Representing Acts of Violence in Comics 9781138484535, 9781351051781

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Representing Acts of Violence in Comics

This book is part of a nuanced two-volume examination of the ways in which violence in comics is presented in different texts, genres, cultures and contexts. Representing Acts of Violence in Comics raises questions about depiction and the act of showing violence, and discusses the ways in which individual moments of violence develop and are both represented and embodied in comics and graphic novels. Contributors consider the impact of gendered and sexual violence, and examine the ways in which violent acts can be rendered palatable (for example through humour) but also how comics can represent trauma and long-lasting repercussions for both perpetrators and victims. This will be a key text and essential reference for scholars and students at all levels in Comics Studies and Cultural and Media Studies more generally. Nina Mickwitz is one of the founding members of CoRH at University of the Arts London (UAL) and the author of Documentary Comics: Graphic Truth-telling in a Skeptical Age ­(Palgrave Macmillan 2015). Situated at the intersection of comics and mobilities, current research includes comics that deal with refugee narratives, migration and displacement. Another area of interest concerns the local/global dynamic of contemporary comics cultures and the interactions and transactional networks between smaller, ‘peripheral’ cultures of production. Ian Horton is Reader in Graphic Communication at London College of Communication, UAL. His present research is focussed in three related areas: comic books, graphic design and illustration. His book Hard Werken: One for All (Graphic Art & Design 1979–1994) (co-authored with Bettina Furnee) is the first academic study of this influential avant-garde Dutch graphic design studio and was published by Valiz in 2018. Within the field of Comics Studies he has published work on national identity in European and British comic books, the relationship between art history and comics, and public relations and comic books. In 2014, along with Lydia Wysocki (founder of Applied Comics Etc) and John Swogger (archaeological illustrator and comic book artist), he founded the ­Applied Comics Network. He is a founding member of CoRH at UAL and is associate editor of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. Ian Hague is the third year Contextual and Theoretical Studies Coordinator in the ­Design School at London College of Communication, UAL. His research takes a materially oriented approach to comics and graphic novels, with a particular focus on the ways in which comics’ material forms affect the experiences of their readers. His first monograph, Comics and the Senses: A Multisensory Approach to Comics and Graphic Novels, was published by Routledge in 2014, and he is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on subjects such as materiality, adaptation and media forms. Ian co-edited ­Representing Multiculturalism in Comics and Graphic Novels (Routledge 2015) and was the founder of the Comics Forum conference series, which has run since 2009 (online since 2011). He is also a peer reviewer for various publishers and journals. Ian’s current research looks at digital comics as they relate to materiality, economics, histories and geographies. He is a founding member of the Comics Research Hub (CoRH) at UAL.

Routledge Advances in Comics Studies

Edited by Randy Duncan, Henderson State University Matthew J. Smith, Radford University

The Narratology of Comic Art Kai Mikkonen Comics Studies Here and Now Edited by Frederick Luis Aldama Superman and Comic Book Brand Continuity Phillip Bevin Empirical Approaches to Comics Research Digital, Multimodal, and Cognitive Methods Edited by Alexander Dunst, Jochen Laubrock, and Janina Wildfeuer Superhero Bodies Identity, Materiality, Transformation Edited by Wendy Haslem, Elizabeth MacFarlane and Sarah Richardson Urban Comics Infrastructure and the Global City in Contemporary Graphic Narratives Dominic Davies Batman and the Multiplicity of Identity The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero as Cultural Nexus Jeffrey A. Brown Contexts of Violence in Comics Edited by Ian Hague, Ian Horton and Nina Mickwitz Representing Acts of Violence in Comics Edited by Nina Mickwitz, Ian Horton and Ian Hague For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com

Representing Acts of Violence in Comics

Edited by Nina Mickwitz, Ian Horton and Ian Hague

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Nina Mickwitz, Ian Horton and Ian Hague to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data CIP data has been applied for. ISBN: 978-1-138-48453-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-05178-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction

vii ix xi 1

N I N A M I C K W I T Z , I A N H O RT O N A N D I A N H AG U E

Depiction

17

1 Picturing National and Personal Acts of Violence: Modes of Depiction in Barefoot Gen

19

JOH N M I ERS

2 Bloody Murder in the Bible: Graphic Representations of the ‘First Murder’ in Biblical Comics

35

Z A N N E D O M O N E Y- LY T T L E

3 A Balancing Act: Didactic Spectacle in Jack Jackson’s ‘Nits Make Lice’ and Slow Death Comix

53

L AU R I K E I N ‘ T V E L D

Embodiment

69

4 Seeing (in) Red: ‘Thick’ Violence in Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas’s Red: A Haida Manga

71

L AU R A A . P E A R S O N

5 Embodied Reading and Performing Vulnerability in Joe Sacco’s The Great War ESZT ER SZÉP

89

vi Contents

Humour

103

6 ‘Boiled or fried, Dennis?’ Violence, Play and Narrative in ‘Dennis the Menace and Gnasher’

105

C H R ISTOPH E R J. T HOM PSON

7 Humour as a Strategy in Communicating Sexual and Domestic Abuse of Women in Comics

119

N ICOL A ST R EET EN

Gendered and Sexual Violence

137

8 The Risks of Representation: Making Gender and Violence Visible in The Ballad of Halo Jones

139

M AG G I E G R AY

9 Unmaking the Apocalypse: Pain, Violence, Torture and Weaponising the Black, Female Body

159

JOSEPH W I LLIS

10 Killgrave, The Purple Man

170

JA M I E BR ASSET T A N D R ICH A R D R EY NOLDS

Index

185

List of Figures

1.1 Nakazawa, Keiji. 2005a. Barefoot Gen Volume One: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima, p. 103. © Keiji Nakazawa. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Last Gasp 28 1.2 Nakazawa, Keiji. 2005a. Barefoot Gen Volume One: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima, p. 106. © Keiji Nakazawa. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Last Gasp 30 1.3 Nakazawa, Keiji. 2005a. Barefoot Gen Volume One: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima, p. 105. © Keiji Nakazawa. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Last Gasp 32 2.1 Genesis 4: 7-15, The Book of Genesis, Illustrated by R. Crumb (R. Crumb 2009) 38 2.2 Genesis 4: 7b-25, The Manga Bible (Siku 2007) 42 2.3 P. 7, Issue 3, The Goddamned: Before the Flood (J. Aaron, R.M. Guéra, and G. Brusco 2017) 47 3.1 ‘Velma Gets it Ndebele’ in Slow Death #7, 1976–1977. © Melinda Gebbie 62 4.1 Red Cover. © MNY (mny.ca) 74 4.2 Red in the forest with broken knees, p. 19. © MNY (mny.ca) 75 4.3 Red in mural form. © MNY (mny.ca) 84 7.1 © Katie Green, The Courage to be Me, 2014, Chapter 5 (Green 2014) 122 7.2 © Jacky Fleming cartoon, 1978 (Source: jackyfleming.co.uk) 123 7.3 © Maria Stoian, Take it as a Compliment, 2016:87 (Stoian 2016) 127 7.4 © Rosalind B. Penfold, Dragonslippers, 2005:46 (Penfold 2005) 131

viii  List of Figures 8.1 Alan Moore, Ian Gibson and Steve Potter. 1984. ‘The Ballad of Halo Jones’ Book 1 Part 8: ‘When the Music’s Over.’ 2000AD Prog 385 (15 September), p. 11 144 8.2 Alan Moore, Ian Gibson and Q. Twerk. 1986. ‘Tharg’s Head ­Revisited.’ 2000AD Prog 500 (13 December), p. 32 148 8.3 Alan Moore, Ian Gibson and Steve Potter. 1985. ‘The Ballad of Halo Jones’ Book 2, Part 7, ‘Puppy Love.’ 2000AD Prog 412 (6 April), p. 5 151 8.4 Alan Moore, Ian Gibson and Richard Starkings. 1986. ‘The Ballad of Halo Jones’ Book 3, Part 11: ‘Slow Death.’ 2000AD Prog 463 (22 March), p. 4 154

Acknowledgements

This book developed from the sixth Comics Forum conference in Leeds on the topic of violence in comics in 2014, and the editors would like to thank Paul Fisher-Davies, Ben Gaskell, Will Grady, Dawn ­Stanley-Donaghy, Hattie Kennedy and Hannah Wadle for their work on the organisation of that conference as well as the team at the Thought Bubble sequential art festival for their ongoing support of comics scholarship. We would also like to thank the series editors, Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith, as well as the peer reviewers, for their input on this volume. Finally, many thanks to Routledge’s Felisa Salvago-Keyes and Eleanor Simmons for stewarding this book through the process of publication.

Notes on Contributors

Jamie Brassett is Reader in Philosophy, Design and Innovation at University of the Arts London and has been Course Leader of MA Innovation Management at Central Saint Martins since it started in 2008 and where he has worked since 1995. With a PhD in Philosophy from University of Warwick (1993) he publishes philosophical work encountering design, innovation, technology, futures and comics. Jamie Brassett and Richard Reynolds will be publishing Superheroes and Excess. A Philosophical Inquiry with Routledge in 2020. Zanne Domoney-Lyttle  teaches and researches at the University of Glasgow. Her research centres on comic book and graphic novel adaptations of the Bible through the perspectives of literary criticism, art criticism, comics theory and gender studies. Her doctoral thesis explored the space of comic books as visual aids to scripture, the tension between authorship and authority in biblical comics and who has the right to reinterpret ancient sacred texts in a new graphical-visual medium, and her future projects carry on aspects of these discussions. Maggie Gray  lectures in Critical and Historical Studies at Kingston School of Art, Kingston University, specialising in the history and theory of illustration, animation and communication design. Her research has centred on the history, aesthetics and politics of British comics in relation to cultures of resistance and political dissent, with a particular focus on the work of Alan Moore. This work has been published in Studies in Comics; the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics; Kunst und Politik; and Alan Moore and the Gothic Tradition, edited by Matt Green (Manchester University Press, 2013). Most recently her monograph, Alan Moore, Out from the Underground: Cartooning, Performance and Dissent (Palgrave 2017), explored Moore’s early work as a cartoonist in relation to his wider creative practice as a poet, musician and illustrator. Maggie is increasingly interested in the historical relationship between comics and theatre, the performative aspects of comics as a mode of drawing and storytelling, and the politics of performance thereby invoked. She sits on the organising committee of the annual UK conference Comics Forum,

xii  Notes on Contributors which is part of Leeds’s Thought Bubble comics art festival, and is an associate member of CoRH at University of the Arts London. Alongside Nick White, she co-runs Kingston School of Art Comic Club. John Miers is Lecturer in Illustration and Critical Historical Studies at Kingston School of Art and visiting lecturer at University of the Arts London and the Royal College of Art. In 2018 he completed his PhD at Central Saint Martins and began as a postdoctoral Researcher in the Archives Residency at University of the Arts London, producing new comics in response to the material in the Archives and Special Collections Centre. His work as a cartoonist has been published in a wide variety of scholarly and artistic contexts, and can be viewed at johnmiers.com. Laura A. Pearson (BAH University of Western Ontario at Huron, MA University of New Brunswick) is from Exeter, Ontario, Canada. She recently earned her PhD from the University of Leeds in the UK. She’s grateful to her funders—the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada and the School of English at Leeds—for research support. Some of her latest publications appear in The Canadian Alternative: Cartoonists, Comics, and Graphic Novels (University Press of Mississippi, 2018); Animal Comics: Multispecies Storyworlds in Graphic Narratives (Bloomsbury, 2018); and The Dalhousie Review (Summer 2018). Some of her forthcoming publications will appear in Cambridge Critical Contexts: Magical Realism (Cambridge University Press) and Child-Animal Relationships in Comics: Contexts, Identities and Politics (University Press of Liège). She currently works as an independent scholar and researcher in Stockholm, Sweden. Richard Reynolds has been Course Leader for MA Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries at Central Saint Martins since 2014. He holds a Master’s in Anglo-American Studies from Oxford University (1982). He began teaching at Central St Martins in 1994 whilst still working as a publisher. He is the author of Superheroes: A Modern Mythology (UK 1992, USA 1994) and a number of other conference papers and book chapters dealing with comics, superheroes and related subjects. Jamie Brassett and Richard Reynolds will be publishing Superheroes and Excess. A Philosophical Inquiry with Routledge in 2020. Nicola Streeten  (also using the name Nicola Plowman) is an ­anthropologist-turned-illustrator and comics scholar. Her graphic memoir, Billy, Me & You (2011, Myriad Editions), is the first published graphic memoir by a British woman. It received a British Medical Association Award in 2012. Nicola co-founded the international forum Laydeez do Comics in 2009. Her Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded PhD from the University of Sussex is on The

Notes on Contributors  xiii Cultural History of British Feminist Cartoons and Comics from 1970 to 2010, focussing on the role of humour in disseminating the feminist message. www.streetenillustration.com @NicolaStreeten Eszter Szép is an independent scholar, educator and curator, researching embodied engagement with comics in acts of drawing and reading. She is co-founder of Hungary’s first community comics library, she is a board member of the Hungarian Comics Association and she is one of the organisers of the yearly International Comics Festival ­Budapest. She has co-curated Comics as Narrative: The 9th Art and Its Icons in Hungary, a major exhibition on Hungarian comics at the National Széchényi Library (14 May – 26 July 2018). She has edited a bilingual catalogue about the exhibition, entitled Képregény-történet [A ­History of Comics] (2018), and she is co-editor of the volume Turning the Page: Gendered Identities in Contemporary Literary and Visual Cultures (2018). She is a reviewer for Studies in Comics. Her monograph, Comics and the Body: Drawing, Reading, and Vulnerability, is forthcoming with the Ohio State University Press. Further info at eszterszep.com. Christopher J. Thompson is an educational developer and learner experience designer at the University of Leeds. His research investigates the relationship between storytelling, content and audiences in comics, with a focus on children’s comics and Underground Comix in the UK. He has published and presented research on the British comix artist Hunt Emerson, exploring narrative parody in three satirical adaptions of literary works. This work has identified themes of access and nonconformity central to the interplay of image and text in Emerson’s lively narrative style. A long-running interest in 1970s countercultures has also led Chris to explore the birth of the magazine of strange phenomena, The Fortean Times. This study examined the early print culture of the magazine, describing the ongoing artistic contributions made by Emerson in over 40 years of publication. Chris’s interest in visual storytelling draws him both to comics and digital pedagogies. This extends his expertise in design for conversational learning, learning narrative and digital multimedia production for online education. Most recently, his attention has centred on the children’s periodical The Beano. In the present volume, he explores the relationship between violence and humour in this comic within a narrative framework developed by cognitive scientist Neil Cohn. Chris has a BA and MA in English from Oxford Brookes University. He is Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Teaching Enhancement Project Leader for the Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence. Laurike in ‘t Veld is a Lecturer at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, and a research associate at the Centre for

xiv  Notes on Contributors Historical Culture, Erasmus University Rotterdam. She holds a PhD in History from the University of Chichester, the UK. Her research interests include popular cultural depictions of war and genocide, non-fictional comics and discourses around (Holo)kitsch. Recent publications include ‘Introducing the Rwandan Genocide from a Distance: American Noir and the Animal Metaphor in 99 Days’ (2015, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics) and ‘Reading Presence and Absence in Fax from Sarajevo’s Rape Narrative’ (2018, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics). Her monograph The Representation of Genocide in Graphic Novels: Considering the Role of Kitsch is forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan. Joseph Willis completed his PhD in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies at the University of Nottingham. His thesis, ‘Damsel, Wonder, Object: Gender Expectation and Performance in Superhero Comics,’ focusses on the roles and images of female characters in superhero comics and the cultural systems that have maintained them. He has presented papers on comics and graphic novels at multiple national conferences, including the Modern Language Association of America and the Popular/American Culture Association. He has also contributed material to the series of books Critical Survey of Graphic ­Novels. As a lecturer in Utah, Florida and Arizona, he has taught courses in composition, creative writing, media, critical theory and comics.

Introduction Nina Mickwitz, Ian Horton and Ian Hague

Violence in Comics The presence of violence in comics form is now so prevalent and ­accepted that it tends to go unremarked. Yet violence is a complex a­ ffair. Graphic (in both meanings of the word) depictions of fist fights and ­bodies ­skewered by swords, riddled by bullets or crushed under falling objects are commonplace in superhero, fantasy and action stories. These kinds of violence differ markedly from the slapstick gag of a thrown brick (as in George Herriman’s Krazy Kat) or slingshot projectile (prime contenders include Dennis the Menace in The Beano and his American namesake, created by Hank Ketcham) hurtling through the air to hit its target, intended or otherwise. Different again are representations of violence in autobiographical and documentary comics, such as Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Joe Sacco’s Palestine, which speak of real-world acts of violence and the contexts from which they emerge. With their origins in the conference ‘Violence in Comics,’ organised by Comics Forum in 2014, these two companion volumes, Contexts of Violence in Comics and Representing Acts of Violence in Comics, have been curated to initiate a nuanced examination of the ways in which violence is evident in comics. Although we do not claim to offer an ­exhaustive history or a complete survey of the topic, this study strives to provide a broad overview of the ways in which a range of types of violence are presented across different genres, cultures and contexts. In so doing, we hope to offer a foundation for a wide-ranging and considered debate and discussion of violence in comics, and to prompt further discussion and analysis of this vitally important subject. As violence continues to be a pervasive element in popular culture more generally, as well as in comics, it is intended that the chapters ­collected together in these two volumes will contribute to wider debates about the contexts in which violence takes place and how acts of ­violence are ­represented across the media landscape. This is a multifaceted subject that can be understood in many ways, and we have chosen to consider contexts and representations as two very different major subsections of the topic. By contexts we mean the various sociopolitical and cultural

2  Nina Mickwitz et al. forces that shape the way violence is presented in comics and impact ­directly on their production. In contrast when examining representation, we are concerned with the different kinds of violence that take place in comics and in the specific modes of depiction used to show these violent acts. This book concerns the depiction and representation of violence in comics. Where Contexts of Violence in Comics attends to cultural, industry, scholarly and critical contexts as the route to understanding this topic, this volume will present approaches to representation of violent acts, with examples organised thematically. This is, of course, not to say that the authors’ treatment of examples will not take into account the contextual factors of these specific instances, but this book will pay particular attention to strategies of representation.

Representing Acts of Violence in Comics It is important to acknowledge that violence is something that functions on multiple levels. Slavoj Žižek (2008) has directed our attention to an important theoretical distinction that can be drawn between s­ ubjective and social violence. Social violence in this instance refers to ‘violence ­inherent in a system: not only direct physical violence, but also the s­ ubtler forms of coercion that sustain relations of dominance and ­exploitation, including the threat of violence’ (Žižek 2008, 8). An ­individual and subjective act of violence may overlap with and be produced by social formations of violence, whereas the latter might not necessarily manifest in singular instances or acts readily recognisable as violent. Acts of violence can thus be understood as incorporating symbolic gestures, violations, abuses and abject atrocities. The challenges and implications of depicting violence, and especially the visual representation of violent acts, intersect with ­philosophical enquiries into the ontology of images (Gombrich 1960; Mitchell 1995, 2005; Ranciére 2009) and have generated discussions that range from the historically specific (Haywood 2006; Der Derian 2009) to ­contemporary debates about documentary witnessing (Guerin and ­Hallas 2007) through the politics of representation of crime, police brutality, ­terrorism and war in news media and entertainment (Horeck 2004; ­Jewkes 2004; Weaver and Carter 2006; Horeck and Kendall 2011; Greer and Reiner 2015) to continued anxieties around effects (see Barker and Petley 2002). On the whole, concerns about the moral impact of gratuitous depictions of violent acts have moved on from the mid-20th-century moral panics concerning comics (Pumphrey 1954, 55, 64; Wertham 1954) to video games and virtual reality.1 But we feel that a more sustained and up-to-date examination of how violence features as a persistent theme in comics, both historically and currently, with no signs of

Introduction  3 abating, is due. A considerable amount of scholarly attention has been generated around the themes of conflict and trauma in comics, ­noteworthy ­recent ­examples of which include Hillary Chute’s (2016) Disaster Drawn: ­Visual ­Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form; Harriet E. H. ­Earle’s (2017) ­Comics, Trauma, and the New Art of War to Cultures of War in Graphic ­Novels: Violence, Trauma and Memory (2018), ­edited by ­Tatjana Prorokova and Nimrod Tal; Laurike in ’t Veld’s The ­Representation of Genocide in Graphic Novels: considering the role of kitsch (2019) and Documenting Trauma: Traumatic Pasts, Embodied ­Histories & Graphic Reportage in Comics (2019), edited by Dominic Davies and Candida Rifkind. The intersections between such work, innately and closely dealing with questions of violence and its depiction, and the concerns of this volume and its companion Contexts of Violence in Comics are evident. However, our aim here has been to consider violence and its representation in comics in fiction as well as factual modes and to examine how violence in comics can take a multitude of forms. Alongside reportage and remembrance comics also regularly represent violence using dramatic and melodramatic registers, and by taking humorous, playful and flippant approaches. This diversity is borne out by the chapters in this volume, and the fact that representation in and of itself can constitute an act of violence only emphasizes representation as an issue that calls for explicit attention. W. J. T. Mitchell (2005) and Hans Belting (2005) have each examined the relationship between material images and entities that are as much cultural as they are conceptual. ‘Images are neither on the wall (or on the screen) nor in the head alone’ (Belting 2005, 302). For Mitchell, this indeterminacy is at the heart of both the power of images and the perceived threat that images pose. When it comes to a subject as integrated into the social fabric and at the same time subject to legal and moral sanction as violence, it hardly seems surprising that, following the reasoning of Mitchell and Belting, material images of violence are equally ubiquitous while also subject to complex meanings and constraints.

The Paradigm of Witnessing Susan Sontag’s (2003) work, despite her particular interest in the ­photographic image, still offers a useful reference point for setting out concerns explored by some of the authors in this book. Aside from the fact that they predate photographic technologies by more than a decade, Sontag notes that Goya’s Disasters of War (1810–1820) evokes actual atrocities through synthesis (42). These depictions are understood and accepted as testimonial and therefore not beholden to the strict criteria and expectations in relation to notions of fact and evidence that tend to apply to photographic depictions. This assessment by Sontag can be usefully expanded with the assistance of Paul Ricoeur (2004), who has

4  Nina Mickwitz et al. examined the paradigm of witness testimony and truth. ‘With testimony opens up an epistemological process that departs from declared memory, passes through the archive and documents, and finds its fulfillment [sic] in documentary proof’ (Ricoeur 2004, 161). If we understand the key feature of witness testimony as the assertion of the claim ‘I was there’ (Ricoeur 2004, 163), then some of the comics examined in this collection fit the criteria more easily than others. However, the main focus of these enquiries is how the comics in question deal with representing the acts of violence that they are concerned with, and through these manifold examples and approaches we are hopeful that wider ideas about the strategies, capacities and affordances of comics will emerge. The ways in which comics are unlike the images that Sontag is ­concerned with are not reducible to the difference between drawn and lens-derived images. The declaration ‘The image as shock and the image as cliché are two aspects of the same presence’ (Sontag 2003, 20) relates specifically to the single image. Although it is possible for single images involving acts of violence in comics to stand out and demand closer attention, the sequential structures that they commonly are located within would perhaps be expected to affect the dynamic that Sontag highlights here. Elsewhere, she contends that while photographs can haunt us, ‘[n] arratives can make us understand’ (Sontag 2003, 80). Through their sequential and narrative depictions, comics bring a tendency towards specificity, which presumably has the capacity to act as a corrective to the potential of singular images of violence to circulate as decontextualised fragments. Some of the reproaches made against images of atrocity are not different from characterizations of sight itself. Sight is effortless; it requires spatial distance; sight can be turned off (we have lids on our eyes, we do not have doors on our ears). The very qualities that made the ancient Greek philosophers consider sight the most excellent, the noblest of the senses are now associated with a deficit. (Sontag 2003, 105) Such a damning view of vision also reverberates through Paul ­Virilio’s assessment of militarised technologies of vision and technocratic v­ isual cultures (1994, 1997). Indeed, Virilio’s critique of vision could be ­applied to comics as well since they seek to control and constrain our vision (in that they show us the fragments they want us to see). But at the same time, the subjective and situated telling, especially prominent in witnessing and testimonial modes in comics, can be figured as a response to a wider cultural concern, voiced by Virilio’s contention that machine visions are degrading our perception. Such a reading would seem to correlate with the attention to comics that extend an emphatically hand-drawn aesthetic by a number of critics, but most notably

Introduction  5 Hillary Chute (2010, 2016). The extent to which values (and the perceived authenticity) associated with such an emphasis on materiality and idiosyncrasy signify cultural desires, more so than innate qualities, is a topic of ongoing debate. However, overarching questions also arise regarding the reader ­positions offered by the various comics work under scrutiny by our ­authors. In the introduction to their collection The Image and the ­Witness: trauma, memory and visual culture (2007), Frances Guerin and Roger Hallas argue that images, whether drawn by the primary witness who ‘was there’ or not, make available acts of secondary witnessing. The aim of such visual representations that allow readers to ‘see’ rather than merely know can often be to elicit emotional engagement. The capacity to simultaneously express subjectivity and observation, and sustain fluidity between internal states and external situations that the drawn images of comics possess would seem well suited for these purposes. However, even if representations of violent acts invite us to look, they do not necessarily aim to engender moral outrage or present a call to action in order to put a stop to conditions and structures under which violence prevails. the gruesome invites us to be either spectators or cowards, unable to look. Those with the stomach to look are playing a role authorized by many glorious depictions of suffering. Torment, a canonical subject in art, is often represented in painting as a spectacle, something to be watched (or ignored) by other people. The implication is: no, it cannot be stopped – and the mingling of inattentive with attentive onlookers underscores this. (Sontag 2003, 38) This concern is not limited to the representation of actual, historical acts of violence but, as will become apparent, also crops up in relation to fiction. The boundary between factual and fictional modes can indeed be both contested and shifting. However, some distinction can nevertheless be made in terms of how factual and fictional representations of violence position readers and viewers. Perhaps the crucial difference is best captured by comparing an invitation to ‘see this’ with the directive ‘imagine this.’

