218

Nootan Chitra Katha Series The heroes of Nootan Chitra Katha series are Bhoot Nath, Amar, Akbar and Mamaji. Bhoot Nath a fantastic hero with a stout physique puts on a mask almost identical to that of Phantom and is able to travel far and wide in the universe in different planets like Flash Gordon. The name has perhaps been taken from the title of a famous Hindi fiction entitled BhootNath, written by Deoki Nandan Khatri in 24 parts about a century ago. The book Bhoot Nath had been very popular during the British regime, when thousands of persons learnt Hindi only by reading this book. Bhoot Nath is a patriotic hero and will do anything and everything to save his country from saboteurs, smugglers etc. The pictures and dialogues in this series are suited to the occasions and convey the appropriate impressions and expressions.

Folk Tales Series There is a large number of folk tales in India which are either proverbial, instructive or fantastic in nature or entertaining. Many creators have chosen these tales for comic books of which the titles are mostly the titles of the tales. As these tales are part of Indian heritage, they gain easy popularity among children, adolescents as well as elderly persons. Folk tales have a regional bias and therefore differ from region to region in dialect and form. In India children are socialized by their grand parent who are renowned tor their unending treasure of interesting tales. The children gather around them in the evening to listen to the stories of fairies, Shaikh Chilli, the lucky escape, the treasure hunt, Rama to the Rescue, and many other imaginary kings, queens and princesses. This oral literature has become a common feature in the Indian family system. The comic creators who have taken up these stories have given a new turn to the folk tales and are making them very popular.

Ancient Literature Series The stories of the "Amar Chitra Katha" comics series are taken from the great epics of the Mahahharata, the Ramayana, the Buddhist literature, the Jain scriptures, the Srutis, the Smritis and the tales contained in Vishnu Sharma's famous works entitled: Hitopadesh, Suhrid Bhed, Panch Tantra and Mitra Lahha. There is no dearth of material for these tales which have vividity in approach covering history, religion, morality, politics and even entertainment. Theobjectiveofthesestoriesis purposeful as they contain mostly religious and moral preachings or the idealization of behavioural aspects of human beings as members of society. The Ramayana, for example, besides being an epic containing a sustained story, lays down the tenets of human behaviour as a king, as a servant, as a wife, as a husband, as a member of a family or society and so on. The mode of presentation of the stories is, of course, different from that of the antique scriptures. 219

The dialogues in such stories have to be restructured so that their originality is not distorted, and that they convey the appropriate pictorial impression and expression in the comics. The characters are mostly human beings (religious heads, kings, princes), sometimes also wild or domestic animals. In Hitopadesh, for example, the characters are mostly wild animals. As the characters are well-known and people already have their images in their minds, even simple sketches of the characters are easily understood by the readers. When Hindu gods, their consorts and rakshasas and their stories are appearing in comics, then the gods - with the exception of Brahma the creator - are usually depicted very young. They almost look ef fiminate in appearance, except Hanuman the monkey god with powerful muscles bursting with vigour. Though gods are shown with many arms and endowed with superhuman power, they are depicted as smooth limbed, soft and smiling even when killing demons.

Diamond Series The most popular hero of these series is Fauladi Singh who travels far and wide in the universe on different planets inhabited by living beings. The fiction is quite scientific, showing the vigour and physical strength of Fauladi Singh along with his tactical approach to. the problems. The pair of Rajan and Iqbal, two adolescents, interested in detective adventures are other characters in the series. They are helped by the Police Inspetor, their so-called uncle. The two grown-up boys know the art of bull fighting, judo, karate and other techniques of free-style fighting. Lamboo and Motoo - another pair of young detectives - are keenly interested in spying and discovering thieves and gangsters. They once have had a serious encounter with Count Drakula in a hair raising fictional comic. Drakula tries to kill them but they subdue him with the help of a Tantrik Sadhu and pack up his spirit in a bottle. The achievements of this pair are shown as superb and unimaginable. Chacha and Bhatija (Uncle and Nephew) are also a pair of heroes in the same series, but like " Alladin and his Lamp" or other fairy tales, they are quite fantastic and can amuse only children of the lower age group.