Violent Fictions and Other Symbolic Resources Fictional depictions of violent acts across different media are pervasive and abundant and, it would seem, accepted and constructed as problematic in almost equal measure. Some representations of violence are ­unapologetic about the spectacle they offer up because, as Martin Barker’s

6  Nina Mickwitz et al. (1989) seminal analysis argued, the violence is presented within a specific context and address. For instance, whether to deliberately shock, antagonise or subvert social codes of propriety and the pretences these involve, or in order to tackle social and political forms of ­violence, genres such as horror (see Benshoff 2014) and the Gothic (Monnet 2016) are known to place the corporeal and spectacular violence at their c­ entre. In a perfect illustration of this idea, Chanokporn ­Chitikamoltham has discussed Thai ‘one-baht comics’ as a form of v­ ernacular culture, ­performing a function of ‘cultural catharsis’ (2014, 46). These comics eschew more rigid restrictions imposed on more respected cultural forms; key factors in their role and the space they are able to offer are constituted by their lowly cultural stature and the genre conventions of horror. Other genres, such as comedy, also include violence according to their own particular conditions. Slapstick traditions, for example, are familiar in both comics and animation and their lineages reach further back into performance, with both human performers and proxies (such as dolls and marionettes). Comics and animation both employ the expressive, ideational and narrative possibilities of drawing, and the satirical and humorous cartooning that feeds into both forms is, of course, evident in the very nomination of comics. So, it is important to note that drawing (that depicts acts of violence) is not always a carrier of testimony that makes a secondary act of witnessing possible. It can equally be employed to present a spectacle of exaggerated gestures of violence without actual consequence. But such representations are not always as easily accepted as under the guise of comedy. Cultural critic Henry Giroux (1995) has drawn a distinction between different kinds of cinematic violence2 that are of interest to our consideration of comics and their engagement with violence in the context of popular visual culture: ritualistic, symbolic and hyperreal depictions. Ritualistic violence is the staple fare of Hollywood action films, in the words of Giroux (1995, 301) ‘utterly banal, predictable, and often stereotypically masculine, and is pure spectacle in form and superficial in content.’ While expressing concern about the impact and (central to his argument, deeply racist) agendas served by the aestheticising of violence, Giroux is clear that blaming media only serves to obscure the systemic social and economic causes that underlie violence in society. In contrast to much media effects discourse he also distinguishes between different kinds of mediated violence in popular entertainment. Thus, symbolic violence differs from its ritualistic counterpart as it ‘attempts to combine the visceral with the reflective’ (ibid, 303) as a means of incorporating elements of social critique. Hyperreal violence is the hyperreal celluloid violence that Tarantino exemplifies, combining explicit gore with hefty doses of parody and ironic detachment. This, for Giroux, is a cynical exercise and one that absolves both producers and audiences positioning the violence offered for their consumption in relation to it ‘as an

Introduction  7 e­ stablished social practice’ (Giroux 1995, 309). While researchers more ­concerned with actual reception and engagement by readers and audiences (Barker and Petley 2002) are likely to remain unimpressed, Scott Kirsch (2002) has used Giroux’s ideas in order to expand a more encompassing notion of spectacular violence. He proposes that the ­problem with hyperreal violence is not, as with ritualistic violence, a total lack of engagement with reality but an over-engagement with, or rather focus on, criminal or street violence at such a narrow and intense scale of resolution that we tend to lose track of all else. (Kirsch 2002, 37) While the cinematic experience differs fundamentally to that of reading comics, some of the core questions brought to the fore in these discussions are related to how violence is depicted and presented, and how acts of violence are given context within a system of signification. And such quandaries are precisely what guide the chapters in this collection and their authors’ examination of the diverse comics and graphic novels that form its corpus. According to Kirsch, spectacular violence encompasses graphic depictions of violence, the threat of violence and a fascination with it. But, he argues, spectacular, gratuitous and commodified violence nevertheless does not inevitably mean that the representation as a whole is devoid of moral compass. The continued prevalence of violence in popular culture forms and debates concerning it, whether cinematic, in games or in comics, suggest that these are questions that resist easy resolution. It is also worth remembering that social hierarchies of both people and forms of culture play a considerable role in where and when violence as spectacle is sanctioned and when it is censored (Schechter 2005, 1–14). This might help explain why historically violence in comics has been a contested issue in a way that it would be difficult to imagine in relation to violence in forms that have come to command comparatively high cultural status: for example Shakespeare’s plays and the opera. In other words, the ways in which comics are understood as depicting acts of violence, as well as the conventions, means and expectations at their disposal, are clearly part of a wider cultural terrain. Together, the chapters in this book set out a variety of approaches, fact-based as well as fictional, and multifaceted considerations to representing violent acts in comics.

The Structure of This Volume Section 1: Depiction Considering the questions outlined earlier in this introduction, depiction itself is a suitable place to begin. It is probably fair to say that some

8  Nina Mickwitz et al. of the best known endeavours to theorise the formal components and affordances of comics, Thierry Groensteen’s The System of Comics (2007 [1999]) and Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics (1993), still remain the touchstone contributions. This is irrespective of the fact that the poetics and formal dynamics of comics have since been e­ lucidated in numerous more specific textual analyses. Such treatments have been ­prolific in works contributing insights in terms of specific aspects, including text-image relations (Kannenberg 2001), comics ­temporalities (Bartual 2012; Gunning 2014), spatial construction (Bredehoft 2006; Peeters 2007; Lefèvre 2009; Dittmer 2010), drawing style (Baetens 2011; ­Gardner 2011), narrative drawing (Grennan 2017) and colour (Baetens 2011). Unsurprisingly, every chapter in this book engages with issues relating to depiction and representation as encountered in their various case studies of representing acts of violence in comics. In the chapters in the very first section, however, the authors’ analytical efforts and critical searchlights are particularly trained on comics creators’ strategic uses of formal capacities as they represent violent acts. The authors all undertake close and attentive analyses in order to ascertain how rhetorical means are applied and formal means are utilised in order to construct positions of meaning-making, especially in relation to profoundly t­ raumatic acts of violence. At the same time, the comics under scrutiny in the three chapters in this section represent distinct historical and cultural contexts as well as diversity in terms of approach and genre affiliation. In the opening chapter, John Miers examines Keiji Nakasawa’s ­Barefoot Gen, a semi-autobiographical account of the nuclear assault on ­Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 as well as its aftermath and its ­consequences for the population on the ground. He observes how ­momentous geopolitical events are addressed by retaining ­narrative ­focus strictly on close and familial interactions, and argues that ­Nakasawa strategically employs genre conventions of Shõnen manga (a genre largely aimed at teenage boys, within which action, adventure and war are prominent themes) to present a resolutely anti-war message. Zanne Domoney-Lyttle’s chapter takes as its focus the symbolic ‘first’ murder in the biblical story of Cain’s slaughter of his younger brother, Abel. Here the author examines the interpretation and visual ­exegesis of this story in three very different comics: The Book of Genesis ­Illustrated by R. Crumb (2009), Siku’s The Manga Bible (2009) and The ­Goddamned by Aaron and Guéra (2017). The process demonstrates how their various approaches construe not only significantly differing understandings of the events taking place but implicit understandings about transgression, responsibility and punishment as they relate to this profound act of extreme violence. The third chapter in this section is by Laurike in ‘t Veld and explores how Jaxon’s story ‘Nits Make Lice,’ which appeared in a special

Introduction  9 issue of the underground magazine Slow Death Comix (1976–1977), ­performs a tricky balancing act between entertainment, educational impulse, ­political commentary and agitprop confrontation. The author also ­attends to the magazine’s connecting role between an underground tradition revelling in its excesses and the more restrained treatments of collective and personal trauma that have flourished more recently. Of particular relevance to the theme of depiction is the author’s concern with ‘­atrocity-panels’ and their function in representing acts of historical violence. Section 2: Embodiment The second section in the book is embodiment, a concept that ­potentially provides a way out from, with reference to the earlier quote by ­Sontag (2003, 38), the impasse of either consuming suffering bodies as s­ pectacular visions or looking away. Understanding how violence is ­enacted upon bodies first requires some understanding of bodies that goes beyond essentialist definitions. Citing Foucault’s work as an ­influential contributor to these reconceptualisations of the body, or (underscoring distancing from a universal conception) bodies, Thomas Csordas (1994) has outlined critical contributions that render the notion of bodies as ahistorical, fixed or bounded untenable. As described here, ‘“the body” has come to be understood as simultaneously subject and object, meaningful and material, individual and social’ (Mascia-Lees 2011, 1). The critical category of embodiment responds to the insight that while ‘constituted by, and constitutive of, political and economic formations’ (ibid, 2), bodies are inseparable from lived experience and prime sites for the contestation of self and identity. Structural violence, and the violence of war in particular, multiplies the bodies involved and subjected. At such a scale experiential aspects, ­ ecome all-consuming and traumatic for those involved as they may be, b difficult to make comprehensible through acts of communication: for ­example, representation. To overcome such challenges, one ­available route is to focus on individual experiences that function through synecdoche—­one part standing for a larger collective. The chapters in this section focus on comics that have opted for a different strategy. Both Laura E. Pearson and Eszter Szép have chosen as their focus comics that remake formal precepts and conventional ­formats in order to communicate how violent conflict engages social and lived bodies. In doing so they simultaneously draw attention to reading experience as situated, culturally coded and multisensory (Hague 2014): in other words an embodied process. Laura A. Pearson’s chapter explores multiple sites of cultural and ­ecological violence in Red: A Haida Manga. On the surface, this is the tragic coming of age tale of the eponymous protagonist, Red. Yet the

10  Nina Mickwitz et al. story and its presentation eschew the naturalism that would identify it as a representative individual narrative. Red is instead an allegory about the destructive power of fear and its cost to individuals, communities and the environment. Originally composed as a composite mural of what creator Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas terms ‘Haida Manga’ and subsequently reconstructed as a graphic novel, Red is an embodiment of transcultural narrative. Pearson’s analysis shows how Red’s formal innovation and intertextuality combines storytelling techniques associated with the Pacific Northwest and critical commentary indicting ­anthropocentric structures of domination and war that are both historic and ongoing. Eszter Szép’s chapter examines another work that uses unconventional formal means to communicate the violence of war. Joe Sacco’s The Great War narrates the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, in a series of seamlessly interwoven wordless images. Twenty-four-feet long, the work is folded into twenty-four plates and requires the reader to adapt her/his physical and embodied engagement with it accordingly. For Szép this format establishes an awareness of the situatedness and vulnerability of the reader’s own body, creating a vital connection based on vulnerability between the reader and the bodies represented by Sacco’s painstaking and detailed drawing. Section 3: Humour Recent scholarship has often privileged autobiographical, testimonial and documentary approaches, such as Sacco’s, as prime sites where the representation of violence and critical reflection on the violence of ­representation intersect (Adams 2008; Rifkind 2008; Chute 2016). ­Taking on ‘serious’ topics has played a part in comics’ being taken more seriously, and this validation in part undergirded the swell of critical attention (in mainstream media and academe alike) to such comics. Notably less attention has been awarded to comics that are funny— whether daft, deadpan or exponents of slapstick gags. Even critics in established and respected fields such as sociology (Lockyer and Pickering 2008) and art history (Diack 2012) have felt it necessary to defend humour as a worthwhile subject of study. ‘Topics considered light or ephemeral, playful or derisive, have generally been seen as aesthetically problematic in their unseriousness and have therefore been rejected as antithetical’ (Diack 2012 75). This judgement also describes some of the challenges faced by Comics Studies, carving out a space with variable institutional support. It is perhaps small wonder that comics scholars have yet to explore this seemingly obvious aspect of comics in a more concerted way. That humour is a crucial element in caricature and satire alike has been recognised in some important work on comics histories (Berger 1970; Kunzle 1983; Sabin 2014). Yet the complex means and

Introduction  11 uses of humour in diverse genres of comics, contemporary as well as historical, offer rich opportunities for further exploration, and we are pleased to present a section looking at the intersection of humour and violence in comics. Although much effort has been made to establish that comics are not just for children, we should remember that children nevertheless ­constitute an important demographic, with titles aimed squarely at young readers. Christopher J. Thompson’s chapter turns attention to Dennis the Menace, a leading character in the longest-running B ­ ritish comics periodical for children, The Beano (1938). Grounding his ­analysis in ­historical debates around violence in comics, the author proceeds to unpack power relations between children and adults in the comic. He proposes that play (involving both humour and violence) here offers a vital resource and space for not just challenging authority but more ­profoundly subverting it. The second chapter in this section explores how humour provides a strategic means in comics to tackle domestic abuse and sexual violence. Nicola Streeten applies theories of humour in order to understand a range of different approaches, selected to represent a wide spectrum of acts and behaviour that constitute this category. The chosen texts in this chapter all feature female protagonists, and the analysis probes the strategies taken by creators in relation to complex issues of long-term repercussions, victimhood and agency as well as their decisions to steer clear of explicit depictions. Drawing, as it does significantly, on theories of humour in its analysis of gendered and sexual violence, this chapter bridges the concerns of this section and the next. Section 4: Gendered Violence The pervasiveness of sexual violence, whether as a deliberate tactic of military aggression or insidiously concealed in the everyday of domestic and workplace contexts, is both a highly topical issue and a long-­standing one. And while the comics in Nicola Streeten’s chapter deliberately eschew such depictions, visual representation of sexual violence is commonplace across popular culture forms. Such imagery raises contentious issues of voyeuristic pleasures, the production and reproduction of rape culture (Horeck 2004; Projansky 2001), and thus the idea mentioned earlier of acts of representation as enacted violence. ­Moreover, depictions of sexual violence have historically been used to serve ideological agendas, as exemplified by colonialist imagery and sexualised racism (­Bhattacharyya 2008). Orientalist tropes passed as standard fare in many adventure comics of the early and mid-20th century, from threats posed to white protagonists by tribes of ‘savages’ to exoticist depictions of sheiks and harems. Such cultural imaginaries are stubbornly persistent, as highlighted by, for example, Craig Thompson’s graphic novel Habibi.

12  Nina Mickwitz et al. Gender certainly figures as an important factor and consideration in depictions of sexual violence. However, gendered violence is not reducible to sexual violence. When considering gender in this, as in many other contexts, it is useful to note the, by now well-established, argument that gender is far from biological, intrinsic or ‘natural’ but ‘a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practice’ (Haraway 1991, 155). Following Judith Butler (1990) we can elaborate this social practice in terms of performative means and ritualistic and everyday differentiations and identifications. The deconstruction of gender fundamentally questions and upturns the notion of gender as natural or inevitable and has opened up important discursive spaces. Yet this does not lessen the meaning of gender as ­structural and symbolic or its profound impact in terms of lived experience. Highly ­pertinent to the topic at hand is Karen Boyle’s (2004) ­observation that cultural attitudes to violence are themselves highly gendered. The ­chapters on this, the concluding section of the book, ­elaborate ­notions of gender and ­gendered violence in a variety of ways, taking in a breadth of ­material that covers mid-1980s Alan Moore, 21st-century post-­ apocalyptic fantasy-­horror and Marvel’s superhero multiverse. Each chapter contributes to a nuanced understanding of how fiction can allow pressing societal issues to be brought into critical focus. The first chapter in this section is Maggie Gray’s exploration of gender and violence in The Ballad of Halo Jones. Gray locates Alan Moore’s comic strip, which originally featured in 2000AD (1984–1986), and its eponymous heroine in the feminist discourse of its time. She argues that Moore sought to challenge the limited repertoire and stereotypically two-dimensional female characters that were dominant, both in mainstream comics and 2000AD, at that time. The strip thus offers not just a female protagonist but a distinctly female perspective. The Halo Jones serial uses critical estrangement, an instrument that is well established in science fiction genres, and Gray’s reading traces themes such as structural violence in the everyday, the violence of poverty, symbolic and gendered violence, and military and political structures of violence inherent to colonial expansion. Following on from this, Joseph Willis analyses the way in which the roles of black female characters are constructed in the post-­apocalyptic worlds of Y: The Last Man and The Walking Dead. Willis’s chapter ­argues that these characters, as they draw on particular racialised and gendered sociopolitical histories, become sites of particular resistance and struggle. Yet the exposition of their bodies made into powerful ­instruments with an enhanced capacity for violence is fraught with tension. In Willis’s reading these black female bodies become fighting machines employed to ensure the survival of other, and predominantly white and male, survivors. This suggests that while they are embodiments of opposition and action, they are ultimately cast as disposable.

Introduction  13 Richard Reynolds and Jamie Brassett complete the collection with their chapter ‘Killgrave: the purple man.’ Killgrave is the mind controlling Marvel supervillain who first appeared in Daredevil in 1964 but has more recently resurfaced in the comic book series Alias and the 2015 Netflix show Jessica Jones. Standing apart from other supervillains due to his lack of ulterior aims or agenda, the authors propose that Killgrave’s violations are motivated only by his own desire for control over his victims. In order to bring to light the workings and meanings that Killgrave encompasses, the chapter first connects him with the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814), the French libertine philosopher and writer known for dismissing moral and social constraints, and advocating the pleasures of domination over others. Using Gilles Deleuze’s discussion of Sade then provides a bridge to notions of institutional power control, allowing the discussion to locate Killgrave in relation to Foucault’s notion of biopower and biopolitical violence. The chapters in this book thus engage with the representation of acts of violence in a range of comics genres and formats. The approaches of the authors are equally varied. In some chapters the significance of specific sociopolitical and historical contexts is particularly acutely brought into view. In others, and signalling a plurality of perspectives and scholarly concerns, a variety of theoretical frameworks are employed to develop analysis of examples. Such strident multiplicity perfectly underscores the editorial intentions of this contribution. Alongside its companion volume Contexts of Violence in Comics and in its own right, we hope that this collection convincingly demonstrates the relationship between comics and violence as one of nuance and complexity.

Notes 1 For a more detailed account of events leading up to the setting up of the Comics Code Authority, as an instrument of self-regulation and c­ ensorship by the US comics industry in 1954, see the introduction to Contexts of ­Violence in Comics (2019). 2 That Giroux offers his analysis of cultures of violence in connection with an analysis of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994) makes it all the more ­fitting, considering this the graphic depictions of violence in Tarantino’s films tend to be characterized as ‘cartoonish.’

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Depiction

1 Picturing National and Personal Acts of Violence Modes of Depiction in Barefoot Gen John Miers Introduction: Gen, Genre, and Metaphor Keiji Nakazawa’s semi-autobiographical story about surviving the ­detonation of an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, on 6 August 1945, Barefoot Gen (Nakazawa 2005a, 2005b), responds to a violent act of geopolitics but focusses primarily on the depiction of smaller-scale responses to this act rather than the spectacular manifestation of war that motivated its production. It presents a strongly anti-war message, and does so, I will argue, not by subverting the conventions of the often violence-heavy genre to which it belongs, but by adhering to them. As Roger Sabin (2006) has documented, when Barefoot Gen was first made available to an anglophone audience, the context of its ­initial ­publication was unknown in the West. The manga was translated by Project Gen, an anti-nuclear organisation that sought to position it as a carrier of countercultural messages that could be aligned with the ­anti-Vietnam war protest movement in the USA and more broadly with left-wing discourse. For the first two years of its publication in Japan (1973–1975), however, it ran in Shōnen Jump magazine (Yū and Tomoyuki 2006), an anthology aimed at teenage boys, and appeared alongside war comics that celebrated military hardware and heroism. As Sabin explains, Though it may seem strange to readers in the US and UK today, Gen appears to have been promoted as a war comic, a ‘ripping yarn’, and appeared accompanied by advertisements for war toys . . . Evidently, war was perceived to be ‘cool’ amongst youngsters in Japan in the early 1970s, as it was in Britain and the US, and this was one way of marketing the comic. (2006, 41) Itō Yū and Omote Tomoyuki (2006) observe that violence was a ­significant theme in the stories published in Shōnen Jump, and that given the frequent depictions of violence in Barefoot Gen, it ‘could have been read as a form of spectacular visual entertainment irrespective of the

20  John Miers messages embedded in its representational content’ (ibid, 28). They suggest that, for its initial readership at least, its pacifist message may well have been de-emphasised in favour of a focus on themes that were more commonly highlighted in manga aimed at teenage boys: ‘Barefoot Gen seems to convey rather the importance of living true to one’s beliefs, ­referring less to society in the main than to the individual’ (ibid). The ideas of self-reliance and remaining true to one’s beliefs, and of rejection of ideas about the value or nobility of war, cannot be fully separated in Barefoot Gen, however; rather, they are introduced alongside one another. In the first volume, the majority of which takes place before the atomic bomb is dropped, a central plot line is the refusal of Gen’s father, Daikichi, to engage in military training. On pp. 9–13 Nakazawa presents a sequence in which Daikichi arrives at a training exercise drunk and flatulent. His initial impertinence, which draws laughter from his fellow trainees, is soon replaced by a more strident critique of the purpose of the military training: ‘Japan has no business fighting a war!’ (Nakazawa 2005a, 13), he says to the neighbourhood Chairman leading the training, and, in a theme that will be restated by both him and Gen numerous times throughout the manga, ‘The military was misled by the rich. They started the war to grab resources by force, and drew us all in’ (ibid). Daikichi leaves the training session branded a ‘traitor’ by his colleagues and commanding officer. The resulting stigma follows the Naokoka family throughout Volume 1 and is used as a justification for repeated acts of violence against members of the family, the first of which occurs when the Chairman’s son and a group of his friends pelt Gen, his brother Shinji and his sister Eiko with rocks, while they are delivering a wagon full of clogs made by Daikichi to a wholesaler. Nevertheless, Daikichi’s resilient adherence to his pacifist principles—he refuses to accept the validity of the war, arguing ‘It’s because I love Japan that I’m against the war’ (ibid, 32) while being beaten by the local police chief—is celebrated, even as it brings persecution to his family. In this, Barefoot Gen again conforms to genre conventions. As Yū and Tomoyuki observe, ‘Such father figures who taught the way ‘true men ought to live’ were common in boys’ manga at that time’ (2006, 28). In an analysis of the way in which Captain America comics reflect ­post-9/11 geopolitics, Jason Dittmer highlights the use of fictional ­characters to create structures of expectations, which ‘influence how people from a region interpret new information or situations’ (2005, 627). Daikichi and Captain America are, in a sense, diametrically ­opposed with regard to their ideological positions: the Captain is ­explicitly ­presented as an embodiment of the USA, while Daikichi rejects ­nationalism. Yet he phrases this rejection as a result of his patriotism and thereby makes a claim to true ‘Japaneseness.’ Dittmer quotes Captain America editor Axel Alonso’s comment in a radio interview that ‘our responsibility as writers, artists, editors and creators is to create narratives

Picturing National and Personal Acts of Violence  21 that have a point, that entertain and seek to do something more, perhaps educate on some level’ (ibid) and remarks that ‘through the medium of their comic book, these men help create structures of expectations that consequently influence the way readers view the world and locate their own place as Americans within it’ (ibid). Although the relationship to national identity is constructed differently in both examples, Nakazawa and Alonso share compatible aims in the comics they create. Structures of expectation are constructed through character archetypes that are salient within their respective genres—the superhero in American boys’ comics, the strong father figure in Shōnen manga. The guidance Daikichi gives to his sons is summed up in a metaphor presented on the first page of Barefoot Gen. As the manga opens, they are working in the family field, tending to their crop of wheat, which, we are told by the opening caption, ‘pushes its shoots up through the winter frost, only to be stepped on again and again’ (Nakazawa 2005a, 1). Daikichi explicitly highlights the wheat’s resilience as a quality to be emulated: ‘Boys, I want you to grow up just like this wheat grows,’ he says, to which Shinji replies, ‘I know, grow strong even if we’re stepped on’ (Panel 7). The image of wheat is conventionalised as a symbol of resilience both within Barefoot Gen itself and its paratextual material: the first three panels of the manga present images of wheat removed from the specific narrative context established on the rest of the page, highlighting its allegorical nature. Gen appears holding an ear of wheat on the cover of the Last Gasp edition of Volume 3, and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum sells booklets that combine information about Nakazawa and his work with instructions on how to grow wheat, attached to which are actual ears of wheat (de la Iglesia 2016). This visual metaphor is an example of what Richard Wollheim (1987) calls pictures ‘that have metaphors as their [. . . ] textual content’ (ibid, 308). ‘Textual’ here refers to the fact that, despite being realised in visual form, the metaphor is interpreted in much the same way as a ­linguistic metaphor: we first recognise the depicted subjects of a ­picture—on ­Barefoot Gen page 1, the image of an ear of wheat in Panel 3, and the images of Gen and Shinji in Panels 4–8—and then, in the terminology employed by Max Black (1993), project properties of the metaphor’s secondary subject on to its primary subject. In this case, the Naokoka children are the primary subject, wheat is the secondary subject and the property projected is resilience. For Wollheim, however, there is a more fundamental type of visual metaphor, which he identifies as pictures ‘that are metaphors.’ In these cases, the projection of properties from one subject to another is not a matter of second-order signification, but is an inherent part of our recognition of depicted subjects in the marked surface of a picture. Wollheim uses the term ‘seeing-in’ to describe the twofold nature of the phenomenology of looking at pictures: ‘depictive seeing’ does not involve

22  John Miers identifying the subjects of a depiction and then attributing properties to them (Miers 2018); rather, seeing-in ‘permits unlimited simultaneous attention to what is seen and to the features of the medium’ (Wollheim 1980, 212). As Phillip Rawson puts it, the marks that constitute a drawing imbue the subjects they define with ‘analogous forms from quite other fields of experience’ (1969, 26). Thus, if when looking at the first page of Barefoot Gen, we observe that the marks that define the bodies of the Naokokas are lines that appear to have been executed with fluid, relatively rapid strokes, whereas the image of the corn in Panel 3 is constructed from solid areas of black that have a more static, monumental quality, our recognition of the subjects of these pictures is simultaneously accompanied by an attribution of these properties to those subjects. I argue in this chapter that the drawing styles employed to depict ­violence in Barefoot Gen create visual metaphors that embody the ­rejection of militaristic nationalism, and the emphasis on self-reliance and resilience, described earlier. In doing so I draw on an analysis ­presented by Thomas Lamarre (2011), which focusses on a distinction between what he calls ‘plastic’ and ‘structural’ lines, and which makes the broader argument that Barefoot Gen’s drawing style underscores its anti-war message by adhering to, rather than subverting, the graphic conventions of Shōnen manga. I also argue that Barefoot Gen’s tension between imposed discipline and its violent disruption is characteristic of narrative drawing more broadly.

Interpersonal Violence in Barefoot Gen With the exception of a scene in which atomic bomb survivors throw rocks at the corpse of an American soldier (Nakazawa 2005b, 22–23), and of course the atomic bomb itself, depictions of acts of violence between citizens of the warring nations of Japan and the USA are rare in the first two volumes of Barefoot Gen. Instead, interpersonal acts of violence are exchanged between Japanese citizens and are framed within ideological debates regarding the validity of war, whether between antagonists on opposing sides, as in the ambush just described, or within the Naokoka family. Domestic violence is a frequent occurrence in Barefoot Gen. Some of the scenes in which Daikichi knocks his sons about while imparting moral instruction seem strikingly incongruous in the mismatch between depicted actions and spoken dialogue. A notable example is found in Volume 1, pages 89–90. In this sequence, Daikichi is enraged because his eldest son, Koji, plans to volunteer to join the navy. Daikichi objects strongly to this idea, for reasons that by this point in the manga are familiar to the reader, and accompanies the delivery of his arguments with vigorous blows to his son’s head. He slaps Koji in the face while exclaiming, ‘Idiot! I didn’t raise you to become a murderer!’ (89, Panel 6)

Picturing National and Personal Acts of Violence  23 and punches him forcefully while reminding him that ‘A handful of rich men started this war! They didn’t consult us!’ (90, Panel 3). If the presentation of vigorous corporal punishment as an unremarkable aspect of familial debates is shocking to Western readers, the formal relationships between dialogue and depicted actions in sequences such as this will nevertheless be familiar to readers of superhero comics, in which antagonists frequently conduct lengthy discussions in the midst of battle. From the perspective of the conventions of boys’ war comics, we can draw a distinction between the depictions of interpersonal acts of violence and larger-scale acts of war, and the graphic conventions that are used in depicting both types of conflict. In a summary of the history and conventions of Shōnen manga, Angela Drummond-Matthews describes the way in which boys’ manga in the 1960s often began their development of more serious themes by ‘adding scatological humour, sexual situations, and graphic violence’ (2010, 63) to the repertoire of topics covered by the ‘gag manga’ that had been predominant in children’s manga in the preceding decade. Robin Brenner observes that even in manga that focus on serious themes, depictions of violence may draw on the traditions of slapstick humour that characterise much Shōnen manga. In slapstick conventions, ‘the superhuman ability of characters to avoid blows or to take harsh blows and pop right back up again are indicators that a fight is not serious, nor should the reader be worried about any true damage to these elastic characters’ (Brenner 2007, 100). This is not to say that depictions of violence in Barefoot Gen should be taken as inconsequential—far from it—but the elasticity identified by Brenner is emphasised when acts of violence are pictured, and this is at its strongest during moments of what Art Spiegelman, in his ­introduction to the first volume, calls ‘casual violence’ (2005, ii) amongst members of the Naokoka family. The very first page of Barefoot Gen, for ­example, ­concludes with a panel in which Daikichi punches both Gen and his younger brother Shinji on the tops of their heads while exclaiming, ‘You scamps!’ (Nakazawa 2005a, 1). The force of the blows is e­ mphasised by motion lines and ‘impact flashes’ (Potsch and Williams 2012) surrounding the children’s heads like haloes. The mood in the panel, however, is light and humorous. The mouths of all three characters are contorted into grimaces that are close to grins, and Gen and Shinji each raise one leg in a stylised motion that is also used to ­signal excitement or joy (for example, Nakazawa 2005a, 170, Panel 9; 240, Panels 8–9). Lamarre explicitly positions such moments as bearing the influence of what he calls a ‘lighter’ modality of violence found in the work of Osamu ­Tezuka, a lineage ‘which drew inspiration from ­slapstick, gag strips, Hollywood films, and Disney animations’ (2010, 290). Lamarre distinguishes sequences such as this from ones in which members of the Naokoka family fight with other groups or individuals, as in the aforementioned ambush. By the end of this sequence, Gen has blood running

24  John Miers down his face after being hit on the head with a rock, and his assailants are fleeing in response to Gen biting off the tip of one of their fingers. Incidents such as these, where the intention is to harm rather than to ­discipline, and the results of violent acts are more palpable, are described by Lamarre as darker modalities, ‘inspired by European and Japanese New Wave cinema, as well as crime fiction’ (ibid).

Scales of Violence and Styles of Drawing Nevertheless, the plasticity of characters in both modalities remains ­consistent: motion lines and impact flashes are used liberally, bodies twist themselves into exaggerated poses and faces are contorted into a variety of emphatic grimaces and howls. ‘[W]e don’t feel any radical d ­ isjuncture between these two modalities,’ Lamarre argues (ibid, 291), because both adhere to the graphic conventions of Shōnen manga, in which a cause and effect logic is produced by ‘an economy of action that serves to ­coordinate or compose various forces, which are figured in terms of kinds of violence stretched between lighter and darker ­modalities’ (ibid, 292). In the terms used by Dittmer, such relatively small-scale acts of violence provide scripts that contribute to structures of e­ xpectations that support Barefoot Gen’s pacifist message: the graphic forces arranged on the page are understood as a metaphor for the interplay of opposing views regarding how one should act when asked to fight on behalf of a government. These views are embodied in the figures of the combatants, and the principled resilience of the Naokoka family in upholding their pacifist views reinforces the reader’s impression that these views are the ones endorsed by the manga. The distinction between ‘light’ and ‘dark’ modalities of violence in Barefoot Gen, however, is subsumed beneath a much starker distinction between types of violent activity. While both modalities are comprehensible through a cause and effect logic, the composition of forces in such scenes is haunted by ‘the possibility of “pure violence” that escapes the logic of cause and effect, action and reaction’ (ibid). The key instance of this ‘pure violence’ in Barefoot Gen is, of course, the atomic bomb itself, but this lack of logic is attributed to the actions of the Japanese and American military machines more broadly. The graphic styles used to depict such moments of pure violence in Barefoot Gen also differ markedly from the elastic and energetic lines that render the smaller-scale acts of violence. Lamarre’s analysis pivots around two distinctions between aspects of Nakazawa’s drawing style, and the graphic conventions of Shōnen manga more broadly. The first is the distinction between what Lamarre calls the ‘plastic line’ or ‘cartoon line,’ which operates as a trace of a gesture, possesses its own internal force and therefore ‘doesn’t have to be subordinated to a form in order to exert an effect’ (ibid, 278), and the

Picturing National and Personal Acts of Violence  25 ‘“structural line,’ which ‘encourages a subordination of lines to forms, and forms to structures’ (ibid). Lamarre’s plastic line, then, produces meaning in a manner similar to Phillipe Marion’s concept of ­graphiation, at least to the extent that ‘it is only by acknowledging and identifying the graphic trace or index of the artist that the reader can fully understand the message of the work’ (Baetens 2001, 149); we a­ ttend to the apparent impulse that has produced a line, and the network of what Rudolf Arnheim (1974) calls ‘perceptual forces’ that it creates, and these indexical and figural properties are meaningful in themselves, independent of the form to whose depiction they contribute. The structural line, by contrast, is meaningful inasmuch as it contributes to the presentation of a recognisable form within the picture, and to the subordination of individual pictures to the larger spatio-­topical apparatus in which they operate, in the case of the structural lines that form the borders of panels. If this distinction is based in broader ­considerations of how drawn marks produce meaning in comics, the second distinction Lamarre draws, between the ‘cartoon’ and ‘mecha’ styles, refers more directly to what is depicted. In making this distinction he draws on Ōtsuka Eiji’s (2008) analysis of Osamu Tezuka’s wartime manga. In these comics, military hardware and industrial equipment are depicted with exacting detail and rendered in precise linear perspective, while bodies are rendered with what Eiji describes as ‘Disney-­ esque ­antirealism’ (ibid, 120). This antirealism is what Lamarre calls the ‘­cartoon style’: it emphasises the plastic line, which, in turn, emphasises the ­resilience of bodies and their ability to spring back into life after physical injury. As Eiji observes, Even when Mickey [Mouse] falls from a cliff and is squashed flat into the ground, he reappears in the next scene without a scratch. This “undying” or “deathless” physicality is one of the legacies of Hollywood in anime, which comes via Disney. (ibid, 118) If the cartoon style bears the influence of the nation responsible for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the ‘mecha’ style, the term Lamarre uses to refer to the depictions of military hardware, has its origins in Japanese militarism. Eiji notes that the use of perspective-based realism was first used in modern Japan ‘at the demand of the Army and Navy as a drafting technique’ (ibid, 120). Art schools were brought under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry immediately following the Meiji Restoration of 1868; perspectival techniques were further developed during the Sino-Japanese War of 1904–1905 and ‘became the preferred ideology for drawing and painting in times of war and, in the course of the Fifteen-Year Asia-Pacific War, came to be sought after in manga too’ (ibid). Bryce and Davis also observe that the depiction

26  John Miers of military hardware in Shōnen manga serves a nationalistic function: manga that depicted Japanese pilots and planes in aerial battles ‘were collective acts of memorialization eliding the trauma of crushing national defeat through fixation on the technology of planes and the heroic bravery and sacrifice of their Japanese pilots’ (2010, 50). The co-presence of contrasting graphic regimes that either emphasise the subjugation of the figure to the machinery of societal discipline or invoke the individual’s resistance to it is not unique to Barefoot Gen. Scott Bukatman (2006) observes a similar tension in the work of Winsor McCay, and in early 20th-century American comics more broadly. The machinery that is disrupted in his examples is not that of war but that of industrialised labour. Bukatman argues that American comics of this period were strongly influenced by Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey’s uses of photography to ‘capture and display the stages that comprise the continuum of movement’ (ibid, 87). This display of regulated movement was ‘innately bound’ (ibid, 95) to the regulation of bodily activity demanded by Fordist industrialised production. McCay’s comic strip Little Sammy Sneeze displays in each of its six-panel episodes the meticulous development of a delicate process: a table is laid, a pool shot is lined up and goods are piled high in a supermarket. Invariably, in Panel 4 Sammy’s mouth is deformed into a wide gape, and in Panel 5 he unleashes a mighty ‘CHOW’ that irreparably disrupts the proceedings: the force of his sneeze sends objects, animals and people flying, turning efficient motion into chaos. In an example more closely aligned to this chapter’s focus on the properties of lines, Bukatman describes a passage from McCay’s animation Watch Me Move in which the impish character Flip blows a plume of cigar smoke, rendered in flowing, voluptuous lines, directly at the viewer. In such moments, which amount to ‘a pie thrown in the face of instrumental reason’ (ibid, 99), characters elude ‘the rigidity of the chronophotograph’ (ibid, 100). The effect of these disruptions is parodic. Charles Hatfield, however, identifies a more substantial coincidence of rejection of both structural lines and militarism in his analysis of Jack Kirby’s comic The Pact (Kirby 1972). It depicts a war in which destructive machines of ­ever-­increasing scale are employed by the warring nations of Apokolips and New ­Genesis, which Hatfield argues is ‘surely a post-WWII moment, with Metron [inventor of the war machines] standing in for the bombmakers and rocket-scientists of Kirby’s own lifetime’ (Hatfield 2011, ­219–220). In the aftermath, Izaya, the leader of New Genesis, renounces war, and, like Gen and his family, seeks to reject its influence through a ­reassertion of individual identity. At the emotional peak of this sequence Izaya is shown in close-up in a borderless panel, screaming his own name, his face rendered in sweeping brush marks that communicate the energy of their own production as much as the details of humanoid features. As Hatfield puts it, ‘almost nothing remains to define his face

Picturing National and Personal Acts of Violence  27 except so many violent ink-strokes’ (ibid, 221–223). If the process of ­narrative drawing—segmenting narrative material into pages, panels and ­balloons—implies the imposition of a rationalising structure, the production of the marks that fill those segmented spaces always offers the possibility of escape.

Visual Analysis: Barefoot Gen Volume 1, pp. 103–106 While the co-presence of the opposing graphic regimes of the plastic-line cartoon style and structural-line mecha style is frequently employed throughout Barefoot Gen, it is, as indicated by its opening focus on ­Daikichi’s rejection of the validity of the war, emphatically not nationalistic, at least not in the sense of celebrating the bravery and sacrifice of Japanese soldiers. Equally, although bodies are plastic, they have nothing approaching Mickey Mouse’s invulnerability: bodies are traumatised by hunger and depredation, and more obviously by the effects of the bomb itself. In the pages immediately following its detonation, the reader is presented with harrowing sequences in which victims stagger around trailing their skin as if it were a loincloth (Nakazawa 2005b, 87), or lose their hair and control of their bodily functions as they succumb to the effects of radiation sickness (ibid, 34–35). Figures 1.1–1.3 demonstrate the distinction between these two ­depictive regimes and the rhetorical purposes each serves. In these pages, the Naokokas are battling the neighbourhood Chairman, while American planes are bombing the nearby city of Iwakuni. On the preceding pages, an air-raid siren has been sounded, and the Chairman, accompanied by two soldiers, has ordered Daikichi to put out the lights in his house. Daikichi, angered by the way his family has been treated by the local military authorities, and by the more recent departure of his eldest son for the navy, responds by saying, ‘Grrr. . . Damn you, Chairman’ (Nakazawa 2005a, 102, Panel 2), ‘You turned my son from a human being into a killing machine . . . You damn murderer! I’ll beat you to a pulp!!’ (ibid, Panels 5–6). The distinction Daikichi draws between ­human beings and ‘killing machines’ is visually reinforced over the three pages reproduced here. In the first three panels of Figure 1.1, we see Gen and Daikichi engaged in combat with the Chairman and his men. Slapstick cartoon conventions dominate these three pictures: sweeping motion lines reinforce the vigour with which Gen implausibly leaps onto the shoulders of one of the soldiers, and with which Daikichi strikes the Chairman in the back. In Panel 1, Gen leaps forward with arms aloft and an expression of glee as he exclaims, ‘Go, Papa, go! I’ll help you!,’ and in Panel 2 he appears to bite, with suddenly enlarged teeth, into the skull of one of the soldiers. This image in particular is difficult to interpret literally as a coherent moment of physical conflict; instead, it obeys a sort of cartoon physics. The vector of Gen’s movement in the

28  John Miers

Figure 1.1  N  akazawa, Keiji. 2005a. Barefoot Gen Volume One: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima, p. 103. © Keiji Nakazawa. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Last Gasp.

previous panel does not seem to have granted him enough height to land directly on the shoulders of an adult male. It is difficult to ­discern ­exactly what bodily movement is being emphasised by the elliptical ­motion line. The large teardrops emitted from the soldier’s eyes seem as if they are being squeezed out by the pressure Gen is exerting on the top of his head with his teeth and right hand, and on his neck with his left hand.

Picturing National and Personal Acts of Violence  29 No backgrounds are drawn in these panels. The focus in Panels 1–3 is ­entirely on the bodies of the opposing parties as they engage in acts of interpersonal violence that serve as manifestations of the ideological ­dispute introduced in the book’s opening pages, and in Panel 5, the focus is on the intense emotions experienced by the Naokoka parents as mother Kimie restrains Daikichi, urging her husband to consider the ramifications for the family of his continued antagonism towards the local military authorities. Despite the physical brutality and emotional intensity of this ­sequence, Shōnen manga’s tradition of slapstick humour is still in evidence as the fight concludes. In Panel 6, as the three soldiers flee, the Chairman ­appears to be clutching his buttocks as he wails, ‘Ow ow owch! The traitor’s gone insane!” The graphic style then changes markedly as the focus switches to the mechanised violence visited by one nation state on ­another. In the last and largest panel of page 103, Daikichi and Gen look upwards towards a mountain in the background, behind which a ‘boom boom’ is emitted, and searchlights divide the night sky into ­geometric shards that resemble the Rising Sun flag used until 1945 by the Japanese Army and Navy. Father and son are located in physical space more specifically than they were during the fight that began the page: what Lamarre calls ‘structural lines’ are used to construct a single-point perspective drawing of the street in which they are standing, wherein the edges and textures of fences, walls and buildings are rendered with lines that are thinner and more uniform than those that depict bodies. The ‘mecha’ style, rather than being used for nationalistic depictions of Japanese weaponry, instead depicts the American B-29 bombers that implacably rain destruction on Iwakuni. Where Japanese weaponry is shown in the depiction of this series of attacks, it appears as a marker of defeat, rather than of successful or honourable resistance. On page 107, Panel 7, a tank lies inoperative next to the piles of corpses on a smouldering battlefield; on page 110, Panel 2, a plane used by a Kamikaze pilot is engulfed by flame while being shot at by an American battleship. The B-29 bombers are first seen in this sequence in page 104, Panel 4, flying in close formation against a backdrop of hard-edged searchlight beams. This mode of depiction becomes more dominant in the following spread. Page 106 (see Figure 1.2) begins with a large, oppressive image in which a formation of seven bombers, rendered with diagrammatic detail, flies towards the viewer in a perspectival arrangement, their hard metallic contours again emphasised by the geometric arrangement of searchlights. The following two panels show a close-up of a bomb bay door releasing its payload, and a top-down view of a series of bombs falling to earth. When the bombs hit in the fourth and final panel, the depictions of their effects on the Japanese civilians they hit bear none of the slapstick tropes that characterised the Naokoka

30  John Miers

Figure 1.2  Nakazawa, Keiji. 2005a. Barefoot Gen Volume One: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima, p. 106. © Keiji Nakazawa. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Last Gasp.

family’s battles with local antagonists. The victims’ bodies are limp as they are thrown forward by the explosions, and their movements are not emphasised by motion lines. The black plumes of smoke in the background, along with the whirling arrangements of collapsing buildings and telephone poles, as well as the radial spray of ruled lines at the

Picturing National and Personal Acts of Violence  31 top of the panel, all contribute to the sense of chaotic, destructive action in this image. However, all of these features can be understood as depictions of objects and atmospheric effects, as opposed to the whirling lines of force in page 103, Panels 1–3, that operate as cartoon abstractions of physical forces with no specific depictive referent. If these lines metaphorically invoke wheat’s properties of resilience, and Nakazawa’s elevation of individual autonomy over militaristic nationalism, it should be no surprise that they are not applied to the victims of the bombing in Figure 1.2: these people have been subordinated to the war machine in the most complete manner possible, and there is no hope of them springing back to life. The contrast between drawing styles is most strongly felt, however, in the two panels on page 105 that deal directly with the ­development of the atomic bomb (see Figure 1.3). In contrast to the rest of this ­sequence, these two images are calm and matter-of-fact. In Panel 2, an image of the ‘Little Boy’ is superimposed over a map of Japan on which the four cities initially selected as potential targets for the bomb are highlighted. The language used to describe the planning is ­similarly ­restrained and procedural. The bomb would ‘bring the war to a quick and ­advantageous end,’ and ‘preparations proceeded smoothly.’ ­Daikichi’s repeated assertions that the war was begun by rich and ­powerful men who are unconcerned with the effects it has on those affected by it are echoed in these two panels: Japan is shown as a schematic diagram, the only salient parts of which are potential targets, and in the large panel that begins page 105 we are told that the Manhattan Project was being developed by ‘a group of the [USA’s] elite scientists.’ This panel is set in a military laboratory where work on the Manhattan Project is taking place. As in the depictions of the bombing mission, perspectival depiction of military hardware is emphasised. Bodies, even that of the military policeman who stands watch over the scene, appear relaxed. The two scientists in the foreground of the panel appear to go about their work with unhurried satisfaction. The contrast between the two aspects of Nakazawa’s drawing style, and the way in which they express his response to the war, are condensed in the final panel on this page. The type of mark-making that characterises the ‘mecha’ style is condensed to its barest essence in the pattern of searchlights in the background. Gen and Shinji, the representatives of the structures of expectation Nakazawa aims to create, literally turn their backs on this abstraction of nationalistic ‘pure violence.’ Their poses, with fists clenched, are defiant but not rigid: the lines that describe the contours of their bodies are tapered and flowing, and in Shinji’s case, face and limbs are rendered with a cartoon simplicity. The plastic line both emphasises individual resilience and situates Barefoot Gen within the graphic traditions of Shōnen manga.

32  John Miers

Figure 1.3  Nakazawa, Keiji. 2005a. Barefoot Gen Volume One: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima, p. 105. © Keiji Nakazawa. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Last Gasp.

Concluding Remarks While the apparent contradiction between genre conventions and ­message in Barefoot Gen is striking, it does not constitute a p ­ articularly unusual feature of this comic. Inherent to depiction in comics is a ­complementary process of restraint and regulation on the one hand, and

Picturing National and Personal Acts of Violence  33 disruption thereof on the other. The property of violence can also be attributed to more whimsical manifestations of this tension—Sammy Sneeze’s ­eruptions are violent disruptions of relatively insignificant ­features of life in New York in the early 20th century. Gen responds to a very specific context of violent action, some of which may be shocking or at least discomfiting for Western readers—but the colliding forces enacted within the images draw on the standard properties of narrative drawing.

Bibliography Arnheim, Rudolf. 1974. Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the ­C reative Eye. 2nd Revised Edition. Berkeley, CA: London: University of ­California Press. Baetens, Jan. 2001. “Revealing Traces: A New Theory of Graphic Enunciation”. In The Language of Comics: Word and Image, edited by Robin Varnum and Christina T. Gibbons, 145–155. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Black, Max. 1993. “More about Metaphor”. In Metaphor and Thought, ­edited by Andrew Ortony, 2nd ed., 19–41. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge ­University Press. Brenner, Robin E. 2007. Understanding Manga and Anime. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group. Bryce, Mio, and Jason Davies. 2010. “An Overview of Manga Genres”. In Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Toni Johnson-Woods, 34–61. London: A&C Black. Bukatman, Scott. 2006. “Comics and the Critique of Chronophotography, or ‘He Never Knew When It Was Coming!’” Animation 1 (1): 83–103. doi:10.1177/1746847706065843. de la Iglesia, Martin. 2016. “Artifacts from Japan, Part 3: Barefoot Gen Wheat”. The 650-Cent Plague (blog). 2016. https://650centplague.­ wordpress.com/tag/barefoot-gen/. Dittmer, Jason. 2005. “Captain America’s Empire: Reflections on Identity, ­Popular Culture, and Post-9/11 Geopolitics”. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95 (3): 626–643. Drummond-Matthews, Angela. 2010. “What Boys Will Be: A Study of Shōnen Manga”. In Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives, ­edited by Toni Johnson-Woods, 62–76. London: A&C Black. Hatfield, Charles. 2011. Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby. Google Books edition. Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi. Kirby, Jack. 1972. The Pact. Vol. 1. New Gods. New York: DC Comics. LaMarre, Thomas. 2010. “Manga Bomb: Between the Lines of Barefoot Gen”. In Comics Worlds & the World of Comics: Towards Scholarship on a Global Scale, edited by Jaqueline Berndt, 263–308. Kyoto: International Manga ­Research Center, Kyoto Seika University. ———. 2011. “Believe in Comics: Forms of Expression in Barefoot Gen”. In Mangatopia: Essays on Manga and Anime in the Modern World: Essays on Manga and Anime in the Modern World, edited by Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

34  John Miers Miers, John. 2018. “Visual Metaphor and Drawn Narratives”. Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Nakazawa, Keiji. 2005a. Barefoot Gen Volume One: A Cartoon Story of ­Hiroshima. San Francisco, CA: Last Gasp. ———. 2005b. Barefoot Gen Volume Two: The Day After. San Francisco, CA: Last Gasp. Potsch, Elisabeth, and Robert F. Williams. 2012. “Image Schemas and ­Conceptual Metaphor in Action Comics”. In Linguistics and the Study of Comics, edited by Frank Bramlett, 13–36. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Rawson, Philip. 1969. Drawing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sabin, Roger. 2006. “Barefoot Gen in the US and UK: Activist Comic, Graphic Novel, Manga”. In Reading Manga: Local and Global Perceptions of ­Japanese Comics, edited by Jaqueline Berndt and Steffi Richter. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsvlg. Spiegelman, Art. 2005. “Barefoot Gen: Comics after the Bomb”. In Barefoot Gen Volume One: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima, edited by Keiji Nakazawa, i–iii. San Francisco, CA: Last Gasp. Wollheim, Richard. 1980. Art and Its Objects. 2nd ed. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1987. “Painting, Metaphor, and the Body: Titian, Bellini, De Kooning, Etc”. In Painting as an Art, edited by Richard Wollheim, 305–357. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Yū, Itō, and Omote Tomoyuki. 2006. “Barefoot Gen in Japan: An Attempt at Media History”. In Reading Manga: Local and Global Perceptions of ­Japanese Comics, edited by Jaqueline Berndt and Steffi Richter, 21–38. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsvlg.