Humorous Series The typology of the series is based on the two publications: Madhu Muskan and Madhti Muskan Comics. The former is humorous for plain entertainment with stray cartoons and comical stories. The latter produces fictional based comics, mostly containing detective stories. In the Dvwa.no. series of comics there are humorous and satirical stories, parodies of films, distorted dialogues of film heroes and stars, and the comic adventures of MotuPatlu, Sil-Bil and Phantom. LotPot'is a weekly comic magazine which contains permanent features of Chacha Chaudhari, Motu Patlu, Mahabali Vishal, Pinki and Natkhat Neetu, and some humorous and moral stories. Chacha Chaudhari is always accompanied by Sabu, a 220

superhuman, and performs acts extending help to others in apprehending thieves and the like with the help of Sabu. The mind of Chacha and strength of Sabu are bound together. Motu Patlu are two friends living together. They are often accompanied by Dr. Jhatka, Papita, Nurso and Chelaram. Motu and Patlu always perform humorous actions; Dr. Jhatka invents fantastic medicines and carries out operations with the help of chissels, saws, hammers and is able to graft lims. They are accompanied by Ghasitaram, a master, whose conspiracies against Motu and Patlu are always defeated. Chanda Mama Classics and Comics produces Hindi and regional language versions of Walt Disney's comics. At present they publish "Galliant Zoro" - a medieval European knight who opposes the cruel king, helping the people in their distress.

Consumers Comic books attract a large number of readers because their stories are full of incidents, they are easy to read and are visual attractiv. As other visual means in India, i.e. cinema, T.V. etc. are not within easy reach of the common man and the entertainment in comic books at a very low cost is versatile and vivid, the comic books resemble a personal T.V. set or a film strip for the readers. More often children and sometimes adults believe that "Phantom", for example, is a living reality. Readers wait eagerly for every new number of their favourite comic books. The most important aspect of reading comics is the amalgamation of visuality and story. The reading of dialogues together with the pictorial presentation of the characters in the same expressive moods foster the reading and make it more interesting and fascinating. More particularly, we know that comic books do not take as much of the time of the readers as common fictions do. Hence, the remarkable interest in comic books which are short and provide more entertainment than voluminous fictions. This, perhaps, is the fundamental reason for the popularity of comic books. The reading public comprises in its majority children and adolescents; elderly people read them only as a pastime. In fact, we have in India a craze for comics and children hanker after securing more and more new books. There are stalls which supply comic books on daily rental basis, and children prefer spending their pocket money on hiring these books instead of buying edibles. They also exchange their books with others. Even when children visit the houses of relatives they always try to get comic books. A small study done by the author in a town about comic book readers shows the preferential likings:

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S.No. Subjects

Children

Adults Male

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7

8. 9. 10.

Detective Horror Historical tales Classical tales Humour Fairy tales Religious tales Romantic tales National Hero Comics based on films

Female

25 5 10 10 15 5 5 5 5 15

30 5 10 5 5 5 10 15 10 5

20 10 5 20 5 5 5

100

100

100

15 -

15

The above table shows the changing preference between children and adults, males and females. But detective comics obviously fascinate people of all ages. The readers can be divided into the following categories according to their interest in reading comics: 1. Curious Readers In this group we find readers who are interested in the content of the comics. They trie to satisfy their curiosity about the "strange" characters. 2. Casual Readers Casual readers happen to read comics whenever they find time. They do not make any special effort in securing comic books nor do they sacrifice their work in order to read comics. 3. Interested Readers ' These readers get the copies of a series regularly and do not want to miss them. They spare time and money for procuring comics uninterruptedly and show sympathy or interest in the characters. 4. Addicts The readers in this group will abandon their work in hand to enjoy the comics. They will try to get as many numbers of comic books as possible, talk and think all the time about them and spend all their resources on this matter.

Conclusions Comics provide a means of occupation for people who have leisure time on their hands but lack the resources for better use. For most of the adult readers it is a pleasure to enjoy some reading material in the shortest possible time. In the beginning a newspaper reader reads comics because they are there. But as soon as he becomes involved with them he will notice when one or two of the series are missed. On such occasions readers experience a sort of vague discomfort. When comic reading becomes a habit they will consider the characters of comics as their 222