2 Bloody Murder in the Bible Graphic Representations of the ‘First Murder’ in Biblical Comics Zanne Domoney-Lyttle And Cain said to Abel his brother, “Let us go out to the field.” And when they were in the field, Cain rose against his brother Abel and killed him. (Genesis 4:8)

Cain is the first human in the Bible to be given life from humans, but he is also the first human to take away life; he murders Abel, his younger brother, in Genesis 4:8. Cain and Abel are the sons of the Bible’s first ­humans, Adam and Eve, who, after consuming forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden, are expelled into the b ­ arren ­wilderness, forced to farm the land to survive. While Adam must ­fruitlessly till the soil, Eve is punished for her part in the transgression with severe pain in childbirth. Despite this, Genesis 4 opens with Eve falling pregnant with Cain and then with Abel (Genesis 4:1–2). Cain is destined to become a tiller of the soil like his father, while Abel becomes a shepherd. Time passes, and Cain brings an offering of his produce to God in an effort to please him. Abel follows suit, bringing ‘the choice firstlings of his flock’1 for God to inspect. For no given reason, 2 God prefers Abel’s offering, ignoring Cain’s attempts to please him; Cain is incensed. God notices that Cain’s face has fallen and warns him about the potentially dangerous consequences of his state of mind (Sarna 1960, 30): ‘for whether you offer well or do not, at the tent flap sin crouches and for you is its longing’ (Genesis 4:7). In the next verse, Cain takes Abel out into the field and murders him. In the biblical text, the reader is offered no reason for the violent act; in fact, the reader is given no time at all to come to terms with the ­action. Instead, God immediately descends upon the scene, ­questioning the whereabouts of Abel to a petulant Cain, who replies with the now ­infamous line: ‘I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?’ (Genesis 4:9). God is not fooled by the evasive reply, and he ‘hears’ the blood of Abel cry out from the soil. Realising what Cain has done, God punishes him by banishing him from his presence to be a restless wanderer upon the earth. In a final twist of poetic justice which recalls Adam’s punishment

36  Zanne Domoney-Lyttle in Genesis 3, Cain will no longer be able to yield produce from the ground. His livelihood, his sustenance and his home have been taken from him. Like much of the Bible, and especially the Torah, the language of Genesis 4 is terse and sketchy; very little detail is given, no pronounced scene is set and no emotional reactions are recorded in the murder narrative. However, similar to other biblical stories, the tale of Cain and Abel has pervaded centuries of theological, sociological and even political interpretations. Scholars have pored over the text, arguing that, for example, it establishes a theme of ultimogeniture which is recurrent elsewhere in Genesis and the Hebrew Bible, where the younger brother inherits a blessing or privilege over their older sibling(s). 3 Others read it as a reflection of a traditional culture-founding story of conflict between herdsman and farmers (Maccoby 1982; Ennis 2014), or as a reflection of the contrast between Cain’s meanness and Abel’s generosity (Maccoby 1982, 25). Some, more simply, regard Genesis 4 as the ultimate narrative of sibling rivalry, wherein the character of God acts as the parent, punishing his sulking son to teach him a lesson that we do not always get what we desire (Armstrong 2011, 34). A history of interpreting biblical texts is represented through ­centuries of textual and visual exegesis, with each writer or artist ­reshaping, developing and representing stories according to their own readings of the biblical text. Comic book versions of biblical narratives offer the same scope for interpreting such texts, but from a different ­vantage point to textual or visual exegesis. Through a combination of both text and image, comic book versions of Bible stories can ­often present fresh ­perspectives on an ancient text, allowing different meaning—­theological or otherwise—to emerge (Alderman and Alderman 2011, 36). Genesis 4 is particularly suited to being remediated into a comic book format partly because of the highly graphic elements of the text, and partly because the textual version is so sparse in detail. This either gives the creators greater freedom to interpret and express their understanding of the text, or it limits creative approaches, with creators having to work within the confines of a given text without adding superfluous material. The aim of this chapter is to examine and analyse three comic book ­versions of Genesis 4:8 in order to discuss how the creator(s) has ­approached and represented the story, arguing that the problematic ­nature of biblical text is such that the creator(s) perspective is clearly visible in their remediation, or that they have been limited by the text in their ­interpretation. I am ultimately interested in what graphic ­remediations ‘do’ to sacred text in terms of interpretation and visual exegesis. The three comic book versions examined here are The Book of Genesis, ­Illustrated by R. Crumb (Crumb 2009), The Manga Bible (Siku 2007) and The Goddamned (Aaron, Guéra, and Brusco 2017).

Bloody Murder in the Bible  37 By applying a theoretical framework of reading comics through the works of comic book theorists such as Ann Miller (2007) and Thierry Groensteen (2007), I will illuminate how adapting biblical material into text-image narrative ultimately allows for different readings of the text to emerge. In turn, I discuss how this potentially informs biblical literacy both for the reader and on a wider scale. There are three key c­ ategories within the toolbox of comics which particularly affect how the reader engages with the comic books, and these are spatio-topical code,4 restrained arthrology5 and tressage 6 (Groensteen 2007, 103–43) or ‘braiding’. Both Miller and Groensteen discuss how the resources of comics can be approached by considering the articulation of sequential art, or as an art that may involve text and image (Groensteen 2007, 30–32; Miller 2007, 82). The former approach is constructive in drawing out how meaning is made within and between panels (Miller 2007, 82), and is especially useful in interrogating adaptations of biblical text regarding how meaning is made or inhibited by text-image sequences.

The Book of Genesis, Illustrated by R. Crumb Published in 2009, R. Crumb’s illustration of the book of Genesis is ­purported to be a ‘word-for-word’ comic book version of the biblical text, taken from the ‘original’ text.7 All 50 chapters of Genesis were included, and Crumb used a combination of the King James Version (KJV), Robert Alter’s translation and commentary of Genesis (Alter 1996), the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) version of Genesis and other named and unnamed sources to influence his work (NPR 2013). Crumb’s representation of Genesis 4:8 takes place over two panels (see Figure 2.1), panels 9 and 10 in Genesis 4. God (depicted as the stereotypical stern older male with a long flowing beard, reminiscent of Charlton Heston in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments and almost every Renaissance image of God which exists)8 has rejected Cain’s offering, preferring Abel’s offering of livestock instead. Cain is depicted as a strong, wild and unkempt man, with a mess of curly hair and a short beard which obscures his face. His face and chest are hairy, and in all of the images up to this point, he is pictured as being unhappy, with sweat on his brow signalling the hard work he must do. In contrast, Abel is smooth-faced, with waved and shiny hair. Abel’s countenance is relaxed or happy, and his body is slightly smaller and less hairy than Cain’s. Crumb’s representation of each brother implies Cain is the older and stronger of the two, while Abel has an air of innocence and youth about his character. The insinuation is clear: Cain is dominant in size and strength. He performs traditional notions of masculinity, in the way that he works the field, carries his heavy load of vegetables and does not have the time to mop the sweat from his brow. Abel embodies a stereotypically feminised

38  Zanne Domoney-Lyttle

Figure 2.1  G  enesis 4: 7-15, The Book of Genesis, Illustrated by R. Crumb (R. Crumb 2009).

role within Crumb’s remediation; he is smaller in size, fairer of face, his work of shepherding livestock seems to involve him standing idly around while his sheep graze, he does not break a sweat and his offering to God is a sweet little lamb in contrast to Cain’s heavy basket of produce, which he struggles to carry.

Bloody Murder in the Bible  39 Furthermore, the panels which lead up to the representation of the murder represent the biblical text in that Abel does not utter a word, even when presenting God with his offering. Cain also does not speak to God, but he is the subject of God’s speech, both before and after the murder, and he is also present on the page more often than Abel. Each of these things places Cain at the forefront of the text, both visually and literally, emphasising his culpability in the act of the first murder. The murder itself, as noted, occurs over two panels (panels 9 and 10); panel 9 represents the biblical text of 4:8a; panel 10 the text of 4:8b. The division of the text is itself a tool of suspense, dividing the action of luring Abel to the field under false pretences, and the action of killing Abel. Crumb’s use of ellipsis at the end of Cain’s speech propagates the idea of suspense, suggesting Cain’s speech tails off and there is more to his actions. Abel does not verbally reply, but allows Cain to guide him towards the field. Both figures of Cain and Abel are pointing towards the next panel, which is suggestive of Cain leading Abel to his death. Panel 10 is the event of murder. Traditional representations of Cain murdering Abel depict him using a rock to smash his brother’s head. The use of a rock as a tool comes from, first, the connection that Cain works with the ground, so from the ground he took his murder weapon, and, second, it connects to Adam, Cain’s father, whose name in Hebrew means ‘earth’ or ‘ground.’ Adam is also banished from paradise and forced to work the earth for food and trade. The biblical text, in the Hebrew, does not mention a rock or stone, only that ‘Cain killed Abel,’ leaving the weapon and motive open to interpretation. Crumb’s version is no different. Cain straddles Abel’s body, which is face down on the ground as Cain lifts a bloodied rock with one hand. The other hand holds Abel’s shoulder down, restraining him. The whites of Cain’s eyes are emphasised against his darkened face, which is also partially obscured by his facial hair, and his mouth is set in a grimace giving him the appearance of a crazed or frenetic man. In contrast to this image though, Crumb has depicted Cain’s actions as deliberate and calculated, using a range of visual tools to identify this to the reader. Critics responding to Crumb’s Genesis, Illustrated have expressed ­disappointment with what they see as a lack of expression and a rigidity in faithfully expressing the text, which has usurped Crumb’s c­ reativeness in remediating the text.9 With regard to Genesis 4:8, this opinion is reflected in the static presentation of Crumb’s Cain and Abel, the use of panels, the narrative-dominant grid pattern and reading the panels within the multistage multiframe10 (Groensteen 2007, 30–31). While it is not unusual for Crumb to use this structure in his work, it may have been that critics thought remediating biblical material was an opportunity for Crumb to approach the task differently, as the material was also unusual for him.

40  Zanne Domoney-Lyttle Cain’s murder of Abel is widely understood to be a purposeful act of violence committed by an older brother against his younger sibling. With such a violent act, the reader expects to see a reflection of energy, ­ epiction movement and strength within the narrative. Instead, Crumb’s d divides the action into two brief moments: (1) Cain leads Abel to the field, and (2) Cain kills Abel. In each moment, Cain is active, Abel is passive. The panels which represent the scenes are static in that they conform to a rigid structure of a rectangle bordered by a white gutter, and they sit within a standard nine-panel pattern on the page, a pattern often used by Crumb. Movement between panels is restricted by the ­gutter, but also by the lack of action within the panels. While Cain’s speech bubble e­ ncouraging Abel to the field (‘Let’s go out to the field. . .’) breaks the panel borders and blurs the space between image and the narrator’s voice, it is still positioned within the confines of a nine-panel grid pattern, and this is reflected in the equal and consistent space bordering the panels. With regard to the gutter and the page border in particular, though they leave a physical space for the reader to consume as they move from panel to panel, thus giving the reader space to fill in the gaps with their own reading of the text, they also offer one further advantage which links Crumb’s remediation with a history of illustrated Bibles: space for marginalia.11 Leaving space on the page for the reader to insert their own notes and comments is one of the limited ways in which readers can interact with Crumb’s version of Genesis, whether he ­intended that or not. Another way Crumb encourages interaction is his use of the perifield (Peeters 1998, 41),12 which is one of the most cleverly used comic book tools throughout his remediation. First, the readers have Cain in their peripheral vision wherever they look on the page, signifying him as the dominant character over the almost-invisible Abel. Second, Cain’s relationship with the land is also emphasised throughout the page, with land being visible in almost every panel, and therefore visible in the peripheral vision of the reader. The reader, then, is constantly made aware of the importance of land in relation to Cain because it is always in view on the page. The connection is made between Cain and land in the text as well: he commits murder because the land failed to yield what he needed to please God; the land accuses Cain of being the murderer (God heard the blood of Abel calling out to him from the land); and the land ­becomes Cain’s punishment as he is forced to wander it, unable to take any source of produce from the land. Crumb’s design of the pages reflects the ­importance of land in the story and reflects the narrator’s aspect by showing the land behind the character at every opportunity. The narrative-dominant pattern of the panels reflects the biblical text which is written from the narrator’s perspective rather than either of the characters, and this serves to limit interaction between the reader

Bloody Murder in the Bible  41 and the text even more. The narrator’s point of view is the reader’s perspective, and vice versa, meaning there is little insight into potential emotional states of the characters. Of course, this also reflects Crumb’s ‘word-for-word’ approach to the text, where he wanted to produce a ‘straightforward illustration job’ (Crumb 2009, Introduction) without adding to or taking away from the ‘original’ biblical text.13 If it does not appear in the biblical text(s) Crumb was using, it did not appear in his illustration of those texts. That, of course, is not possible. Simply by incorporating images into the text of Genesis, Crumb is adding meaning and visual coding to the text. In the case of Genesis 4:8, the text remains sparse and undetailed. The images which accompany the text tell another story. Crumb’s ­design of the narrative is such that the reader understands Cain to be both victim of God’s judgement and perpetrator in the murder of his brother. Abel is little more than a tool to advance Cain’s narrative, which is ­reflected in his lack of speech and the few times he appears in the panels. God does not appear in the two panels which depict the murder but is present right before and straight after the murder, which implies his culpability in the event alongside Cain. Crumb’s reimagining of Genesis 4:8 frames Cain as the perpetrator of the murder, but with implications that God is at least involved in the reasons behind Cain murdering Abel. To an extent then, the reader can consider God as an accomplice to the murder, or at least a motive. Abel is a passive victim, merely a tool to progress the narrative of Cain, etiologically explaining the wickedness of man, which ultimately leads to the Noah event, where man has become so evil that God must wipe him from the face of the earth by using a flood. The action of murder within the panels is deliberate; Cain is in control of the narrative but is perhaps pushed towards committing murder by God’s actions and reactions towards his offering.

The Manga Bible Siku’s Manga Bible was published in 2007 by Christian publishing house Waterbrook Press. This version is an abridged version of the New International Version (NIV) Bible and covers major themes and characters within the Bible rather than adopting a word-for-word approach like Crumb in his Genesis, Illustrated. Like Crumb’s Genesis, Illustrated, Siku’s adaptation of Genesis 4:8 also takes place over two panels (see Figure 2.2). However, ­unlike Crumb’s version which is bordered by white gutter or frame, Siku ­imposes the panels which show the murder, on top of a larger panel depicting ­Genesis 4:7b, wherein God tells Cain, ‘Sin is at your door. It wants to control you. Make sure you control it instead. Or it will consume you.’ The two panels which show the murder, then, are both

42  Zanne Domoney-Lyttle

Figure 2.2  G enesis 4: 7b-25, The Manga Bible (Siku 2007).

framed by the conversation between God and Cain, where God tells Cain he will fail if he does not master his emotions, and around that conversation. This has the implication of influencing the reader’s perception, first, that Cain is wilfully acting against God’s warning, and, second, that Cain is the dominant character in the narrative. Indeed, Abel has not been visualised at all up until this point.

Bloody Murder in the Bible  43 God is depicted as a strange clawed hand coming down from the corner of the panel of 4:7b, while Cain’s face takes up the majority of the panel, again emphasising his dominance in the narrative. This also ­reflects his strength and dominance over Abel. In the two panels which represent 4:8, Abel finally makes an appearance and, similar to Crumb’s version, is represented as Cain’s opposite. Where Cain is bald with a goatee and thin, pointed eyebrows, Abel is smooth-faced with a crop of hair and thick black eyebrows which give his face a more serene, peaceful look. Both are represented as adults. Siku’s version of the Bible was never meant to faithfully represent ­biblical text; instead, it uses informal language with an emphasis on dialogue rather than the narrator-heavy style of biblical prose. Where the biblical text indicates that Cain merely invites his brother to go the field with him, Siku’s Cain is more forthcoming: ‘Whassup, bro? I’ve got ­something I wanna show you in my farm.’ Abel replies, ‘Sounds interesting. . . what is it?’ Cain is drawn behind his brother, signifying a threat or danger to Abel’s person. Further, his use of language indicates that Cain is deliberately luring Abel to his farm under false pretences. In the next panel, Cain’s reply to Abel’s question is ‘Your death, you smug *£Øæ*!’ This image is accompanied by the image of Cain’s arm holding what may be an animal bone or a club from which blood drips.14 Abel’s body, though beaten, is not yet dead as he leans forward on his arms with his head bent over and blood on his shoulder. As noted, Siku’s version of Genesis 4:8 is not rigorously faithful to the biblical text. However, it arguably conveys similar ideas as the biblical text. For example, Siku’s version does not give a reason behind God rejecting Cain’s offering in favour of Abel’s, similar to Genesis. What it does promote, however, is the idea of Abel being God’s favourite from the outset, which is something that does not appear within the text of Genesis. Leading up to the visualisation of Genesis 4:8, the previous panels highlight (literally) Abel’s status of favourite against Cain. When they are introduced into the story, for example, Cain’s figure is in darkness with a pile of vegetables in front of him. Abel is bathed in light from above, with his hands in a gesture of praise and an offering of livestock in front of him. This is prior to the reader being told that God has rejected Cain in favour of Abel, but the visual clues signify that Abel is the preferred son. Once God rejects Cain’s offering (thus rejecting Cain), Cain’s reaction is itself violent. His mouth is open, showing all of his teeth in a menacing cry; his face is the only object in that panel. The background is grey, emphasising his reaction. God’s voice comes from above Cain, but God is not visualised until the next panel, when his hand descends from above. Siku’s choice not to represent God as anthropomorphic being like Crumb is telling; representing God has always been problematic,

44  Zanne Domoney-Lyttle particularly to those of faith who argue that it is impossible to depict the divine, and Siku is part of this tradition. Unlike Crumb, Siku’s approach to remediating the Bible is from a perspective of faith, and perhaps this is why he does not depict God in any way other than a voice or hand from above, verbally giving instructions or physically guiding other characters in certain ways. The incrustation of the two panels of murder into the larger scene of God’s hand descending from above, telling Cain to renounce his evil thoughts, constructs the impression that Cain has deliberately chosen to turn away from God and commit the wicked act. Tellingly, Siku has depicted Cain with his back to God’s hand and voice, which represents Cain turning away from God’s advice/instruction and guidance; God is absent from Cain’s action. Furthermore, the lack of a clear gutter between the panels takes away space that might have allowed for the reader to input their own reading into the text; the image of Cain turning away from God is literally serving as a backdrop to the murder of Abel. In the panels depicting the murder, Cain is in control of the situation but rather harrowingly, Abel is not yet dead. This perspective on the text at least makes it look like Abel is fighting back, a contrast to Crumb’s passive version. The use of language and the composition within the panels presents Cain in a different light from Crumb’s remediation. In Siku’s version, Cain is deliberately luring Abel to his death but with the air of someone who is going to enjoy what he is going to do. The relaxed manner in which Cain invites Abel to his death, followed by the expletive-filled insult which Cain utters as he strikes the first blow seen by the reader, is indicative of the fact that not only is the murder intentional and ­premeditated, but it is also something Cain is going to enjoy. The implication here for the reception of the biblical text is not only that Cain commits murder but that he enjoys doing so. He has no remorse; he is thoroughly evil. Siku’s version of the text, then, is unlike Crumb’s in that it presents Cain as the perpetrator, but this time, God is not culpable in any way, shape or form. By using different visual clues, Siku’s version of Genesis 4:8 is indicative of the belief that turning away from God leads to a life of ­ resents sin; in Cain’s case, this is literally what happens. Where Crumb p the story of Cain and Abel as a story that also implicates God in the murder narrative, Siku’s version represents sin as a human ­responsibility, and as a concept which exists independently of God.15 Crumb’s version, then, is a secularised account of God as a literary character who is not omnipresent, omnibenevolent or omniscient; Crumb’s God is human. Siku’s God, on the other hand, is all of those things but is also removed enough from humanity to allow them to make their own mistakes but to still remain part of their lives. In this respect, Siku’s God is more akin to a post-Reformation, Christian concept of God.

Bloody Murder in the Bible  45

The Goddamned The Goddamned is a series created by Jason Aaron, R.M. Guéra and Guilia Brusco, published by Image Comics, which began in November 2015. It was collected into volumes, the first of which was published in January 2017. The story borrows elements from the biblical narrative of the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, and Noah and the flood, but is not a straightforward remediation of the Bible. Instead, myths, characters and themes are used in a story which tells of the life of Cain after he murders his brother. The comic book starts 1600 years after the Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden, when Cain is wandering the face of earth, unable to die, despite trying his best to do so. The story begins ‘somewhere on the edge of the desert’ (Aaron, Guéra, and Brusco 2017, 1) in a post-Eden world. The earth is now ­rotten, ­corrupt and full of violence, and it has been stripped of all ­natural ­resources. Murder between humans is a regular occurrence, and they also commit acts of cannibalism and rape, and enslave their fellow men. Children are used in place of dogs to defend and attack tribes. It is the time of Noah, who believes that God has told him to build an ark and save himself and his family before the rains come to wash away the sinners; Noah, however, is just as bad as the other humans as he murders, enslaves and beats everyone around him. Cain is a lone figure whose sole purpose is to find a giant, one of the fabled Nephilim (Genesis 6:4), because legend has it that only these creatures who are part-divine, part-human, are able to kill him, and death is what he seeks. Throughout the first volume of The Goddamned, Cain has flashbacks to his life at the beginning of the world, after his parents, Adam and Eve, have been banished from the Garden of Eden. The flashbacks are bright, colourful and lush with vegetation, which contrast with Cain’s current landscape which is barren and consists of brown earth, blood, soil and bones. One of the flashbacks experienced by Cain includes the moment where he murdered his brother, representing the text of Genesis 4:8. The flashback occurs in Issue Three, which is entitled ‘The Children of Eden,’ and it opens with images of Adam and Eve both holding babies—Abel is dark-haired like his mother, Cain is fair like his father. It is apparent that Adam and Eve do not like each other as they trade insults in a deadpan manner while surveying the luscious landscape. Adam promises Cain, ‘Someday son, this will all be yours,’ which, I will argue is important to contextualise the forthcoming murder of Abel. The first flashback ends, and the scene shifts to Cain’s present, turning the idyllic, paradisiacal scene into a muddied, empty wasteland. Cain and a woman named Aga are in a terse conversation concerning whether or not God listens to or responds to prayers; Cain has agreed to help Aga find her son, who has been kidnapped and enslaved by Noah’s tribe.

46  Zanne Domoney-Lyttle Concerning God’s response to prayers, Cain responds, ‘Oh, he can hear you just fine. He hears everything. Every scream. Every cry. Every whimper. Every plea for mercy. For death. He hears. He just doesn’t give a fuck.’ Agitated by the conversation, Aga springs up and holds a knife to his throat, demanding to know, ‘Why did you change your mind about helping me?’ Cain immediately experiences a flashback, first, to an image of his mother, who is looking down on him as a baby. She tells him that there was no such thing as love in the world until the first time she held him, and that was his legacy. The next panel is the image of Cain murdering Abel. Until this point, any flashbacks have been bathed in light, suggesting to the reader that light is equal to goodness, and that darkness, which surrounds Cain in the present day, is representative of evil and wickedness. For example, the image of Eve looking down on Cain is bathed in a glowing light with a bright colour palette, but in the next panel the act of murder is in shadow, set against a brightly lit, colourful backdrop. This suggests a division between the goodness of the landscape created by God, and the wickedness of Cain’s action through use of colour as a mode of storytelling (Miller 2007, 38, 129). In Aaron and Guéra’s version of the murder scene (see Figure 2.3), Cain and Abel are both very young, contrasting with Crumb and Siku’s version of an adult murdering another (perhaps younger) adult. Cain is straddling Abel, who faces upwards stretching out a hand in defence, but there is already blood on the rock in Cain’s hand, meaning Abel has already been struck. Cain’s arm is raised to strike again, and the scene is framed by foliage and weirdly twisted trees. A unicorn stands and watches in the background, adding a sense of myth and the unreal to the story. The use of non-realist colour adds to the unreal scene. Cain’s voice cries out ‘RRRGHH,’ but Abel is silent, signifying Cain’s activity against Abel’s passivity. The flashback is over, and in the next panel, the reader is brought back to Cain’s present as he is approached by a man holding a baby upside down, shouting, ‘Babies! Babies for sale! Good and Fresh.’ The dream-like flashback of the murder experienced by Cain is framed by the conversation between himself and Aga, in which he argues God hears the prayers of humans but no longer acts upon them. God is absent in the text in terms of characterisation, but the reader is given to understand he is also absent from the life of Cain, and all other humans at this point as well. Also missing is the scene of Cain’s rejected offering, which prompts him to murder Abel in the first place. Instead, the reader sees Eve looking down as she proclaims her love for the receiver of her gaze. Who that person is, is also initially unclear, unless the reader goes back to the beginning of Issue Three, and sees Eve holding Abel. Her proclamation, then, is likely directed towards Abel rather than Cain, who, as a baby, is held in his father’s arms.

Bloody Murder in the Bible  47

Figure 2.3  P  . 7, Issue 3, The Goddamned: Before the Flood (J. Aaron, R.M. Guéra, and G. Brusco 2017).

If that is the case, Aaron and Guéra’s version of the murder implies that this is a case of sibling rivalry taken to the extreme, and I argue this is further supported by the absence of God in the comic book as a character. While the concept of God exists, it is implied that he has abandoned his creation and no longer wishes to have anything to do with them, which is demonstrated in the conversation between Cain and

48  Zanne Domoney-Lyttle Aga described earlier. There is also no mention of the rejected offering, which is supposedly the cause of Cain’s rage in the biblical text. Furthermore, in the panel after the murder, the reader’s attention is drawn to the evilness of man, again by the character holding a baby by the ankles, offering to sell it to Cain. This is a clear example of the weaving of themes throughout the text (Miller 2007, 95), all of which point to the absence of God. The Goddamned offers another perspective of evil, sin and murder within the Cain and Abel story, which differs from both Crumb and Siku’s versions. In this version, God has abandoned his creation as it grows more and more troublesome, and though he can still see and hear ­everything that happens, actively decides not to be part of it (as ­demonstrated in Issue #3, pp. 5–6, Aaron, Guéra, and Brusco 2017). The reader learns of Cain’s punishment through Cain’s own narrative, not by seeing God act as judge against him. God is not represented ­visually in the comic, and is only referred to by characters within the stories rather than given any presence through his own words or narrative. As such, the idea of God is all that exists, but that idea is enough to encourage some of the characters to hold themselves and others to account over evil actions. This links The Goddamned with a postmodernist view of God, wherein God is not and never has been a tangible force within the world, and that God as a force does not and cannot intervene in human or natural issues (Caputo 2006), but that God still exists as a concept that encourages humans to judge their own actions. This is the point of The Goddamned.