friends. Comics and their continuity bestow comfort on the readers and relieve them of boredom. Adult readers do not want to resort to new strips; new characters are strangers to their emotional world. Many readers stopped buying those daily newspapers which dropped the "Mutt and Jeff" strip and switched over to another one. A daily newspaper reader has his own system of reading the paper and unknowingly becomes accustomed to his routine of reading comics. The comics reduce tensions mainly by offering variety and recurrent interest. The humour in comic strips, though simple and stereotyped as it is, produces a grim unsmiling kind of amusement. The humour in comic strips pokes fun at every day domestic occurrences and the strips are enjoyed by children and adults in the family. This reading reduces some of the tensions which are present in real life. Comics provide to adults harmless satirical analogies to the small events of daily life. Generally, they do not enter into controversies about politics and are free from the intrigues of socio-political events. Political conversations are not welcome in India and even small eating places have signs on their walls banning such talks, saying "Do Not Discuss Politics" or "Do Not Sit Idle Here". Indian comic strip characters like Akbar-Birbal, Office Goer, Housewife, Shaikh Chilli, Dady, Chandu, Clever Nitu and many others have become part of the national lore. To children these characters appear to be real life, also many adults take them seriously. Despite the awareness that such characters like " Phantom "or "Bahadur" do not exist they cannot help speaking of them as though they were alive. Some readers are attracted towards comic strips because they identify themselves directly with the character or because the strips depict familiar things and doings. Readers seeking information do find comics based on technological facts particularly interesting. One reason being that in India the literacy rate is very low and people do want more information on the subject of their interest. Many housewives, adults and children read comics based on religious stories like the sacred stories about the benefit of fasting etc. with keen interest. "Satya Narayan Vrat Katha", for example, is most popular as this fast is observed throughout India by women folk. The Katha (story) in comics is, therefore, for the readers of religious value. Advertisers use comics for circulating or disseminating information about their products. Advertisements with comics about chocolates for children and sweets or china balls are very common. They are also used in advertisments for washing or bathing soaps addressing themselves to housewives. Even now companies and industries circulate their prospects for selling their shares in the form of comic books. The comic books in a family are in general the prized possession of children. They read, protect and collect their treasure and exchange it with their friends. Sometimes it is felt that comic reading is a "childish activity" and adults criticise children for wasting their precious study time in reading this literature. Indeed, many children become so addict to reading comics that they even avoid reading course books and miss classes. But with growing age their interest in reading comics usually gradually disappears.

223

English Summary The comics atfirst imported in English about 50 years ago, which appeared in daily newspapers, merely reached the literate elites. Consequently their contents dealt with the daily life problems of the middle class. Now that the comics are published in the country's languages they are widely disseminated as strips and books. The rapid assimilation of this visual literature by the Indian people is, the author proves, attributable to the people's old tradition in pictorial folklore. In this country comics not only offer entertainment but also information, instruction, and advertisement. As aproduct of visual culture they fit perfectly into the picture even where motion pictures and television are absent.

Resume franqais Les Bandes Dessinees d'abord importees en anglais void environ JO ans etpubliees dans des quotidiens, n'atteignaient que I'elite alphabetisee. En consequence de quoi, les contenus traitaient aussi deproblemes quotidiens de la classe moyenne. Depuis que la Bande Dessinee parait desormais dans les langues du pays, eile est largement repandue, sous forme de B. D. (strips) et d'albums. La rapide assimilation de cette litterature visuelle par lepeuple indien, c'est ce que demontre l'auteur, estfondeeparsa vieille tradition pour les coutumes depeinture. La Bande Dessinee offre «et non seulement un divertissement, mats encore enseignement, education etpublicite. Elles'identifiesansproblemecommeproduitculturelvisuel, egalement la oü le cinema et la television n 'existent pas encore.

Deutsche Zusammenfassung Die zunächst in Englisch vor etwa fünf zig Jahren importierten Comics, die in Tageszeitungen erschienen, erreichten nur die alphabetisierten Eliten. Die Inhalte behandelten demnach auch Alltagsprobleme der Mittelklasse. Nachdem die Comics nun in den Landessprachen erscheinen, sind sie als Strips und Bücher weit verbreitet. Die rasche Assimilierung dieser visuellen Literatur durch das indische Volk, so weist der Autor nach, liegt in seiner alten Traditionfür künstlerisch dargestelltes Brauchtum begründet. Comics bieten hier nicht nur Unterhaltung, sondern auch Unterrichtung, Schulung und Werbung. Sie ordnen sich nahtlos als visuelles Kulturprodukt auch dort ein, wo Kino und Fernsehen noch nicht vorhanden sind.