Conclusions Each of these case studies represents a different version of Genesis 4:8, especially in terms of characterisation, plot and motive for murder. In Crumb’s Genesis, Illustrated, Cain is a dominant male performing stereotypical traits of masculinity, who controls the scenes between himself and Abel. The murder of Abel is a deliberate act, framed by two conversations between Cain and God. The first concerns the rejection of the offering and God warning Cain; the second concerns God looking for Abel after the murder. This means God is present in the perifield of the murder narrative, potentially implying God’s culpability in the murder, at least as a motive. The design of the page and the grid pattern reflects the demands of the story—it is systematic, with equally sized panels, which encourages a methodical reading of the text. I argue this reflects Cain’s personality as a farmer, methodically working his land. More than that, it also reflects Cain’s approach to the murder of Abel, which appears to be a logical, systematic action as opposed to a violent or passionate one.

Bloody Murder in the Bible  49 In contrast, Siku’s remediation of Genesis 4:8 is emotionally charged, passionate, yet also deliberate. Siku’s language choices, especially in relation to Cain’s colloquial language and his use of an expletive directed towards Abel, betray the emotion of the moment but also that Cain has no remorse about his decision to murder Abel. Cain’s physical turn away from God represents his rejection of guidance and instruction from the divine, which, in turn, signals his complete culpability in the action of murder and the fact that he is entirely wicked. God is not complicit in this murder, and this is understood through the use of framing and panel design within the Manga Bible. Similarly, The Goddamned completely removes the character of God from the text, and instead implies that Cain’s rejection is from his mother rather than from God. The tone in this comic book is one of sibling rivalry resolving itself in the most violent of ways. In each of the case studies, Cain is guilty of murder, Abel is a ­silent victim and God is either complicit or absent. Each interpretation ­reflects legitimate readings of the text; indeed, each interpretation ­presents a new perspective on the text. In the history of biblical reception and interpretation, each version can stand as an exegesis of the text in its own right, and, as shown, each reading also reflects existing ­i nterpretations of the text across theological and historical ­perspectives. The imagination of the creator(s) of each case study is visible in their remediations, but the texts are also limited in meaning because they conform to, and come from, an authoritative text in the Bible. Therefore, the reader is influenced by prior engagement with biblical texts, themselves reading into the respective comic books what they expect to get out of the text. By reading biblically inspired comics books through a framework of comics theories, I have demonstrated that new interpretations of biblical text emerge, in this case, with regard to why violent acts are committed, who is involved and the perpetual silence of the victim. Biblical ­comics, or comics which are influenced to some degree by biblical material, ­regenerate ancient texts for new audiences, allowing new readers to engage with difficult texts and also allowing new meanings to emerge. Biblical comics are not just cultural products but should be considered markers in biblical reception. The history of biblical interpretation and reception has shaped Western culture profoundly, and ignorance of the Bible leads to misunderstanding or misreading significant cultural products, from Renaissance art to Victorian novels. Crumb’s work in Genesis, Illustrated and other biblical comics which currently exist and are in the process of being created continues the work of interpretation and reception. Biblical comics, in general, are vital to explore the boundary-crossings between ancient script and modern popular culture, regenerating what is, after all, a very old text indeed.

50  Zanne Domoney-Lyttle

Notes 1 Genesis 4:4. Unless otherwise stated, any biblical text or passages that are referred to are taken from Robert Alter’s translation of Genesis (Alter 1996). I use Alter’s version as his commentary is one of the more academically ­rigorous and is well accepted within the field of biblical studies. 2 Alter notes that textually, the only reason for God to have chosen Abel’s offering over Cain’s is because Abel brought the very best of his flock to God. 3 For example, Genesis 27, which is the story of Jacob usurping his older brother Esau to gain the blessing of his father, Isaac. See also the character of David in 1 Samuel as another example of this intertextual theme in the Hebrew Bible. 4 Spatio-topical code refers to the arrangement of panels on the page, which may include the size, shape and position of panels, incrustation, spaces ­between panels and the page itself as a single unit, and the exterior space, which outlines the panels, and which Groensteen refers to as the ‘­hyperframe’ (Groensteen 2007, 30). 5 Miller calls this sequential links (Miller 2007, 88) and it is similar to Groensteen’s concept of ‘restrained arthrology’ (Groensteen 2007, 103–43). ­Restricted arthrology/sequential links refer to the overarching story within a comic book which is divided into ‘discontinuous units which are aligned sequentially, articulated by syntagmatic links’ (Miller 2007, 88). For Miller, coherent progression of the narrative is contingent upon the proper use of elements including interframe space, framing, angle of vision, composition and use of colour. 6 Tressage refers to braiding or weaving, reflecting the idea that “panels may relate to each other through links which are woven throughout a [comic]” (Miller 2007, 95). Groensteen refers to it as ‘[...] braiding is a supplementary relation that is never indispensable to the conduct and intelligibility of the story’, (Groensteen 2007, 146). Repetition is key in both visual and textual elements of the story which tie together themes, patterns and stories and provide depth to the narrative. 7 Clearly, the term ‘word-for-word’ is problematic in terms of biblical ­adaptations, as evidenced in the list of sources R. Crumb notes influenced his work. The number of texts he uses suggests there is no such thing as an ­original text—which, in terms of the Hebrew Bible, is correct—but his choice of language draws attention to history of translating and ­interpreting the ­Bible, and that his version is another translation in the tradition of ­biblical interpretation. I discuss this further in my PhD thesis (Domoney-­ Lyttle 2017, 6–7). 8 Crumb suggested that his image of God was influenced by his own father who was a military man, as well as Charlton Heston, and a dream he had in which God revealed himself to Crumb (Arnold 2005). 9 For example, see the roundtable discussion in: The Hooded Utilitarian, ‘Slow-Rolling Genesis Index.’ Accessed 7 February 2016. www.hoodedutil itarian.com/2010/08/crumbs-limited-literalism/. 10 Groensteen’s understanding of the multistage multiframe is that the page itself constitutes a single unit with the narrative of the comic book (hyperframe) but that other units of information—strips, panels, double-page spreads and the comic book as a whole—are multiframes. Multistage ­multiframes are ‘systems of panel proliferation that are increasingly inclusive,’ and ‘the multiframe is the sum of the frames that compose a given comic’ which include the sum of the hyperframes within each comic book (Groensteen 2007, 30–31).

Bloody Murder in the Bible  51 11 Space for marginalia in Bibles (space around text to allow readers to make notes on the content) is a well-established tradition. In comics, the gutter offers a similar space to margins in the Bible, which allows for the possibility for gutters to perform the same function as margins within Bibles, whether Crumb purposefully created these spaces for that reason or not. With thanks to Dr Ian Hague for this comment. 12 The perifield, or périchamp, is a term introduced by Benoît Peeters which ­describes how each panel is read with other panels in visual periphery. Therefore, panels are not read alone, but along with neighbouring panels. 13 Crumb discusses this further in the introduction to Genesis, Illustrated. 14 The image could be either of a club or an animal thigh bone such as a sheep. If the latter, this would link the image to Abel the shepherd, being the keeper of sheep so killed with his own fruitfulness in the eyes of God. With thanks to Dr Ian Horton for this comment. 15 For varied perspectives on theological readings of the Cain and Abel story, see, for example, Gerhard von Rad (1972), David J. Clines & Philip R. ­Davies (1998) and Claus Westermann (1994).

Bibliography Aaron, Jason, R.M. Guéra, and Giulia Brusco. 2017. The Goddamned: Book One, The Flood. Vol. 1. Portland, OR: Image Comics. Alderman, Isaac M., and Christina L. Alderman. 2011. “Graphically ­Depicted: Biblical Texts in Comic Form”. ARTS: The Arts in Religious and ­Theological Studies 22 (4): 22–36. Accessed 21 August 2015. www.academia. edu/1499853/Graphically_Depicted_Biblical_texts_in_comic_form. Alter, Robert. 1996. Genesis: Translation and Commentary. London: W.W. Norton. Armstrong, Karen. 2011. In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis. London: Vintage. Arnold, Andrew D. 2005. “R. Crumb Speaks”. TIME. Accessed 28 March 2018. http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1055105-1,00.html. Caputo, John D. 2006. The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event. ­Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Clines, David J., and Philip R. Davies. 1998. The World of Genesis: Persons, Places, Perspectives. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Crumb, Robert. 2009. The Book of Genesis, Illustrated by R. Crumb. London: W.W. Norton. Domoney-Lyttle, Zanne. 2017. “Drawing (non)Tradition: Matriarchs, ­Motherhood and the Presentation of Sacred Text”. In The Book of Genesis, Illustrated by R. Crumb. PhD diss., University of Glasgow. ­ sychology Ennis, Mark William. 2014. “Cain and Abel”. Encyclopedia of P & Religion. Accessed 1 November 2017. https://link.springer.com/ referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-1-4614-6086-2_90. Groensteen, Thierry. 2007. The System of Comics. Trans. Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Maccoby, Hyam. 1982. “Cain and Abel”. European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe 16 (1): 25–27. Miller, Ann. 2007. Reading Bande Dessinée: Critical Approaches to French-­ language Comic Strip. Chicago, IL: Intellect Books.

52  Zanne Domoney-Lyttle NPR. 2013. “Genesis: R. Crumb illustrates the Bible”. Accessed 3 November 2015. www.npr.org/2009/11/02/120022241/genesis-r-crumb-illustrates-the-bible. Peeters, Benoît. 1998. Case, planche, récit: lire la bande dessinée. Trans. Jesse Cohn, Paris: Casterman. Rad, Gerhard von. 1972. Genesis: A Commentary (The Old Testament ­Library). Philadelphia: Westminster Press. Rushkoff, Douglas. 2006. Testament. Vol. 1. Burbank, CA: DC Comics. Sarna, Nahum. 1960. Understanding Genesis: The Heritage of Biblical Israel. New York: Schocken Books. Siku. 2007. The Manga Bible: From Genesis to Revelation. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Westermann, Claus. 1994. Genesis 1–11: A Commentary. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

3 A Balancing Act Didactic Spectacle in Jack Jackson’s ‘Nits Make Lice’ and Slow Death Comix Laurike in ‘t Veld In the special war-themed issue of the Underground Comix anthology magazine Slow Death (Issue #7 Winter 1976–1977), comics artist Jack Jackson (1941–2006) opens with ‘Nits Make Lice,’ in which he explores the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864. Over nine pages, Jackson—under the pen name Jaxon—graphically details the violent attack of a Colorado Volunteer Regiment on a peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho encampment, most of whom were women and children. After setting the scene with a prologue that displays the recruitment strategies of the regiment and four subsequent pages that introduce the ruthlessly ambitious and bellicose commander Chivington, Jackson plunges into the depths of this horrific attack as he graphically draws the killing and mutilation of the Cheyennes and Arapahos, showing in detail the brutal attack on women and children. According to Joseph Witek (1989, 62), these panels make this ‘one of the most powerful and shocking historical stories ever published in underground comix.’ Jackson’s style moves between the restrained and detailed panels that we know from his later works Comanche Moon (1979) and Los Tejanos (1981a), and a more caricatured and hyperbolic style that conforms to central elements of the underground aesthetic. Published by Ron Turner’s Last Gasp (which also published, among others, Justin Green’s Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary, and the feminist comix It Ain’t Me Babe and Wimmen’s Comix), Slow Death magazine ran from 1970 until 1979, with a final, belated issue appearing in 1992. The magazine—which started out as Slow Death Funnies but lost the comical appendage after the first issue—focussed on environmental and societal issues, balancing a didactic, sombre and polemical tone with the underground aesthetics of hyperbolic, spectacular and often sexualised images. In the ten issues published between 1970 and 1979 (with roughly one issue published per year, except for a hiatus in 1975), the stories ranged from post-nuclear dystopian sci-fi to cautionary tales on the swindles of the medical industry, and ecologically themed narratives on the (barren and doomed) state of the world. In Comic Books as History (1989) Joseph Witek argues that in Slow Death, ‘[t]he educational impulse, with its implicit appeal to empirical authority, works against the visceral impact of the burlesque horror

54  Laurike in ‘t Veld in the comix, which attacks authority by means of ruthless exaggerations and repulsive images’ (55). This tension between ‘didacticism and sensationalism’ (1989, 43), one that Witek attributes to the historical comic in general, is poignantly articulated in Jackson’s harrowing account of the Sand Creek Massacre. In this balancing act between education and exaggeration, the comic strip poses key questions about the representation of historical violence and the necessity of ‘atrocity panels’ (Witek 1989, 67) to inform and confront an audience. Witek does not expand much on the characteristics and parameters of an atrocity panel, but he emphasises that the graphic nature of these panels ultimately carries an ethical burden. Atrocity panels forcefully confront the representational limits in depicting historical violence, raising questions about the impact and appropriateness of these graphic images of violence: ‘can the truth be too awful to be seen? Is there an aesthetics of atrocity?’ (Witek 1989, 67). Given the context of Jackson’s story, the notion of an ‘atrocity panel’ thus points to those panels that depict explicit violence—or the immediate effects of violence—on innocent and vulnerable bodies. By virtue of their graphic nature, these atrocity panels raise poignant questions about the ethics of showing violence and violated bodies. An atrocity panel could arguably also include images that show the lead-up to acts of violence as well as panels that depict the aftermath (and long-lasting) trauma of violent events (see, for instance, Earle 2017), but for the purpose of this chapter I will consider an atrocity panel an image that visualises an act of violence or shows the violated body of a victim. Taking note of the ethical ramifications of showing explicit violence, this chapter explores how ‘Nits Make Lice’ negotiates between different motivations (education/confrontation/entertainment) by taking into account Jackson’s depiction of violence, perpetrators and victims as well as the links drawn between the past and the present. It argues that the atrocity panels in Jackson’s work balance sensationalism and didacticism but are ultimately closer to the didactic function. In order to better understand Jackson’s particular balancing act, I also look at the context of Slow Death as an Underground Comix magazine. I investigate how its issues are similarly grappling with appropriate and effective ways to inform audiences about (historical and current) injustices. Slow Death’s balancing act demonstrates how the magazine functions as a bridge between the rambunctious and excessive Underground Comix and the more restrained historical and autobiographical graphic novels that followed after its demise. This bridge-function is particularly visible in Jackson’s story; Baetens and Frey (2015) note that Jackson’s work ‘stands out from the deluge of crude comedy comix of the period . . . it points the way to content now more commonly mined in the contemporary graphic novel’ (62). ‘Nits Make Lice’ thus functions as an important transitional text that prefigures many of the issues confronted

A Balancing Act  55 by more recent publications in graphic narratives dealing with war and atrocity. Before gaining mainstream recognition with his well-researched and meticulously executed graphic novels on historical figures in America’s violent past, Jack Jackson was an active participant in the Underground Comix scene. He created the satirical comic God Nose (1964, often credited as the first underground comic), co-founded Rip-Off Press in 1969 and contributed stories to a variety of comix magazines. As a selftaught historian and expert on Texas history, Jackson also published academic works on Spanish ranching in Texas and on cartography. As argued by Martha A. Sandweiss, the ‘twinned halves of Jackson’s unusual career’ (2001, 117) are both grounded in historical research but directed at different audiences (popular and scholarly). However, Jackson’s comics arguably demonstrate that these twinned halves are joined in his visual work, including his atrocity panels in ‘Nits Make Lice,’ in an effort to both educate and entertain his readers. In ‘Nits Make Lice,’ Jackson’s detailed, black-and-white style depicts the events at Sand Creek in conventionally laid out three-tiered pages of six to seven panels. Jackson reserves one-third of the nine pages to detail the carnage committed by the Colorado militia, and these atrocity panels show an explicitly rendered succession of murder, mutilations and rape. The most harrowing images are centred on the treatment of women and children, with two panels that depict a young Cheyenne woman as she is being raped, her head battered with a rifle afterwards. Another image depicts a pregnant woman whose belly has been cut open, her organs and unborn foetus spilling out, and in a horrific turn the next panel portrays a young baby held up by the soldier’s bayonets. In this sequence, Jackson doesn’t grant us a moment of distance or comfortable respite, as one graphically portrayed atrocity follows another in an accumulation of endless brutality. In many ways, Jackson’s depiction of the atrocities directed against the Cheyennes and the Arapahos connects back to the hyperbolic aesthetic of many Underground Comix. The visceral succession of blood, gore and repulsive imagery attacks the senses and aims to shock the audience. Blood squirts from the inflicted wounds in a gory horror style, and a cartoony ‘POP’ accompanies the image of a woman being scalped.1 A subsequent image shows two American soldiers that revel in their accomplishments as they are holding up their ‘grisly mementos’—blood dripping from the female sexual organs that have been cut off. The shocking image leans towards a grim exhibitionism that fuses dark humour and hyperbolic visuals. The explicit gruesomeness of these images ties in with the modus operandi of the Underground Comix, aiming at ‘inducing drastic changes in America’s state of mind’ (Daniels 1973, 166) by exposing the violent, sexual and racist undercurrents of a seemingly civilised society. In contrast to the observation that Underground’s graphic violence is

56  Laurike in ‘t Veld generally ‘not presented as a warning about the horrible consequences of violence, but as a gleeful release of aggressive impulses’ (Duncan and Smith 2009, 56), Jackson’s atrocity panels emphatically confront audiences with America’s tarnished past. He uses their shock factor to instigate awareness, so that these images function as a harrowing warning of what humans are capable of. The underground audience was arguably accustomed to highly explicit and violent imagery, which returned in many comix magazines and functioned as a form of entertainment. Violent images exhibited the underground movement’s rebelliousness and catered to a sense of spectacle. However, Jackson’s story moves away from the self-indulgent, irreverent and satirical content of many other underground texts; ‘Nits Make Lice’ is not a story of self-expression or battling inner demons, or one that unapologetically revels in (violent) irreverence. On the contrary, it presents a story that is grounded in history and historical research, and it offers a direct, visual attack on the ambivalent framing of other key events in frontier history, such as the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn. As stated by Jackson, the story was ‘one of my attempts to dispense with the romantic bullshit about the Winning of the West’ (Jackson 1995, 7). Furthermore, the dramatic impact of the atrocity panels is heightened by the juxtaposition between the unsuspecting and peaceful Indians and the immense brutality of the American troops. This innocence is underscored when the character of Black Kettle, faced with charging soldiers, attempts to calm his people: ‘Cheyennes!! Do not be afraid! The soldiers will not hurt you!’ (1977, n.p.). Centred in the panel and with one arm raised in a gesture of welcoming reassurance, his posture and demeanour are contrasted with the previous panel, where the charging soldiers raise their weapons in a declaration of war. In the next panel, Jackson shows an important historical detail; the Cheyenne encampment had raised both an American and a white flag, indicating that the camp was friendly (Hoig 1961, 150). Jackson combines these flags and Black Kettle’s attempt at reassurance in the background of the image, while a Colorado soldier with a skewed facial expression and large gun is seated on his horse in the foreground. This visible bloodlust is underscored more emphatically in a panel that portrays one of the gap-toothed soldiers with a drooling grimace. As drops of spit are dripping out of his contorted mouth, a thought bubble—drawn as if the soldier is either blowing out smoke or has bad breath—states, ‘Heh Heh easy as takin’ candy from a baby. . . ’(1977, n.p.). As Jackson leads up to visualising the atrocities, this close-up of one of the perpetrators connects bureaucratic perpetrators/masterminds such as Chivington, who is drawn more realistically, and the rank-and-file killers who have been rallied to ‘kill a few injuns’ (1977, n.p.) with the lower ranked soldiers drawn in a visually excessive and caricatured manner. Witek argues that ‘the configurations of the people’s mouths are an important cue for characterization’

A Balancing Act  57 (1989, 64), and the gap-toothed, salivating and hawking mouths of the soldiers clearly signal human brutality and unbridled aggression. This rendering of the perpetrators’ faces highlights and exposes those sides of human behaviour that are usually kept hidden under a mask of civilisation. These deformed faces tie in with other distorted characterisations present in Underground Comix; Robert Crumb’s cartoon persona is one of the more obvious examples of how a caricatured and distorted appearance reflects hidden urges and desires. Redrawing the official recruitment poster on the first page of the comic strip, Jackson shows how men are rallied to become ‘Indian fighters’ for 100 days in the 3rd cavalry in exchange for food, pay and plunder (‘The company will be entitled to all horses and other plunder taken from the Indians’). Furthermore, Jackson complements this official message with a more salacious promise, as the gap-toothed recruiter holds up the promise of rape (‘I hear some of them Cheyenne wimmen jest loves white stuff’). The uneducated nature of these American soldiers is further underscored by Jackson’s use of language. Throughout the comic, crude utterances and platitudes like ‘injuns’ and ‘got me a tit satchel’ work in conjunction with the graphic rendering of the atrocities and the soldiers’ outward appearance to characterise these men as dangerously simple-minded and depraved. Jackson clearly draws these perpetrators as visually and morally excessive in order to confront audiences with the horrors of the event. The question is whether this type of characterisation, though common in Underground Comix, works against an understanding of how this type of violence can take place (and continues to take place). Hyperbolic representations of these perpetrators might preclude a (moral, visual and narrative) investigation of how people come to commit this type of brutal violence. However, even with a limited amount of pages Jackson manages to show how violence is instigated and fostered through recruitment strategies that opportunistically tap into a sense of anger, retribution and greed. The two Denver drunks in the prologue don’t need much persuasion to join the regiment, but the panels elucidate, albeit in condensed form, that the demonisation of the indigenous peoples is an important part of rallying soldiers (‘Didn’t you see those bodies we brought in yesterday? Innocent women and children, butchered like that?’). The fact that Colonel Chivington appears in a more realistic; restrained; and, at times, even statuesque manner also provides a counterweight to the caricatured rendering of some of the perpetrators. By drawing Chivington in a style that conforms less to the comix aesthetic and moves more towards Jackson’s work post-underground, such as Comanche Moon (1979) and Los Tejanos (1981a), ‘Nits Make Lice’ shows that perpetrators come in different guises and function at different societal levels. Although the excessive horrors of the events are visually mirrored in some of the faces of the rank-and-file perpetrators, Chivington’s

58  Laurike in ‘t Veld ‘normal’ appearance demonstrates that the genocide of the indigenous people of America was also planned by opportunistic and ruthlessly ambitious men, from behind their desk. It is only in the penultimate panel that Jackson allows for Chivington’s bad character to come out visually, as a cross-eyed Colonel—a shadow covering part of his face in a symbolic visualisation of his darker side—exclaims that he has no use for any remaining prisoners: ‘Don’t you know that nits make lice?’ (1977, n.p.). Throughout the story, Jackson thus switches style and proposes different types of perpetrators, showing that violence is initiated and executed at different levels. In contrast to the depiction of some of the perpetrators, Jackson draws a consistently earnest image of the ambushed Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples, who maintain a sense of humanity throughout the story. Jackson uses detailed line work to convey the people and their surroundings, as the panels provide a comprehensive image of the dress and living quarters of the Cheyennes and Arapahos. Even in the atrocity panels, the faces of the victims retain a sense of composure as the violence is inflicted on them. The gruesome images of a pregnant woman whose belly has been cut open and another woman being scalped both join an element of excess (the image of the unborn foetus spilling out, the cartoony ‘pop’ as the scalp comes off) with a noteworthy restrained rendering of the victims’ faces. In this way, Jackson uses visual excess to represent the perpetrators and their acts of violence, but he ensures that the victims retain a sense of dignity throughout. In his introduction to Jack Jackson’s American History: Los Tejanos & Lost Cause (2012), Ron Hansen states that It is the nature and appeal of graphic novels to be as histrionic, fervent, and damning as televangelists, and so readers of Los Tejanos can be entertained by the grotesque features and defects that one instantly recognizes as the given aspect of a villain, while noting the tenderly limned, governor’s mansion portraits of those whom Jackson considered heroes. (Jackson, 5) Notwithstanding Hansen’s questionable judgement of the medium as one that eschews nuance, his mention of the grotesque versus the tenderly limned in Los Tejanos is certainly also visible in ‘Nits Make Lice.’ Interestingly, both the Cheyennes and Arapahos as well as Colonel Chivington are drawn in this ‘governor’s mansion’ style, while Jackson saves his grotesque form (which is arguably much more prominently articulated in ‘Nits Make Lice’ than in Los Tejanos) for the foot soldiers that commit the atrocities. In finding a balance between the hyperbolics of comix vocabulary and a more restrained tone to appropriately represent the horrific subject

A Balancing Act  59 matter, Jaxon’s depiction of women and sexual elements signals a further departure from the context of the underground. Here, any sexual markers are taken out of the context of the often lust-filled Underground Comix and subverted into elements of atrocity. Where the cover by William Stout presents a female figure that adheres more to the raucous comix code—a blonde, busty woman with a ‘keep on truckin’ shirt is attacked by extraterrestrials—‘Nits Make Lice’ only allows for a brief moment of visual pleasure as a beautiful, bare-breasted Cheyenne woman awakens her husband. This moment is deceptive, as any sense of titillation is shattered by the destruction that ensues. The atrocity panels feature nudity, but this nudity is framed in the context of an aggressive violation of vulnerable bodies. Not only does Jackson show the mutilation of the dead, he also depicts the rape of a Cheyenne woman in two highly graphic panels. Within the context of the often frivolously depicted sexual encounters in Underground Comix (many of which are arguably misogynist, or at the very least male-centred), Jackson takes this particular rebelliousness against the Comics Code (showing nudity, sex and body parts) and uses it as a means to confront readers with a visual manifestation of sexual violence. However, the visual repetition of nudity throughout the atrocity sequence also makes this sequence particularly daunting and likely to deter many (female) readers. It constitutes a double transgression: showing both extreme violence and the effects of this violence on naked and vulnerable bodies. In an interview with Bill Sherman, Jackson commented on ‘Nits Make Lice,’ calling it ‘very depressing and frustrating’ (Jackson 1981b, 109), and stating that the (often shocked) responses of readers motivated him to rethink the appropriateness and productivity of his rendering of violence. Part of Jackson’s transition from underground to mainstream was his consideration of the use of nudity in his narratives. In a bid for mainstream inclusion, Jackson adjusted panels in Comanche Moon, covering up the breasts and genitals in a scene between Quanah Parker and his future wife Weakeah (Sandweiss 2001, 118); he also chose a different strategy for the depiction of rape (Witek 1989, 76). 2 Although Jackson’s story ‘suggests that the horrific facts of the American past are too important to be veiled behind the indirect locutions of genteel historiographic prose’ (Witek 1989, 68), the question remains whether the immediacy of images of excessive violence is a necessary feature of confronting readers with underrepresented and/or sensitive historical episodes. Following Susan Sontag’s work on examining atrocities, Marshall Battani (2011) poses the question: ‘[d]oes an atrocity require a body?’ (54). Battani confronts the cycle linked to the representation of human atrocity where the initial experience of shock wears off and is ultimately replaced with compassion fatigue or even resentment. He ­argues that an environmental atrocity aesthetic can be much more effective in inviting the (sustained) attention of the viewers by asking

60  Laurike in ‘t Veld them to make connections between the image and their own surroundings; in a more implicit manner, these images motivate viewers to create their own links to human suffering and are better equipped at instigating collective political action than the compassion-pity-resentment cycle of images of human atrocities. Following this line of thinking, the accumulated presence of (sexually) violated bodies in Jackson’s story overwhelms the senses to the point of distress and apathy. The story uses shock as a mode of confrontation, and in light of what Battani argues this use of shock (which is devoid of underground satire or frivolity) can fast-forward readers into feelings of resentment. However, the presence of violated and mutilated bodies in Jackson’s story surpasses the notion of shock for shock’s sake because it invites viewers to make historical connections. The shocking images of human atrocities at the hands of American troops echo the equally graphic images circulating in the media at the time. ‘Nits Make Lice’ is clearly referencing the Vietnam War and atrocities like the 1968 My Lai Massacre. Jackson’s ‘preoccupation with history and how little human nature has changed through the loop of time’ (Jackson 1995, 8) is thus investigated by using the Sand Creek Massacre as a mirror that reflects America’s role in Vietnam. The story also suggests that the revisionist Westerns of the period, like Ralph Nelson’s Soldier Blue (1970), Little Big Man and The Wild Bunch, have been a source of inspiration. Similarly conceived in a countercultural and anti-war context, these films critique a romantic version of frontier history and show the horrors of American expansionism in detail. Soldier Blue sets out to confront audiences with the horrors of the massacre at Sand Creek (and by extension the Vietnam War) and includes a lengthy sequence that depicts the atrocities in gory detail. Echoing these images, Jackson’s atrocity panels attack the senses precisely in order to avoid presenting a sanitised story of violence and to further expose a historical continuity in America’s violent and imperialist policies. This confrontation with a violent past is thus visually articulated through an aesthetic that doesn’t allow for ­cover-ups or visual or semantic indirection. At the same time, these elements of spectacle are embedded in a story that has a strong informative drive. The other stories in this war-themed issue of Slow Death range from caricatured renderings of historical figures by Greg Irons, to Errol McCarthy’s wordless tribute to the Blackhawks and the more didactically inclined ‘Bonus Army’ by William York Wray and George DiCaprio. ‘Bonus Army’ deals with the First World War veterans who could not redeem their service certificates and protested in Washington in 1932 in order to get cash payment for these certificates. The story visibly demonstrates the struggle to combine education and entertainment. Wray does not provide much background information about the ‘Bonus Expeditionary Force’ (Wray just refers to them as BEF), which means the narrative aim of informing an audience and relaying the precarious position

A Balancing Act  61 of these veterans is lost in translation. The panels that depict the fight between the bonus army and the police are drawn with spectacular elements; similar to Jackson’s use of onomatopoeias in his depiction of violence, words like ‘krak’ and ‘pow’ accompany images of muscly policemen throwing punches and shooting at the veterans, and another panel shows a close-up of two screaming women as the soldiers set fire to the camp. At the same time, these images feel stilted, and Wray couples his images with dry informative captions that mostly describe what we already see in the panels. The final, visually arresting story of the issue, Melinda Gebbie’s ‘Velma Gets it Ndebele,’ deals with the Smith regime in Rhodesia (renamed Zimbabwe in 1980). Drawn in an expressionist and psychedelic style, Gebbie packs her panels with information and addresses racist visual stereotypes as she tells the story of a white American woman, Velma, who visits Rhodesia and falls in love with local Rhodesian Thando. In addition to the political backdrop of the story, Gebbie also includes three panels graphically depicting sexual intercourse, balancing underground excess—in this case a graphic depiction of nudity and sex—and a didactic incentive. The final panel of the story echoes one of Jaxon’s atrocity panels as it depicts how a pregnant Velma has been attacked by Smith’s soldiers (see Figure 3.1). The panel takes up half of the page and shows her belly cut open, her intestines and unborn baby on horrific display. 3 Issue #7 thus starts and ends with direct and shocking explorations of historical events, highlighting violence against women and children in a manner that challenges the underground’s recurring use of frivolity and hyperbolic elements. The particular balancing act that I have explored in Jackson’s story and some of the other stories in Issue #7 is symptomatic of a recurring tendency in the Slow Death comix. Many of the stories seem to be caught between didacticism and spectacle; the artists and their stories are unmistakably rooted in the anti-authoritarianism and tongue-in-cheek rebelliousness of the countercultural movement, but they are also searching for ways to educate an audience about topical injustices and historical events. And while ‘it is hardly surprising that all comix present either overt or covert political commentary’ (Sanders 1975, 843, italics in original) there is certainly a distinction to be made between the coarse and often wilfully offensive satire of many underground works and the more pressing and earnest political commentary of many of the stories in Slow Death. Perhaps the most visually striking example of the balancing act between excess and information can be found in Greg Irons’ ‘Murder, Inc.’ in Issue #10 (1979), where Irons reserves most of a double page spread to relay ‘Fun facts about the medical industrial complex.’ These facts are written down rather than drawn, and Irons discards the standard grid for two large panels that take up two-thirds of the page and list the exploitative nature of the US healthcare, while a small strip at the top of the page shows two

62  Laurike in ‘t Veld

Figure 3.1  ‘Velma Gets it Ndebele’ in Slow Death #7, 1976–1977. © Melinda Gebbie.

anthropomorphic animals butchering a patient and then attacking each other with a lot of blood and profanities. As pointed out by Witek, the page ‘embodies and comments on upon the twin poles of sensationalism and didacticism characteristic of the use of facts in the undergrounds (and in historically based comic books in general)’ (1989, 55). The two pages in Irons’ story show that, in this case, the urgency to inform supersedes the comics format, giving full reign to the didactic imperative.4 This tipping over into the didactic can also manifest visually, as Guy Colwell’s ‘Herpes is a Virus’ demonstrates in the same issue. Abandoning any of the usual Underground Comix bravura in both style and content, Colwell’s story functions more as an informative pamphlet about the dangers of contracting herpes. Although it features quite a few panels depicting a young naked man and women, with several images of their genitalia, the tenor of the story—which lasts a good eight pages—is too dry and demure to allow for any (sexual) pleasure to be taken from the story. There is one instance where the didactic tone takes over an entire issue. Following the war-themed issue, Slow Death issue #8 (1977) was a special Greenpeace edition. The stories in this issue dealt with whale hunting, the (danger of) extinction of certain animal species and the

A Balancing Act  63 horrors of seal clubbing. The issue is virtually devoid of comix irreverence, humour and visual excess. Instead, stories are accompanied by lengthy captions, and the drawing style is much more photorealistic than other issues. For instance, Brenda Bernu’s one-page comic strip ‘Bengal Blues’ teaches readers about Bengal tigers and the dangers they face from human poaching in a straightforwardly didactic endeavour, while Doug Hansen’s visually more extravagant ‘Ozean Oinken’ ultimately aims to educate readers about the hunting of baleen whales. Using an environmental organisation like Greenpeace as a theme for an issue thus pushes the artists firmly into an educational mode that does not allow much space for the usual underground flippancy and frivolity. Throughout the other issues, many stories confront societal issues with a fervour while still using sex and violence as spectacular and alluring elements. Rand Holmes’s ‘Museum Piece’ in Slow Death Issue #5 (1973) shows how interplanetary travel now allows humankind to ravage other planets in search for natural resources. The references to the world’s dire state and America’s imperialist drive are obvious. As one character questions the moral issues around ransacking a new planet and uprooting its inhabitants—suggesting people should have listened to the environmentalists before it was too late—Holmes ensures a didactic message is conveyed through the blatant moral disregard of the superior’s racist and imperialist answer: Hell!..North America once belonged to Indians!..For God’s sake lieutenant they’re only gooks!. . . . In Vietnam in the old days we used to kill em by the thousands. . . and that was just over oil rights! Here the resources of an entire planet are at stake. . . Surely you’re not suggesting we betray the interests of our country. (1973, n.p.) Of course, the story does not end well, but not before Holmes complements his evident critique of modern-day America with an encounter between the good guy and a buxom, naked native woman. Though we learn at the end of the story that her alluring presence served something of a narrative purpose, Holmes reserves a double spread to detail the encounter with naked body parts and genitalia on display. Jack Jackson’s ‘Gene Shuffle’ in Slow Death Issue #3 (1971) similarly includes an explicitly drawn sexual encounter in a post-apocalyptic story of reversal where humans are now the new mutants, while deformed and alienesque creatures populate the cities. The main character Gene, one of the last normal-looking humans, who has been banned from society, encounters a scantily clad woman called Olga. She is drawn in typical hypersexualised comix style with large breasts and buttocks, and it doesn’t take long for the bemusedly inexperienced modern-day Adam and Eve to figure out what they can do with their physical apparatus.

64  Laurike in ‘t Veld Jackson’s story is a fairly light-hearted exploration of a world post-­ nuclear attack, and rather than using the comix aesthetic as a means to shock audiences into awareness like in ‘Nits Make Lice,’ Jackson injects sex into the story to entertain a (male) audience. Holmes and Jackson thus accommodate an underground audience looking for X-rated elements by injecting their stories, which share an environmental concern, with a good dose of sexual entertainment. Of course, a didactic incentive does not necessarily exclude elements that amuse or divert. A critique of the state of the world does not have to be at odds with elements of entertainment or titillation. The more overtly satirical and fictional stories in Slow Death cause less friction between the two incentives because they are clearly tongue-in-cheek and/or speculate on a future that hasn’t yet come into existence. Rand Holmes and Jack Jackson can take liberties with their graphic depiction of sex because their stories feature fictional characters—they do not have to accurately represent a historical reality. However, when dealing with past or current injustices and non-fictional topics, a tangible balancing act takes place between education and entertainment. This notion of a ‘balancing act’ adequately captures the fact that in many of these strips, there is a palpable tension between an urgency to inform audiences about the past or current state of affairs and a—perhaps unspoken—suggestion that an underground comic needs to include some impertinent elements to please their readership. In the atrocity panels in ‘Nits Make Lice,’ the impertinency of the graphic visualisation of violence can be read as a bid for sensationalism and titillation: ‘look at the outrageous things I can show for your entertainment.’ However, the context of the story demonstrates that these panels are closer to the didactic function. Jackson is not drawing explicit images to entertain his readers through shock and disgust. On the contrary, his atrocity panels are inserted to educate readers through a visual confrontation with a troubled past. As a magazine, Slow Death is thus both firmly linked to the underground tradition while also struggling to combine its exuberance with a more didactically inclined agenda. In this way, the comix functions as a bridge between the excessive and spectacular tenor of much of the underground work and the more restrained graphic novels that followed after its demise. Slow Death certainly wasn’t the only magazine that attempted to balance these incentives (other examples include It Ain’t Me Babe, Abortion Eve and Facts o’ Life Sex Education Funnies), but it stands out as one of the more persistent comix efforts to inform audiences. This bridge function could arguably be extended to the underground movement as a whole as many of the artists that were successful in the 80s and 90s came out of, or were inspired by, Underground Comix. However, in many respects Slow Death moves away from the highly personal, free love/hypersexual, drug-infused and satirically transgressive nature of many other comix in favour of a much more urgent, earnest

A Balancing Act  65 and informative tone. Although Mark James Estren’s rightfully observes that Underground Comix provoke a laughter of irreverence (2012, 23), it is important to point out that in many of the stories in Slow Death this irreverence is complemented by a sense of serious urgency, or drops away entirely. A lot of the stories in Slow Death, including ‘Nits Make Lice,’ do not aim to be funny or satirical, and those stories position the magazine more clearly as bridge between comix and the graphic novels that explore serious and sensitive themes after the demise of the underground (including, among others, the ‘big three’ of Art Spiegelman, Alan Moore and Frank Miller, and work by Joe Sacco). In many ways, Underground Comix opened up the field for more adult and personal content, thereby functioning as an important phase in the development of the medium, but what Slow Death keenly demonstrates is a particular consideration of searching for effective strategies in dealing with urgent and precarious non-fictional topics. The stories in Slow Death are resisting the Comics Code through their style and content, but in addition to recurring social and political satire, irreverence and X-rated content, these comix also tangibly and earnestly negotiate between different incentives (admittedly, some more successfully than others). Although Estren posits that ‘underground comics deal with whatever subjects their artists wish, in uncompromising visual and verbal terms’ (2012, 20) the stories in Slow Death demonstrate that many stories do indeed make compromises as they negotiate between the poles of education and entertainment in order to ensure an effective form of communication about timely issues. Among the stories in Slow Death, Jaxon’s ‘Nits Make Lice’ functions as an important transitional text; it is the most urgent, visceral and confrontational story in the Slow Death collection, and one in which we can clearly see the outlines take shape of both Jackson’s later work and the (historically informed) graphic novels that were published from the 1980s onwards. A sense of earnestness, the urgency to inform and the use of visually striking drawings in tandem with informative and complementary captions run as a common thread throughout post-­underground comics and graphic novels on historical topics. For instance, both Spiegelman’s Maus and Joe Sacco’s work on the war and conflict in Palestine and Bosnia are characterised by a similar sense of urgency, coupled with a more self-reflexive examination of the artists’ role in the redrawing of historical events and the balancing acts that take place in doing so. Both Spiegelman and Sacco use atrocity panels in harrowing sequences of violence. However, they rely less on explicit and gory visual details, and exercise more restraint in their placement within the storyline (using them more sparingly or, in Sacco’s case, often presented in eyewitness accounts that are part of contained narrative sections). This does not make these panels less distressing, as these drawings are still graphic and/or imply violence. However, the visceral quality of Jackson’s atrocity panels

66  Laurike in ‘t Veld and the visualisation of the horrors enacted on vulnerable bodies set his comic strip apart from other visual treatments of historical violence. Other graphic novels, like Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon’s The 9/11 Report (2006), demonstrate that this balancing act can sometimes tip over into a fairly dry transmission of information, thereby missing a chance to engage readers through comics’ unique vocabulary and storytelling capabilities. On the one hand, Jackson’s story undoubtedly sits within the underground movement through his use of comix elements in the visual articulation of the Sand Creek Massacre. The skewed facial features of the rank-and-file perpetrators and the highly graphic rendering of violence conform to the Underground aesthetic of shock and hyperbolics. Like many other comix, the story wants to shock and defy the restraints of the Comics Code as clearly as possible. On the other hand, Jackson’s story stands out through its restrained representation of the Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples and the representation of sexual violence. Unlike other underground work, Jackson doesn’t allow for any sense of titillation or entertainment in his depiction of sexual violence. Furthermore, Jackson has almost completely discarded any sense of satire or humour; there is virtually nothing funny, light-hearted or frivolous about the story. Instead, Jackson uses excess in service of his didactic drive, though the underground elements of (visual) shock arguably fail to complete the educational aim. The urgency of Jackson’s story is still palpable, as every panel in his story communicates: this is what happened and this is what that looks like. ‘Nits Make Lice’ thus prefigures a particular oscillation between information, education and spectacle that hasn’t lost relevance or impact.

Notes 1 Witek notes that Jackson ‘owes much to the visual style of horror established in the E.C. Comics’ (1989, 70). The visceral quality of the attacks on the victims’ bodies and the mutilation of body parts certainly echo some of the stylistic features of E.C. Comics—the visual emphasis on maimed, disfigured and aberrant bodies—but it also channels other pre-Code horror publishers like Harvey Publications’ Black Cat Mystery Comics, Chamber of Chills and Tomb of Terror. 2 The story ‘The Savage Within,’ part two of Jackson’s three-part series on the Spanish Missions in Texas and published in 1990 in Fantagraphics’ Graphic Story Monthly, features a few atrocity panels that are reminiscent of ‘Nits Make Lice.’ The fictional character of Yoyo Pintado, a native Pajalache, murders his wife and children in a gruesome manner after discovering her infidelity. Jackson does not eschew showing the horrific mutilation of the woman’s body, and one panel depicting a priest stepping on the woman’s severed breast echoes the panels of the Colorado regiment holding up severed genitals as war trophies. 3 In an e-mail conversation (March 2018), Melinda Gebbie notes that the final panel—an idea of co-author Prosper T.—shows ‘the perennial obscenity of the lowest human drive - that of the destruction of life.’

A Balancing Act  67 4 Irons addresses this literal divide between spectacle and didacticism in the first panel of the strip at the top of the page, where a skull head offers readers, or the ‘sex and violence freaks,’ the option to skip the ‘dry, informative, educational-type comic strips’ (n.p.) in favour of the animal cartoon.

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68  Laurike in ‘t Veld Slow Death #3. 1971. Berkeley, CA: Last Gasp Eco-Funnies. Slow Death #5. 1973. Berkeley, CA: Last Gasp Eco-Funnies. Slow Death #7. Winter 1976–1977. Berkeley, CA: Last Gasp Eco-Funnies. Slow Death #8. Special Greenpeace Issue. 1977. Berkeley, CA: Last Gasp of San Francisco. Slow Death #10. 1979. Berkeley, CA: Last Gasp of San Francisco. Spiegelman, Art. 2003. The Complete Maus. London: Penguin Books. Witek, Joseph. 1989. Comic Books as History: The Narrative Art of Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Embodiment

4 Seeing (in) Red ‘Thick’ Violence in Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas’s Red: A Haida Manga Laura A. Pearson For over a century, from at least the Indian Act (1876), the central aim of Canada’s Native policy was to eradicate First Peoples’ cultures and ways of life. The Indian Act, William B. Henderson explains, ‘was first introduced in 1876 as a consolidation of previous colonial ordinances that aimed to eradicate First Nations culture in favour of assimilation into Euro-Canadian society’ (2006). More recently, extensive studies have found that Canada’s ‘Aboriginal policies’ were designed to annul indigenous community’s autonomy; ignore their rights; terminate their treaties; obliterate their distinct languages and cultures; and, through an inexorable process of assimilation, cause First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples to effectively cease to exist in Canada—a policy which has belatedly been described as ‘cultural genocide’ (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 2015, 1). Meanwhile, the contemporary (neo-) liberal framework of ‘colonial reconciliation’ must be critiqued for its pernicious smuggling of state-sanctioned and often ethically charged ‘human’ universals, perennially countenancing new forms of exploitation (c.f. Coulthard 2014). In this chapter, the idea of ‘thick’ violence (i.e. a satirical ethic and embodiment of hegemonic context-smashing) emerges from multiple sites of cultural and ecological violence in Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas’s Red: A Haida Manga (2009), hereafter Red. The concept of thick violence, here, stems from an environmental humanities perspective that recognises the ‘need to re-frame global environmental change issues fundamentally as social and human challenges,’ dealing with ‘concerns within the humanities—such as, “meaning, value, responsibility and purpose”’ (Neimanis et al. 2015, 69 [via Palsson et al. and Rose et al.]). The idea of thick violence comes from this context and aims to build on objectives and imperatives of the environmental humanities particularly for “our” time—a time that is, for certain, a thick (Neimanis and Walker 2013), queer (Halberstam 2005; Freeman 2010), non-linear (De Landa 2000; Prigogine & Stengers 1984), multispecies and ethical (Rose et al. 2012) time that can hardly be said to have a universal subject or one Grand Narrative to accompany it. (Neimanis et al. 2015, 69)

72  Laura A. Pearson ‘Grand Narratives,’ in the case of Red, can be critically deconstructed on the always multiple, idiosyncratic surfaces and imaginative silences of graphic fiction. Red, for example, is a tale of the tragic and eponymous, coming of age protagonist, Red. Yet the painstakingly detailed Red has amalgamated several intertextual and transcultural myths, combining unique storytelling techniques associated with the First Nation Haida People of the Pacific Northwest to create a resonant and timely allegory about how violence can proliferate what I am calling thick violence.1 Accordingly, this chapter draws on specific contexts of Haida suppression and comics racism to explore how the text plays between different levels of satire and humour, between time and space, and between visual and verbal elements, highlighting familiar ways of reading and seeing while ‘defamiliarizing’ (Emberley 2015) readers at the same time. As I will argue, these are all strategies as part of the text’s general aim to show interconnected social and ecological agencies while indicting anthropocentric—­ often invisibly naturalised—structures of domination and war.

What is Haida Manga? For scholars and general readers alike, the generic term ‘manga’ tends to delineate a Japanese style of cartooning. It is commonly acknowledged that Japanese artist ‘Hokusai Katsuhika (1760–1849) coined the term “manga” around 1815’ (Brenner 2007, 3)—a term that ‘originates from the Japanese compound reading of the two Chinese characters 漫画, translated into English as “random” or “irresponsible” and “picture,” respectively’ (Brienza 2014, 469). Although most discussions of manga today describe its descent from Japanese art forms, illuminated scrolls and ancient caricatures, there is ‘an alternate point of view that attributes greater influence to more recent media, such as photography and film, in particular the comic books of U.S. origin that appeared in Japan after World War II’ (Ostrowitz 2011, 2). ‘All of these histories,’ says Judith Ostrowitz, ‘pay tribute to some form of nexus of Eastern and Western traditions’ (2011, 2). As manga scholar Neil Cohn suggests, the word manga has come to have two meanings outside Japan. Some use it to designate Japanese ‘comics,’ the sociocultural objects, and often the industry and community surrounding them. However, others use ‘manga’ to name this visual language itself—loosely conceived of as an ‘aesthetic style’. (2010, 187) Built into both concepts is the idea of a cohesive type that ties manga to its original Japanese location, but in the process also raises questions over cross-cultural ideals of mutual understanding. Indeed, for Casey Brienza

Seeing (in) Red  73 the term manga is best understood as ‘connot[ing] certain stereotypes about specific types of narrative and artistic content’—stereotypes that have come to even greater prominence with the ‘manga revolution’ and/or ‘manga boom’ currently proliferating in the United States (2014, 468–470). The wider contexts of North American settler colonialism and human exceptionalism (or anthropocentrism)—both of which function in exclusionary ways—are important here, as is Wendy Siuyi Wong’s claim that [g]iven the long worldwide domination of American cultural products, the challenges being posed by manga and anime can be seen as a good sign that the world is developing more balanced and tolerant practices. At the moment, Japanese cultural products are the only major alternative choice outside the American cultural hegemony. (2010, 347) In this last sense, manga—however stereotypical its surface form—can emerge as a viable alternative, a potentially disruptive space in which to critique systems of (bio)cultural hegemony such as those of the USA or, more broadly, the West. Enter ‘Haida Manga,’ Yahgulanaas’s term for some of his own work, 2 specifically the graphic text Red (Figure 4.1). Originally composed as a composite mural and subsequently repackaged as a graphic novel, this intriguing text blends Haida artistic practices with oral narrative and Pacific Northwest Coast art. It seems significant in this context that Yahgulanaas, for his part, claims that he is of mixed Scottish and Haida ancestry, but identifies as Haida. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Yahgulanaas served the Haida Nation in campaigns against mining and logging as well as helping to secure political rights for the Haida people (Levell 2013, 97). He became a full-time artist after many decades of working on the Haida Nation’s successful campaign to protect its biocultural diversity. In his words: Culturally I’m Haida, I choose this because my immigrant lineages don’t require defense. They occupy all the available space. Haida values need to be buttressed against this. It is Haida that has a great gift, and strangely, Canada doesn’t know how to receive it. (Augaitis 2006, 160) ‘In literal terms,’ Nicola Levell writes, Haida Manga graphically engages with contemporary political issues, particularly those that relate to the land and address environmental and ecological concerns, which resonate not only with the Haida Nation but also with a broader body politic, at regional, national and global levels. (2013, 99)

74  Laura A. Pearson

Figure 4.1  R  ed Cover. © MNY (mny.ca)

In one of Red’s compelling split-scene sequences, for example, while Red is on his ‘dream’ quest (19), an earthlike figure with ‘broken legs’ speaks to him (see the bottom left images in Figure 4.2). In the parallel scene, readers witness colonialists/capitalists selling ‘weapons’ and ‘fear gear’ to the locals (18). This suggests an interwoven critique of materialism and militarism (discussed further later), which, in turn, clearly speaks to the current resurgence movements of ‘Mother Earth’ (Vidal 2011) and conflicted conceptions of the ‘growing global discourse of the Anthropocene’ (Neimanis et al. 2015, 69). Thus, ‘Haida Manga’ is the idiosyncratic approach that allows Yahgulanaas to infuse Pacific Northwest Coast art and oral history with transpacific influences and cross-biocultural politics. In Yahgulanaas’s words,