224

Herve Fischer

Ecriture phonetique et pictogrammes dans les bandes dessinees McLuhan s'est plu a analyser ä travers la Galaxie Gutenberg la reduction de la communication sociale ä 1'imprime. II en a conclu ä l'appauvrissement de notre apprehension plurisensorielle du monde, au profit d'une linearite typographique et simplement retinienne. Avec la fin de la Galaxie Gutenberg, il constate un retour, grace ä la communication electronique, ä la plurisensorialite qu'avaient connue les societe »ethnologiques«. On souligne souvent par ailleurs le desinteret des jeunes vis-ä-vis du livre typographique, au profit d'une culture plus visuelle, qui doit beaucoup a la television, ä la publicite, ä l'environnement urbain et signaletique, a la bände dessinee. C'est le moment oü je me propose de preciser quelques remarques sur le langage de la bände dessinee. L'histoire de la bände dessinee nous montre que les premiers albums etaient constitues de series lineaires d'images courant parallelement ä des petits textes de typographic uniforme precisant Phistoire de chaque image (»La famille Fenouillard«, »LeProfesseurNimbus«, »Lesapeur Camembert«, etc.) Petit ä petit, cette rigidite s'est assouplie. Ainsi, les celebres histoires de Tintin creees pzrHerge, nous montrent l'integration du texte dans Pimage, d'abord dans un bandeau regulieren hautdel'image, puis, peuapeu, dans les fameuses »bulles«, bientöt reliees a la tete ou a la bouche des personnages par une sorte de cordon pneumatique. C'est alors que la typographic prend aussi une nouvelle liberte, inconnue pendant des siecles. Elle est bientot dessinee ä la main, au lieu de la typographic traditionnelle uniforme, et eile devient progressivement image. McLuhan avait montre l'importance du passage de l'ecriture pictographique (les ideogrammes chinois par exemple) ä l'ecriture phonetique: notre alphabet actuel, dont les caracteres et la combinatoire n'ont plus aucun caractere figuratif, mais dont le degre d'abstraction permet une manipulation plus rapide. On peut se demander si les bandes dessinees ne nous offrent pas l'exemple d'un alphabet pictographique international en cours de constitution sous nos yeux. Comme dit un de mes amis, bientot le mot »chien« va mordre! Le mot »toil« protegera de la pluie!

Les bulles Les bulles en elles-memes constituent deja un element essentiel de ce nouveau code pictographique. Issues du rectangle typographique traditionnel, elles ont pris leur souffle et leur independence dans I'image. Dans les bandes d'Herge, on voit encore 225

le passage du petit nuage de fumee d'une arme ä feu ä la bulle de texte, reduit d'abord ä un point d'exclamation, puis d'interrogation, ä des onomatopees. La bulle-nuage se lit comme espace mental ou psychologique ä l'interieur de l'espace »realiste« ou evoluent les heros. II arrive que cette bulle envahisse la totalite du rectangle de l'image, qui devient espace imaginaire total. Chacun en reconnait le code. Mais la forme ou le contour de la bulle a aussi ses variantes bien connues: contour rond ou lisse, le plus frequent, qui devient ligne brisee plus ou moins dure pour exprimer l'intensite des sentiments de colere ou de surprise, voire la vociferation. Les histoires d'Asterix nous donnent aussi un exemple de bulle entouree de petites fleurs, pour signifier le desir de seduction d'un general romain, qui d'ailleurs va dans les images suivantes, conscient d'avoir rate son effet, adopter la bulle zig-zag pour changer de ton - le ton de la colere. Le cordon pneumatique de la bulle suit le meme code: ligne simple, sans histoire, ou cordon zig-zag pour l'intensite. Pour exprimer la pensee silencieuse, le reve, ou la distance (qui empeche d'entendre la voix) les dessinateurs de bände dessinee ont adoptee le cordon chapelet de petits ronds blancs. Ce code pictographique, qui permet d'exprimer des informations psychologiques est international. La couleur de fond des bulles est sauf exception, blanc-nuage, pour bien marquer la difference d'espace avec l'image elle-meme. Cependant les petites bulles noires, comme les nuages noirs marquent que le personnage nourrit - ä la lettre - des idees noires, de fureur, de vengeance, tandis qu'une bulle verte ou rose signifie des sentiments plus doux.

La typographic La lettre devient image icönique. Les variations de la typographic sont marquantes: caracteres minuscules, majuscules, penches, droit, maigres, gras, de styles varies, de grandeur variee, deformes par les sentiments de celui qui parle ou entend, en alignement ou disposes sur des courbes, des diagonales, des lignes brisees, permettent au dessinateur de multiples nuances dans l'expression sonore. S'y ajoutent des variations de couleur: par exemple la bigarrure des points d'exclamation ou d'interrogation accumules dans une bulle, ou le passage au rouge pour marquer la colere, l'effet de surprise externe, ou pour marquer systematiquement les moments de suspense dans des series d'images assez realistes et detaillees ou la typographic joue habituellement en mineure. II arrive que la typographic prenne des effets sonores traversant les images pour augmenter leur volume, ou que des differences du jaune, de l'orange, du rouge signifient la diversite des bruits: moteur d'avion, fusil, mitraillette, etc. Le passage du graphisme ä la lettre est souvent incertain: par exemple des eclaboussures circulaires autour du visage d'un personnage en proie ä quelques affres se transforment en points d'interrogation; des lettres-images coulent sous l'effet de la chaleur ou de la moiteur; elles se herissent et s'ecrivent en caracteres trembles quand la frayeur dresse les cheveux du personnage. Leur mise en page marquent l'arrivee ou l'eloignement du son; certains mots sortent simplement du 226

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