Seeing (in) Red  75

Figure 4.2  Red in the forest with broken knees, p. 19. © MNY (mny.ca)

The merger is not really of style or technique but rather intent. The first intent was to signal that the lineage of my work would not arise out of a continental American root but would be grafted onto a north Pacific literary tradition. This of course would be Haida graphic and artistic practices in the Classic era and for the Japanese side, I draw on their longstanding appreciation that complexity and diversity can be conveyed in manga, or graphic literature. (Haines 2009) In a different context, he says that he is ‘attracted to the idea that manga (pictures without limitations) might signal an evolution of Haida design [. . .] but need not be seen as contained within a Euro-centric world (“comics”)’ (Colclough 2012, 40). This speaks directly to ongoing decolonisation and resurgence struggles in Canada, elsewhere across Turtle Island and beyond (c.f. Barnd 2017 for examples of how ‘Native geographies effectively reclaim indigenous identities, assert ongoing relations to the land, and refuse the claims of settler colonialism,’ and Todd, who argues that ‘deep intellectual traditions borne out [. . .] across Turtle Island (North America)’ are often left out of the conversation in which ‘European and North American academies are separated, after all, by a mere pond, and our kinship relations and ongoing colonial legacies

76  Laura A. Pearson actually weave us much more closely together than geography suggests’ (2016, 7)). The more immediate context underpinning Red is that of Yahgulanaas’s home islands, the Haida Gwaii archipelago (colonially, the Queen Charlotte Islands) off the west coast of Canada. Historically, these islands have been exploited for their rich natural resources (Takeda and Røpke 2010). Today, their original inhabitants find themselves ‘contesting the buried colonial epistemologies that enframe nature through a defining absence’ (Willems-Braun 1997, 25). Over and against this colonial history, the Haida style of art has been likened to an ancient language with a visual grammar and vocabulary of animals and mythological creatures of its own. When I asked Yahgulanaas about the abundance of animals in his work, he replied, ‘I have little to say about the role [of animals] in my work particularly given their almost complete dominance as iconic and narrative roles in classic Haida Art’ (e-mail to author, 4 December 2014). Carved into and painted on wood, stone and other materials, these iconic figures tell a story, identify the lineage of a social group and explore philosophical ideas; in traditional Haida society, the visual arts have been a primary means of communication (Augaitis 2006; Strauss 2010). In Comics Studies, ‘languages’ take on a wider meaning than one that might be traditionally assumed to refer to ‘words’ alone. Reworking ideas of the local and the national by taking on conspicuously transregional forms, Red is also translinguistic in its methodological approach, in keeping with manga as a medium generally considered to be capable of intermingling several categories and genres—several ‘languages’—at one time. As such, it can be seen as a contemporary example of graphic fiction that disarms all simplistic definitions of genre, nationality and style. As Robin Brenner observes, ‘manga creators can take one idea and run with it in entirely different directions without any qualms about remaining true to the “original” idea or myth’ (2007, 188). Perhaps Red is orthodox after all in this general sense. But, while taking cues from manga—not least by adopting the more or less standard manga tropes of violence and satire as well as its ‘tradition of familiarity between human and nonhuman beings’ (Bouissou 2010, 18)—the text also significantly departs from some of its identifying practices. It cuts across different ontological realms, in the sense of taking on both animal-human and transcultural aspects, but it does so primarily to articulate a culturally specific Haida way of life. By fusing Haida iconography with Japanese-inspired manga, Red evokes a hybrid idiom for creatively negotiating Haida issues, oral narratives and ecological agency within and beyond indigenous, local and generational domains of exchange. The following parts of this chapter will explore how these different cross-fertilisations are placed in tension with one another in the overarching context of an aesthetically enabling (yet incommensurable) Haida worldview.

Seeing (in) Red  77

Seeing and Reading (in) Red For Thomas King, The magic of Native literature—as with other literatures—is not the themes of the stories—identity, isolation, loss, ceremony, community, maturation, home—it is in the way meaning is refracted by cosmology, the way understanding is shaped by cultural paradigms. (2003, 112) For Yahgulanaas, these paradigms have much to do with the legacy of racism and its perpetuation in the North American comics tradition, which, as C. Richard King argues, have served as ‘an exemplary instance of [an] American imperial imaginary’ that has historically imagined ‘Native Americans as objects’ (2009, 214–215). One does not need to be a comics scholar to know that the medium has relied (and often still does rely) on stereotypes—both negative and positive—of the ‘Red Indian.’ Yahgulanaas’s Red explicitly takes up and transforms this ‘Redman’ stereotype. The text performs what we might call a strategically anachronistic (i.e. thoroughly modernised) colonial encounter that both critiques static stereotypes and builds on trickster creation stories and mythologies. In the text’s establishing scene, the eponymous Red dives into the sea; he then comes up clutching what appears to be a clamshell (see Figure 4.2). This transparently reflects the Haida creation story, in which human beings were said to have been liberated by Raven from their watery pen in a clamshell (‘Mythology and Crests’ n.d.). As Lewis Hyde further explains, ‘On the North Pacific coast, the trickster Raven made the first fishhook; he taught the spider how to make her web and human beings how to make nets’ (2008, 18). Although the image of a Raven only makes one obvious appearance in this text, it is rendered in red and linked to Red’s suicide at the end of the text. The colour red, as might be expected, has many different meanings, ranging from bloodline to blood loss. Several of these are specific to Haida cosmology. Miriam Brown Spiers elucidates: According to the rules of Haida art, Red, as a color and a character, is expected to rely upon formlines while also being contained within those lines. Because red/Red’s importance is secondary, he is responsible for respecting the naturally existing boundaries and living according to their structure. (2014, 44) As a heroic figure, Red is arguably secondary to the formlines typical of Haida art that shape Yahgulanaas’s story—but as a decidedly anti-­heroic trickster, he is constantly challenging the boundaries within which he

78  Laura A. Pearson is circumscribed, with violent and ultimately tragic consequences for himself. To some extent this is of a piece with North American Native mythologies in which tricksters, who rarely maintain a singular or fixed form, fall prey to their own rule-breaking schemes, sometimes destroying themselves in the process (Hyde 2008). But, as will be seen, Yahgulanaas’s text is too volatile to sustain ‘an overgeneralized trickster theory’ (Fagan 2010, 8); instead, it highlights disruptions of traditional subject-object relations, challenges conventional ideas of the ‘authentic’ and disturbs linear narratives of progress—and all within a multifaceted, deeply iconoclastic text. The story of Red is framed by the paratext on its inside front cover. This introduction is important, not least because it draws attention to differently encoded methods of storytelling. I will quote it in full, then discuss a few key lines: Referencing a classic Haida oral narrative, this stunning full-colour graphic novel documents the tragic story of a leader so blinded by revenge that he leads his community to the brink of war and destruction. Red is the prideful leader of a small village in the islands off the northwest coast of British Columbia. His sister was abducted years ago by a band of Raiders. When news comes that his sister has been spotted in a nearby village, Red sets out to rescue her and exact revenge on her captors. Consisting of 108 pages of hand-painted illustrations, Red is a groundbreaking mix of Haida imagery and Japanese manga. Tragic and timeless, it is reminiscent of such classic stories as Oedipus Rex and Macbeth. Red is an action-packed and dazzling graphic novel that is also a cautionary tale about the devastating effects of rage and retribution.3 Besides the obvious key words, which are aimed at a popular audience— stunning, dazzling, groundbreaking, action-packed—we can also extrapolate a series of tactically placed frames of reference that surround the eponymous character of Red. For example, the description suggests a transcultural relation between the ‘tragic and timeless’ stories of Oedipus Rex and Macbeth, putting these canonical Western texts in company with a self-proclaimed ‘classic Haida oral narrative.’ In addition, Yahgulanaas’s engagement with histories of settler/indigenous cultural encounter draws attention to a whole host of myths that police lines of difference between these two broadly defined cultural groups: for example, the Western myth of the Noble Savage or ‘Redman.’ These myths feed more or less directly into policies that have presented labels such as ‘Aboriginals’ or ‘Indians’ as stable and homogeneous categories. As Julia Emberley explains, “Aboriginality” refers to the history of representation deployed by settler colonies to circumscribe the meaning of Indigenous

Seeing (in) Red  79 existence, including social, political, and economic values and cultural knowledge. This representational history, perpetuated through an oppositional and hierarchical duality of savagery/civilization and permeating European philosophical and ethnographic discourses of the late nineteenth century, came to substitute for the actual experience of Indigenous peoples and nations. Furthermore, Indigenous people were not permitted access to dominant technologies of representation, including print media and visual forms such as film, photography, and later, television. In spite of this exclusion, over the last 40 years, Indigenous people wrote, engaged in cultural production, and created a body of work that addressed both their experience and this history of representational violence. (2015, 209) To put this in a more specifically West Coast context, we might reflect on the fact that, as Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Jennifer Kramer and K ̣i-ke-in ̣ put it, ‘As with Indigenous people, Indigenous knowledge was, through much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, submerged, if not actively suppressed, from the public sphere in British Columbia’ (2013, xxxiii). To place this now in the expansive context of Red, the title’s main terms immediately draw attention to the aforementioned idea of the Red Indian, which is indexed by the colour of the main character’s hair. This last is nothing if not a loaded signifier, visually reinforced because Red virtually never looks the same way twice—his hair colour is also the only way readers can identify him throughout the text. Red himself literally embodies the negative stereotype he figuratively undermines. His continually mutating state primarily suggests a subversive transformation of the stereotype of the Red Indian by offering many shape-­shifting Reds4 (see Figure 4.1, for example). At other various points in the text, Red’s character is shot through with archetypes of the shaman (10), the warrior (40) and the tragic hero (105)—references that invite comparison with Western ‘high’ and popular cultural figures. Alternatively, as Yahgulanaas himself suggests, since Red is an orphan character—­ albeit another comics trope—we could choose to read him as an anomaly. Thus, when Red dramatically commits suicide towards the end of the text—after he has beheaded his sister’s husband against her wishes, effectively ‘rescuing’ her from a situation she had never wanted to be rescued from in the first place—the standard revenge tale becomes significantly more complicated. And Red’s overdetermined identity—both manifold and mutating—ultimately implodes. Moreover, Yahgulanaas’s intersectional characterisation of Red—one that can be read in terms of race, class and transnational trickster and transregional Haida identity politics—extends to suggest a feminist interest. As Maile Arvin, Eve Tuck and Angie Morrill argue, ‘attending

80  Laura A. Pearson to the links between heteropatriarchy and settler colonialism is intellectually and politically imperative for all peoples living within settler colonial contexts’ (2013, 8–9). Just as important in Red, however, are the various Haida matriarchal practices and etiological (Raven-creation) beliefs that Yahgulanaas invokes in the text. According to the Constitution of the Haida Nation, ‘The Haida Nation is a matrilineal society, and we recognize the prominent role of our hereditary matriarchs as part of our governing body’ (2014, 11). This squares with Yahgulanaas’s ‘identification in the Haida matrilineal system as a Raven—the inveterate trickster of indigenous Northwest Coast mythology, who constantly creates mischief in the human realm with his subversive activities and antics that habitually expose humanity’s foibles’ (Levell 2013, 99). In this last sense we may understand Red, not exactly as a trickster, but more properly as an aptronym, enunciating resistance through the metonym of his fiery hair and functioning as a foil that encompasses the shifting and compound figurations of Red as character and Red as text. Taking this strand of interpretation further, we might read shades of tragic mimicry in Red, especially in the dénouement, which provides examples of Aristotelian anagnorisis (recognition) and peripeteia (reversal). For instance, when Red’s Kaagi, who we understand to be his Elder, tells him, ‘it’s time to end the fighting,’ and she gives him ‘a great bow’ to ‘last [him] all of [his] days’ (102), Yahgulanaas gives readers just a glimmer of a happy ending. This soon reverses, however, when Red shoots an arrow into the sky and dashes to the beach, forcing the arrow to pierce his chest and kill him. In a classic instance of anagnorisis—the moment when Red discovers his mistake of chasing violence for violence’s sake— readers realise that his hubris has led him there. Suggestively foreshadowed by the image of a Raven—which is associated, in turn, with the words of a death figure, who says, ‘I, too, have come for a head’ (99)— this reversal of circumstances (an example of Aristotelian peripeteia) is transculturally bound up with Greek tragedy, Haida oral narrative and Asian manga traditions while also performing a critique that looks to ‘exceed the moment of colonization’ itself (Chow 2003, 342). As Rey Chow writes, The agency of the native cannot simply be imagined in terms of a resistance against the image—that is, after the image has been formed—nor in terms of a subjectivity that existed before, beneath, inside, or outside the image. It needs to be rethought as that which bears witness to its own demolition—in a form that is at once image and gaze, but a gaze that exceeds the moment of colonization. (342) It is worth considering the extent to which Red, in Chow’s terms, ‘bears witness to its own demolition.’ Certainly, the text seeks to go beyond the

Seeing (in) Red  81 repeating negative cycles of (colonial) exploitation it also instantiates, as can be intuited from a comparative analysis of its opening and closing frames. Unlike the image of the boat on the first page of the story, the boat on the final page is built with many eyes and ‘gaze-like’ figurations (1, 108). At the most obvious level, this suggests alternative ways of ­seeing—not least Haida ways of seeing—but these are then combined with a verbal cue from Red’s sister, ‘let’s go home son.’ Where ‘home’ is located—and how it is seen—will likely vary according to the cultural codes of the text’s readers, but Red’s suicide, which clearly invokes epidemic rates of Indigenous self-harm and suicide in North America (Chandler and Lalonde 2008), asks us to consider homes that have been violently taken alongside lives that have been tragically lost. This is further suggested in the second last sentence of Red, which reads, ‘I am truly sorry for our losses’ (107), implying both shared bereavement and a collective responsibility for finding alternative ways of seeing that support a people whose territory has been ‘viewed by outsiders largely in terms of the resources that could be profitably extracted’ (Takeda and Røpke 2010, 180). Red is a sombre reflection on these losses, but as I will now go on to show, it also offers a celebration of First Nations cultures, nowhere more apparent than in its innovative combination of manga comics and Haida art.

Transforming ‘Comics’ with Haida Formlines and Yah’guudang Yahgulanaas’s deployment of Haida formline art replaces what we might more usually call comics frames and panels. In this and other ways, Red manifests the intricate visual language of the Haida.5 Following Haida artist Reg Davidson, David Levi Strauss explains that Haida art is primarily a language for representing transformation. The complex arrangement of ovoids and U-shaped designs in Haida compositions is an abstract approach to figuration, where shapes metamorphose into creatures that in turn become other creatures. The formlines are boundaries to be crossed and recrossed. The underlying ‘subject’ of all Haida art is the great chain of being, the cyclical transformation of life forms. (2010, 50) This ‘cyclical transformation’ connects with the Haida cosmological concept of Yah’guudang, the informing vision for which can be described as follows: Yah’guudang—our respect for all living things—celebrates the ways our lives and spirits are intertwined and honors the responsibility

82  Laura A. Pearson we hold to future generations. [Haida Gwaii] Yah’guudang is about respect and responsibility, about knowing our place in the web of life, and how the fate of our culture runs parallel with the fate of the ocean, sky, and forest people. (Quail 2014, 676) Red’s visual language seeks, at least in part—and across multiple r­ egisters—to capture this vision. In two early scenes, a young Red learns about Yah’guudang. Pointing towards the ocean and then the forest, an elder tells him, Out there is where we are conceived. . . / Here on the beach is where we are born. . . / And in there, that is where we become adults. / Red you aren’t a kid anymore. You must become aware of the world outside you. . . / And inside you. (5–7) This bears out a ‘vision of the Haida legal system as one that prioritizes respect between and among humans and the non-human world’ (Quail 2014, 678). As Susanna Quail argues, ‘[Haida] stories are not cultural relics, nor merely works of art to admire and be entertained by, but are fundamentally tools for thinking through conflict’ (2014,  674). This is an appropriate way of looking at conflict and examples of thick violence in the text. At the same time as the scene that leads to Red’s ‘dream’ quest (mentioned earlier), back in Red’s village, traders arrive selling ‘weapons’ and ‘fear gear.’ Both the plot and the irony thicken. The verbal exchange reads, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen and children of all ages! Come feast your eyes on the latest in home security! Here are the instruments to make your lives worry free. / But what do we need weapons for?’ asks a villager; ‘Can’t sell fear gear to happy people’ is the response from the traders (18). Typically, the text is at once obvious—satirically comical—and more complicated than it seems. Because of Yahgulanaas’s suggestive play on time, we may assume that this scenario refers to colonial history. While Haida oral history supported by recent archaeological records traces the Haida people’s connection to the land and waters of Haida Gwaii back more than 10,000 years (long before there was a Canada or the United States), the history of colonisation is generally acknowledged to have begun in the late 18th century when explorers embarked on the maritime fur trade. However, the diction Yahgulanaas uses in phrases like ‘home security’ and ‘fear gear’ supports other, conflated (or fluid) historical readings, such as the one reviewer Robert Haines finds when he views Red as a cautionary tale, ‘woven with an eye towards former President George Bush and the policies and actions of the post-9/11 years’ (2010).

Seeing (in) Red  83 A few pages later, readers encounter a related scene in which the idea of increasing divisions emerges again, especially when the villagers discuss the traders: ‘My wife works in accounts, says all our goods are being traded for weapons.’ / ‘It’s part of our deal with the traders. After all they’re our friends. Our only friends.’ / ‘Yeah, but ever since we got scared, everyone else’s gotten scared of us’ (39). As the text progresses, Red’s quest for revenge is exacerbated by this atmosphere of increasing militarism and by a destructive mentality of divide and conquer mitigated through distinct capitalist undertones connected to environmental commodification. In another example, after Red meets a carpenter whom people are ‘scared of’ because of his ‘hunting’ and ‘killing’ inventions, the two collude to build a giant sea vessel that Red will use in his mission to find his sister. Red is ‘transfixed by Carpenter’s story’ (35–36). Meaning to impale or make motionless with astonishment, Red is metaphorically ‘transfixed’ (in the latter meaning) by the representations of animals being literally impaled (in the former one). The scene’s caricatured depiction of an impaled and astonished sea lion suggests a subversively mordant form of cartooning. Here, Yahgulanaas’s art provides an example of a not-so-funny animal representation of exploitation.6 Following this, Red’s reflexive dialogue ponders the potential consequences of his actions, highlighting hubristic disregard: Wow, that’s a lot of hides. / The whales won’t be happy we’re killing all their sea lions. / We need more hides so carpenter can build us our own great whale. / Maybe we won’t need real whales anymore. (37) Yahgulanaas invites readers to imagine a form of speciesism leading to potential whale extinction while subtly undermining the (Western) anthropomorphic impulse that would second animals to the realm of human symbolism. As Indigenous scholar Kim TallBear points out, ‘Our traditional stories also portray nonhuman persons in ways that do not adhere to another meaningful modern category, the “animal.”’ Such stories, says TallBear, ‘avoid the hierarchical nature-culture and animal-­ human split that has enabled domineering human management, naming, controlling, and ‘saving’ of nature’ (2015, 235). By foregrounding his text in the Haida notion of Yah’guudang, Yahgulanaas’s satirical techniques invite readers to make crucial, ethical links between these and other aggressive structures at work, such as militarism. Red turns out, however, not to be a particularly assiduous student of Yah’guudang. Instead, the text highlights his increasing anthropocentrism, further illustrated when he is inside (and ultimately in control) of the whale submarine they have built. Red is quite literally depicted ‘in the belly of the whale’ (68). This trope has ample currency in the West,

84  Laura A. Pearson as Peter Wayne Moe points out, ‘recirculat[ing] through [the biblical] Jonah, medieval poetry and art, Pinocchio, a handful of Batman comics, a Bruce Springsteen song, yarns from eighteenth- and nineteenth-­century whalers—among other places—and, of course, [Herman] Melville’s ­Moby-Dick’ (2015, 41). Moe does not mention here the plethora of whale stories that occur in Haida and other Pacific Northwest myths. In one of these latter stories, the trickster Raven ‘pecked himself out of the body of a whale through the end of its dorsal fin’ (“Mythology and Crests” n.d.). While this may or may not be the specific tale Yahgulanaas is alluding to, clearly his meticulously detailed text has incorporated several myths; these are all part of the text’s broad objective to show interrelated social and ecological agencies while critiquing notions of alienating individualism and (naturalised) dualistic visions of the world, which have endangered the planet at large. As Spiers points out, Red’s ‘destructive behavior is both represented and reinforced by his efforts to bend the formline to his will’ (2014, 44). Red’s destructive obsessions can be read, in fact, in multiple levels of the text and in several different social and historical contexts that allude not just to distinctive histories of cultural and ecological imperialism in North America but also to different ways of conceiving and interpreting temporality and historicity itself. Yahgulanaas’s anachronistic tale, beginning with the archetypal yet seemingly paradoxical phrase ‘once upon a time this was a true story. . .’ suggests a multiplicity of temporal registers while obscuring the text’s generic frameworks; this highlights familiar ways of reading and seeing, while it ‘defamiliarizes’ readers at the same time (Emberley 2015, 215–216).7 Following the final page of the text, readers find a postscript section entitled ‘overleaf.’ Here, and only at the end, do readers discover that the graphic novel Red derives from an originally composed composite mural. Here Yahgulanaas says, ‘I welcome you to destroy this book,’ that is, he both invites a deconstruction and a reconstruction back into its quasi-original mural shape (Figure 4.3).8

Figure 4.3  Red in mural form. © MNY (mny.ca)

Seeing (in) Red  85 In participating in or even imagining this transformative act, and looking at the text in its macro (non-verbal) incarnation—and in its micro details—there emerges a potent critique about knowledge creation that privileges hegemonic, linear and thus exclusionary kinds of cognitive, epistemological and ontological sovereignty. Thus, in performing its own circuitous visual statement the text assumes its own trickster-like complexity—a complex shape-shifting that conveys a uniquely Haida sense of space and place while disarming categorical confinement and generic ‘purity’ through the various, often conflicting meanings that Yahugulanaas attaches to Red. In conclusion, Yahgulanaas’s Red draws on the diversity already embedded within the manga genre to excavate tensions between transcultural graphic forms and to assess the limitations of translating incommensurable spaces, places and identities. Red invites participatory readings in the interest of bridging cultural gaps, yet also stops short of full translation. This extends to the representations of non-human beings and more-than-human cosmologies. In asking readers to participate in his project of pictures without borders, Yahgulanaas invites resistance to an exclusionary and objectifying comics canon, spins his own kaleidoscopic web of fluid connections, suggests ways of subverting the colonial myth of unoccupied territory and acts out the storied search for difference and struggle within common yet shifting ground. Moreover, Yahgulanaas demands that readers rethink entanglements of space and place, contesting natural/ cultural purities through overlapping formal elements and expansive metaphors of language, identity and otherness. These elements build diverse storyworlds that make pertinent contributions to the kinds of discussions that give us new ways to consider ‘manga’ outside of a purely Japanese context and ‘comics’ outside of an Anglo-American one (c.f. Brienza 2014). Of course, ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ are loaded terms, as Yahgulanaas suggests, that are either explicitly or implicitly attached to thick violence, such as ideas and ideologies of the ‘authentic.’ In short, Red suggests—albeit tentatively—that new kinds of affinities can emerge even while demonstrating the continuing violence of ‘purity discourses.’ Above all, perhaps, Red reconfirms the importance of thinking about alternative ways of being and knowing in which the inhuman, the non-human and the more-than-human are all part of the ‘necessary queer labor of the incommensurate’ (Muñoz 2015, 209). In these and other ways, Red is indeed a trickster text, bearing witness to its own context-smashing prerogatives while calling on readers to rethink the persistent illusions of totality and authenticity that underwrite overlapping violence(s) of speciesist, racist, colonialist and other sociopolitical systems of cultural intolerance and discrimination—both in the past and in the present day.

86  Laura A. Pearson

Notes 1 Acknowledgements for research support and suggestions for chapter development are due to the editors of the present volume as well as to the research supporters listed in my biography. I would also point interested readers to Rob Nixon’s theorisations of ‘Slow Violence,’ an influential concept I became familiar with early on in my studies of the Environmental Humanities (See, for example, his Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, 2011). 2 See http://mny.ca/en for more on MNY’s work with ‘Haida Manga.’ 3 To maintain typographical consistency, I have not reproduced Red’s all-caps typeset, but I have retained original boldface and italics where possible. Slashes (/) indicate breaks between word bubbles. 4 See the cover image in colour at http://mny.ca/en/work/14/RED. 5 See also Yahgulanaas’s recent sequel The War of the Blink (2017). 6 For further discussion on the ‘not-so-funny animal,’ c.f. Pearson 2018. 7 Emberley links her concept of the ‘defamiliar’ to ‘the indigenous uncanny’ and Gerald Vizenor’s idea of ‘survivance’ (2015, 215). These terms and ideas—although there is no space here to examine them more closely—are applicable to Yahgulanaas’s text. 8 For a reproduction of this image, see www.geist.com/downloads/737/­ download/MNY-Red.jpg?cb=eff75239bda673fde13c9abdf7522c10.

Bibliography Arvin, Maile, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill. 2013. “Decolonizing Feminism: Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy”. Feminist Formations 25 (1): 8–34. Augaitis, Daina, et al. 2006. Raven Travelling: Two Centuries of Haida Art. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre. Barnd, Natchee Blu. 2017. Native Space: Geographic Strategies to Unsettle Settler Colonialism. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press. Bouissou, Jean-Marie. 2010. “Manga: A Historical Overview”. In Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Toni Johnson-­ Woods, 17–33. New York: Continuum. Brenner, Robin E. 2007. Understanding Manga and Anime. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Brienza, Casey. 2014. “Sociological Perspectives on Japanese Manga in ­A merica”. Sociology Compass 8 (5): 468–477. Chandler, Michael J. and Christopher E. Lalonde. 2008. “Cultural Continuity as a Protective Factor against Suicide in First Nations Youth”. Horizons 10 (1): 68–72. Chow, Rey. 2003. “Where Have all the Natives Gone”. In Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, edited by Reina Lewis and Sara Mills, 324–349. New York: Routledge. Cohn, Neil. 2010. “Japanese Visual Language: The Structure of Manga”. In Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Toni Johnson-Woods, 187–203. New York: Continuum. Colclough, Wesley Benjamin IV. 2012. Transforming Hybridities: Brendan Lee Satish Tang’s Manga Ormolu and Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas’ Haida Manga. MA Thesis, Concordia University.

Seeing (in) Red  87 “Constitution of the Haida Nation”. 2014. Haida Nation, 1–14. www.­ haidanation.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/HN-Constitution-­R evisedOct-2014_official-unsigned-copy.pdf. Coulthard, Glen. 2014. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. De Landa, Manuel. 2000. A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History. ­Cambridge: MIT Press. Emberley, Julia. 2015. “In/Hospitable ‘Aboriginalities’ in Contemporary Indigenous Women’s Writing”. In The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature, edited by Cynthia Sugars, 209–223. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fagan, Kristina. 2010. “What’s the Trouble with the Trickster?: An Introduction”. In Troubling Tricksters: Revisioning Critical Conversations, edited by Deanna Reder and Linda M. Morra, 3–20. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier ­University Press. Freeman, Elizabeth. 2010. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Durham: Duke University Press. Haines, Robert. 2009. “Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas Interview”. The Joe Shuster Awards: Canadian Comics Awards, News & Links. https://­joeshusterawards. com/2009/04/09/michael-nicoll-yahgulanaas-interview/. ———. 2010. “Red: A Haida Manga by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas”. The Joe Shuster Awards: Canadian Comics Awards, News & Links. https://­ joeshusterawards.com/2010/02/22/. Halberstam, Judith. 2005. In a Queer Time and Place. New York: NYU Press. Henderson, William B. 2006. “Indian Act”. The Canadian Encyclopedia, ­H istorica Canada. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indian-act/. Hyde, Lewis. 2008. Trickster Makes this World: How Disruptive Imagination Creates Culture. Edinburgh: Canongate. King, C. Richard. 2009. “Alter/native Heroes: Native Americans, Comic Books, and the Struggle for Self-Definition”. Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies 9 (2): 214–223. King, Thomas. 2003. The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative. Toronto: Anansi. Levell, Nicola. 2013. “Site-specificity and Dislocation: Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas and His Haida Manga Meddling”. Journal of Material Culture 18 (2): 93–116. Moe, Peter Wayne. 2015. “Of Tombs and Wombs, or, The Whale, Part III”. Leviathan 17 (1): 41–60. Muñoz, José Esteban. 2015. “Theorizing Queer Inhumanisms: The Sense of Brownness”. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 21 (2): 209–210. “Mythology and Crests”. n.d. Canadian Museum of History, www.­ historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/aborig/haida/hapmc01e.shtml. Neimanis, Astrida, and Rachel Loewen Walker. 2013. “Weathering: Climate Change and the ‘Thick Time’ of Transcorporeality”. Hypatia 29 (3): 558–75. Neimanis, Astrida, Cecilia Åsberg, and Johan Hedrén. 2015. “Four Problems, Four Directions for the Environmental Humanities: Toward Critical Posthumanities for the Anthropocene”. Ethics and the Environment 20 (1): 67–97. Ostrowitz, Judith. 2011. “Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas: It Looks Like Manga”. 1–12. In Objects of Exchange: Social and Material Transformation on the

88  Laura A. Pearson Late Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast, edited by Aaron Glass, 79–88. staff.washington.edu/kbunn/Yahgulanaas.doc. Pearson, Laura A. 2018. “Alternative Paradoxes in Heartless”. In The Canadian Alternative, edited by Dominick Grace and Eric Hoffman, 224–244. ­Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Prigogine, Ilya, and Isabelle Stengers. 1984. Order Out of Chaos. New York: Bantam Books. Quail, Susanna. 2014. “Yah’guudang: The Principle of Respect in the Haida Legal Tradition”. UBC Law Review 47 (2): 673–707. Rose, Deborah Bird, et al. 2012. “Thinking Through the Environment, Unsettling the Humanities”. Environmental Humanities 1: 1–5. Spiers, Miriam Brown. 2014. “Creating a Haida Manga: The Formline of Social Responsibility in Red”. Studies in American Indian Literatures 26 (3): 41–61. Strauss, David Levi. 2010. From Head to Hand: Art and the Manual. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Takeda, Louise, and Inge Røpke. 2010. “Power and Contestation in Collaborative Ecosystem-Based Management: The Case of Haida Gwaii”. Ecological Economics 70: 178–188. TallBear, Kim. 2015. “An Indigenous Reflection on Working beyond the ­Human/Not Human”. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 21 (2): 230–235. Todd, Zoe. 2016. “An Indigenous Feminist’s Take On The Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ Is Just Another Word For Colonialism”. Journal of Historical ­Sociology 29 (1): 4–22. Townsend-Gault, Charlotte, Jennifer Kramer, and K ̣i-k ̣e-in. 2013. “Preface”. In Native Art of the Northwest Coast: A History of Changing Ideas, edited by Townsend-Gault, Kramer, and K ̣i-k ̣e-in, xxxiii–xxxvi. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future. www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/2015/ Findings/Exec_Summary_2015_05_31_web_o.pdf. Vidal, John. 2011. “Bolivia Enshrines Natural World’ss Rights with Equal ­Status for Mother Earth”. Guardian.co.uk, 10 April, np. Willems-Braun, Bruce. 1997. “Buried Epistemologies: The Politics of Nature in (Post)colonial British Columbia”. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87 (1): 3–31. Wong, Wendy Siuyi. 2010. “Globalizing Manga: From Japan to Hong Kong and Beyond”. In Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Toni Johnson-Woods, 332–350. New York: Continuum. Yahgulanaas, Michael Nicoll. 2009. Red: A Haida Manga. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre.

5 Embodied Reading and Performing Vulnerability in Joe Sacco’s The Great War Eszter Szép

Cartoonist and comics journalist Joe Sacco turned to an unusual format in his 2013 book, The Great War. The box in which Sacco’s work is packaged promises it to be ‘An Illustrated Panorama,’ and 19th-­century panoramic traditions are duly invoked. Yet Sacco’s hand-drawn and black-and-white printed panorama offers radically different spatial and bodily experiences than the gigantic painted canvases of those traditions. The Great War narrates the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, in a series of seamlessly interwoven wordless images. It also devotes some narrative space to the months of preparation preceding the battle, and to the bleak months to come after this specific day. Visually, the narrative of The Great War shows countless soldiers marching, preparing for war, squeezing in the trenches, being blown up, falling, dying, surviving, dead or burying other bodies. The actual publication is ­24-feet long, and for practical reasons it is published folded into 24 plates. In this paper I argue that reading The Great War is a unique embodied experience that builds on establishing an awareness of the situatedness and vulnerability of the reader’s own body, and that creates a link based on a shared experience of vulnerability between the reader and the represented bodies. The Great War emphasises the primacy of the body in multiple ways: in its figurative representations of the bodies of the soldiers, in the richness of haptically charged surfaces and in calling attention to the reader’s embodied interpretive processes. In my analysis, I postulate a connection between the represented bodies, the topic of war and the ways the reader’s body is involved in interpretation. I connect all of these and consider them as expressions of the fundamental experience of vulnerability. My investigations of both the performance of reading and of the performance of vulnerability are rooted in the realisation that meaning is embodied, and that the ethics of vulnerability is based on the fact that we all inhabit bodies. Following Judith Butler, I consider vulnerability to be a universal condition: due to the embodied nature of existence, and to mortality implied by the body, we are all vulnerable. ‘The body implies mortality, vulnerability, agency,’ claims Butler in Precarious Life (2004, 26), arguing that vulnerability is not a negative quality, but ‘vulnerability to

90  Eszter Szép the other [. . . ] is part of bodily life’ (Butler 2004, 29). Though vulnerability is often framed as weakness and as a lack, feminist theoreticians emphasise its dialogical, unpredictable, unfinished and dynamic nature (Diprose 2013, 185). Simone Drichel also points out that experiencing one’s vulnerability is a prerequisite for experiencing pleasure and satisfaction, ‘and ultimately, for ethical life’ (Drichel 2013, 13). Vulnerability can be perceived as a structure of address and response, as a quality which manifests in social interaction. Acknowledging ‘corporeal interdependence’ (Diprose 2013, 185) can be conceptualised as a foundation of human interaction. However, the dynamic and unpredictable nature of this interdependence implies that the address made by one’s vulnerability can be answered either by wounding or by caring (Drichel 2013, 10). In my reading of The Great War I postulate such a discursive relationship between the printed panorama and the reader: The Great War does not only thematise vulnerability, it also follows its basic structure of address and response. I approach The Great War as an opportunity for interaction among bodies. In this interaction the vulnerability of the represented bodies and the unusual material characteristics of Sacco’s work address and entice responses from the reader: vulnerability is performed as a dialogue. The embodied nature of comics reading (Orbán 2013, 2014; Scherr 2013; Hague 2014) and of the experience of vulnerability (Butler 2004) creates the starting point of my investigation. I will show that the many ways in which Sacco alludes to the body can invite a readerly performance of vulnerability. Elaborating on the significance of embodied experience, N. Catherine Hayles explains: ‘embodiment is contextual, enmeshed within specificities of place, time, physiology, and culture, which together compose enactment’ (Hayles 1999, 196). Along these lines, my present description of readerly involvement and performance is not governed by any normative intent. Performance manifests in a reader’s body and in the space of reading. Building on the realisation that ‘embodiment is individually articulated’ (Hayles 1999, 199) and encouraged by film phenomenologist Vivian Sobchack (1992), I rely on my own personal experience. In this way, the readings in this paper can be said to be influenced by my experiences in various locations, such as my desk, on a plane, in an armchair, on the floor of my study. In an interview with Scott Bukatman, Sobchack explains her methodology, which is also shared by this paper: I [. . . ] begin with my own specific experience as I start thinking and writing something. And then I generalize these specifics as larger structures of experience. [. . . ] In the end, I don’t write about me. [. . . ] I leave “me” (in the egological sense) to look at the structure of the experience I’m writing about, to move into the domain of a more general experiential structure that anybody might inhabit. (Bukatman 2009)

Embodied Reading  91

The Materiality of the Object and the Space of Reading Reading The Great War is an encounter with the materials, weight, fragility and dimensions of the published object: the reading experience builds on the open and active participation of the reader’s body. It also entails immersion in the represented action: managing the dichotomy between the strong horizontal drive of the layout and the depth of each represented scene. The flow of the continuous narrative enables turning the plates along their folds, and opening them, and in this way to read dynamically. But a tension is also felt in the reader’s hands and body because the abundance of detail in each scene invites slowing down, immersing oneself in the minute scenes in order to vertically decipher the images instead of following the horizontal drive. The Great War can be read by completely unfolding the accordion fold book and by aiming to perceive the graphic narrative in its full length, a strategy I will elaborate at the very end of this chapter. It can also be read—and is possibly more often read this way—by turning the ‘pages’: the reader perceives and accepts the predefined units into which the story is divided. These units, labelled ‘plates’ in the booklet accompanying Sacco’s drawing, are defined by the needs of packaging, and no visual clues motivate their arrangement. During this second kind of reading, pages are turned in order to proceed in the narrative, as if The Great War was a comic published in regular book format, and as if turning the page meant well-defined moments of closure in the narrative. However, turning the page here is somewhat unusual and less automatic. It feels distinct because the paper on which The Great War is printed is hard and strong compared to regular books—yet fragile compared to the covers—and also because one always touches two pages connected at their outer edges. Due to the accordion format, the publication does not have a spine, but pages are glued together along the folds. As a result, turning the page implies accepting the tyranny of the folds, which disturb the flow of one scene into the other. Readers frequently undermine the disruption of the fold by pausing to connect the images that it separates. By looking at the scenes as if they were not separated by the folds, readers reorganise the units and the given structure of the graphic narrative by engaging with the represented action and the materiality of the work simultaneously. As the publication is not bound in the way books are, and lacks an axis, its fragility and the independence of its parts are always accounted for by the body of the reader. The instability of the accordion format has to be dealt with during the entire performance of reading, which makes it one of the most defining material characteristic of The Great War. Awareness of the materiality of the publication is linked both to the topic of representing bodies in war and to the reader’s awareness and experience of her body taking part in unusual ways in interpreting The

92  Eszter Szép Great War. Interpreting this graphic narrative is in fact performing it. Though all comics reading can be approached as performance (Hague 2014, 5), the unusual formal and material characteristics of The Great War allow for more easily noticeable and also more peculiar performances. In Comics Studies, the performance of the reader’s body is often approached from the direction of the sense of touch. Rebecca Scherr analyses Sacco’s representations of hands in Palestine and interprets them as ‘visual metonyms’ for feeling (Scherr 2013, 23), which is one of the tools by which Sacco frames the reader as ‘a kind of emotionally invested witness to [the Palestinians’] pain’ (Scherr 2013, 25). Katalin Orbán writes about an ‘embodied, multisensory reading process’ (Orbán 2014, 169), which she also calls ‘visuo-haptic processing’ (Orbán 2014, 171): comics reading builds on actual physical touch and looking at haptically charged images (Orbán 2013, 8). In the embodied interaction with comics as objects, both Orbán and Scherr emphasise the way visual elements appeal to touch by their haptic charge. Sacco’s The Great War involves the reader’s body through unusual tactile qualities and materialities and by employing haptically visual surfaces, an aspect I will discuss in the next section. At this point, I would like to focus on actual physical touch and interaction with The Great War as a physical object, and the spatial relations this object allows. Touch establishes a connection between the reader’s body and the subject of the narrative, the bodies of the soldiers. Touch initiates a reciprocal connection. To use Scherr’s words, ‘to touch is always, also, to be touched’ (Scherr 2013, 22). The format of the accordion, by calling to mind the format of the very first books studied by young children, evokes a world where touch and tasting are inseparable from the visual experience of the book. Children’s accordion fold books offer limited text if any, they may or may not have a story and they often have an educational agenda: they introduce the workings of the child’s environment, the world and society. In contrast to The Great War, they are colourful, and an ever more significant difference is that children’s accordion fold books are rarely read alone. Instead, they are often performed together with the parent. The interaction between child and parent can be very active and engaging; it usually incorporates touch and pointing. The dynamism of this performance of reading is based on a structure of question and answer, where either party can perform either activity. The Great War, however, is silent. There are no captions or dialogues, and the text is printed in a separate booklet. This booklet has the same dimensions as The Great War, and it contains an ‘Author’s note,’ an annotation to the printed panorama by Sacco and a description of the historical circumstances of the Battle of the Somme by historian Adam Hochshield (Sacco and Hochsild 2013). While it is absolutely possible to read The Great War without textual impulses, the reverse, interestingly, is not true: the booklet contains details from Sacco’s drawings on almost

Embodied Reading  93 every page in order to decorate the historical explanation, and it also features a small version of the panorama with explanations of certain details. By filling in corners or empty areas next to titles, drawings do not function as illustrations—they become decorative elements. The images in the booklet have an evocative function in relation to The Great War; they are here to connect specific instances of the visual narrative with the explanatory text. I would like to position this multi-authored booklet as fulfilling a role similar to that of the parent in the child’s performance of reading the accordion fold picture books. It satisfies the reader’s need for information. In the ‘Author’s note,’ Sacco mentions the Bayeux tapestry as a visual and narrative influence on the undisturbed pictorial narrative in The Great War (Sacco and Hochsild 2013, 1). Yet Sacco’s panorama not only evokes preprint and preliteracy linear visual narratives, and the strategies necessary to decipher or ‘read’ them, but it places these narratives and strategies in the context of contemporary expectations about reading. Today, adult reading is an isolated and silent activity, and it increasingly happens on a digital device, or is interrupted by tactile interaction with a digital device. Yet, in the context of present-day electronic textuality, The Great War puts great emphasis on its material characteristics. It is via engagement with these characteristics that it establishes an embodied interaction with the reader (Brillenburg Wurth et al. 2013, 105). Should one try to read The Great War in a sitting position, as one would do with book format comics, one would soon realise that the attempt is defied by the very structure of the work. The accordion unfolds almost immediately, and the interaction with it is no longer directed by the reader. Instead, the performance of reading adapts to the instability of the material support. One might also use touch not only to trace Sacco’s lines in gestures of interpretation but to discipline the behaviour of the publication. This physical interaction is very much related to the ways in which The Great War mobilises the concept of vulnerability, but before elaborating how this happens, I would like to briefly introduce the bodily experience of interaction with panoramas as this 19th-­ century genre is possibly the most obvious pictorial tradition evoked by Sacco. My aim with this section is to show the significance of the reversed spatial relations in the performance of vulnerability. Whereas The Great War invites the reader to interact from an intimate distance, the gigantic proportions of panoramas convey the idea of movement in space and being impressed through visual and spatial interaction instead of tactile ones. Stephan Oettermann writes: [t]he basic aim of a panorama was to reproduce the real world so skilfully that spectators could believe what they were seeing was genuine. [. . . ] The painting had to surround observers and envelop them completely, so as to exclude any glimpse of their real

94  Eszter Szép whereabouts. An entire pictorial environment was created for visitors to pass through. (Oettermann 1997, 49) The panorama simulated a space in which the onlooker could move freely, or, alternatively, could sit comfortably while the displayed visual narrative moved (Gunning 2014, 39). The body and its relation to space are thus fundamental issues addressed in this monumental way. Panoramas belong to the tradition of simulation, which ‘aims to blend virtual and physical spaces rather than to separate them’ (Manovich 2001, 111). For this to happen, as Lev Manovich explains, the physical space and the virtual space have to be on the same scale, and the boundaries between them are de-emphasised. In contrast to simulation, in the tradition of representation, the boundary between physical space and represented space is always highlighted: for example by frames (Comment 1999, 97–103). In comics, which also belong to the tradition of representation, the page is usually framed by a margin, and the grid can also serve a similar function. The printed small-scale panorama of The Great War does not emphasise the boundary of the represented world, and it does not create the ‘illusion of a boundless view’ as panoramas do (Gunning 2014, 38) either. Instead, as discussed already, the materiality of the support, an aspect that was to be hidden in the 19th-century panorama, is constantly drawn attention to. Apart from scale, the other crucial difference between simulation and representation, as both Manovich (2001) and Tom Gunning (2014) explain, is the way in which they control the bodily practices of their spectators. Simulation and the 19th-century panorama encourage movement in the space of simulation. In contrast, especially in the period of the Renaissance when three-point perspective was perfected, portable and mobile paintings were designed to be watched from an ideal, fixed vantage point by a non-moving one-eyed subject (Bryson 1983; Panofsky 1991; Crary 1994). Any other location of the onlooker’s body resulted in the deterioration of the experience conveyed by representation. Manovich claims that ‘[i]n the simulation tradition the spectator exists in a single coherent space,’ which includes spectator and representation. In contrast, in the representational tradition, ‘the spectator has a double identity. She simultaneously exists in physical space and in the space of representation’ (Manovich 2001, 113). The Great War is a mini panorama, and this reversal of proportion crucially influences the spatial relationship between the panoramic spectacle and the reader/observer. The scale of events becomes radically smaller than the reader’s body; it becomes book-sized. It is reproduced and circulated via the same process as books are; it is printed and sold in bookshops. This change of scale results in the loss of the feeling of awe that traditional panoramas evoke, and approximates the double identity

Embodied Reading  95 of the representational tradition. Yet, unlike typical examples of this tradition, The Great War is not to be observed from a fixed point. Instead, the observer is invited to bend closer, and zoom in on the amazing amount of detail in the drawings. We are invited to be absorbed by them, and also to actually touch these details. A visually outstanding instance for inviting the body to move and interact is on Plate 8: here the darkness of the night is represented with grey tones. First, the reader has to make sense of this darkness and realise that it is not a printing mistake, that it has a function in the narrative. She then has to relate to two bright spots in the centre. The contrast of dark and light draws our attention, while tactility is also invited: touching and checking the surface, making sure that the bright spots are intentional and not printing mistakes either. They are, as it turns out, sheltered and hidden places, with lamplight for communications officers to work in. In the spatial structure of the traditional panorama a degree of distance has to be maintained between observer and spectacle for the illusion not to perish. Here, in the case of the mini panorama, the reader has control over this distance.

Vulnerable Bodies and Haptic Surfaces: A Close Reading of The Great War In his review of The Great War, Josh Ellenbogen explains that this work excels in the ‘manipulations of space and time’ (Ellenbogen 2015, 705): Sacco condenses months of preparation within a few plates, and then expands the space devoted only to a couple of hours of action (Ellenbogen 2015, 706). However, when we focus on the representation of bodies, different spatial relations also become apparent. I consider the movement of the body in space a central element of Sacco’s drawn narrative. In this section I would like to link the figurative representation of bodies and the representation of space that emphasises texture to the already discussed unusual format and material characteristics of The Great War. As the narrative progresses, preparation in spacious locations (Plates 1–2) gives way to detailed representations of soldiers marching from left to right, contributing to the dynamism of the narrative (5–8). Gradually, the horizontal drive of soldiers’ movement gives way to their march in a maze of winding trenches (9–10). Their movement becomes visibly slower and more difficult, and also less goal-oriented. As the soldiers crawl out of the trenches and attempt to run towards the German army, Sacco abandons the left to right orientation. Instead, the depth of the plates is utilised (13–16), and the soldiers move up the field towards the quickly diminishing horizon. However, explosions and smoke make all movement and all sense of direction impossible (13–19). On Plates 16 and 17 the illusion of a space in which the body could move is annihilated by the shells directly hitting the trenches. These plates, as will

96  Eszter Szép be discussed shortly, appeal to a more sensual reading experience and a reading strategy that no longer focusses on the outlines of bodies but on the material characteristics of extensive surfaces. In these plates, the bodies of the soldiers are not only tiny compared to the massive extension of smoke, but having abandoned the line of marching that dominated the previous panels, soldiers are represented in their individual helplessness. The experience of a wounding response to vulnerability is expressed not only by the injured and dead bodies but by the living ones: separated from each other, soldiers are shown crawling, bending or making futile efforts to move. All these soldiers are tiny, and they resemble each other, in spite of their individualised gestures. In an interview Sacco speaks about his intention to represent the soldiers in specific activities and his goal to show them in interaction in certain situations (Mediacontainer 2014). Parallel to this, the representation does not zoom in on any individual: none of the soldiers or actions is more prominent than the other. The scenes of the panorama are represented from an elevated point of view, always keeping even the people and objects in the foreground of the plates at a distance. Our expectations concerning realistic representation, namely that objects close to us should seem bigger, is not answered by Sacco. He claims that he deliberately disregards the rules of a three-point perspective in his representation of space (Sacco 2013 and Adam Hochsild, 1). For example, the soldiers in Plate 6 march in the direction of, and in fact approximate, the point from which events are viewed, but they are not drawn bigger. As a result, a visual and also narrative distance is present in the perception and visualisation of events, further underlined by the lack of a central character in the narrative (Keen 2006). Distance from the multitude of bodies and lack of a named central figure, with whom the reader could identify and whom she could feel empathy and sympathy for, influence the way the reader positions herself in relation to the text. The only individualised face addressing the reader is the frontispiece: an image of Lord Kitchener (Eslava 2017, 73), originally used for British recruitment posters, points and looks at the reader. The focus on the face brings him unusually close. The richness of black lines by which his moustache and the shadows cast by his own body are drawn foretells the importance of haptic surfaces in the narrative. Instead of focussing on the story of an individual, as he does in his journalism (Sacco 2000, 2004), in The Great War Sacco emphasises that humans are part of social structures, in this case the military. The experiences and the physical nature of human bodies are the major visual preoccupations of the narrative: repeated rows of bodies and repetitive actions become the major motifs by detailing ordinary and very physical experiences of eating, sleeping, doing physical work and going to the latrines. Furthermore, the decreasing amount of space in the trenches results in perceiving bodies as masses. Finally, the third way in which Sacco emphasises

Embodied Reading  97 the physical nature and the vulnerability of the body is in elaborated scenes of wounding and death. Sacco’s representations of bodies draw in the reader despite the distance created by the elevated point of view and the lack of a protagonist. The reason for this is that whenever we look at a representation of a body, an involuntary bodily sensation is elicited: we feel, not only see. The phenomenon is called empathy, and it means that when we see a representation of a body, we automatically translate its posture or its physical condition to our own experiences and memories of our bodies (Elkins 1996, 137). Empathy in this sense is not an emotion but a ‘sharing of sensation between our bodies and something or someone we see’ (Elkins 1996, 137). Empathy is easier to observe when the body is represented in pain, because the responsive sensation in our own body is stronger. James Elkins uses the term ‘visceral seeing’ (Elkins 1999, vii– viii) for this kind of embodied perception when we use our own bodies as reference. In Pictures of the Body: Pain and Metamorphosis Elkins also refers to this phenomenon as ‘thoughtful embodiedness’ (Elkins 1999, vii–viii), reminding us of the importance of the experience of the body in cognition (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Elkins shows that empathy or ‘visceral seeing’ is elicited by representations of the body that preserve its recognisability and do not distort it to an extent where the representation becomes a mental puzzle appealing to thought. For this reason, he distinguishes two basic traditions of representing bodies: the one that elicits a visceral reaction, which he calls ‘pain,’ and a contradictory one, which appeals to the mind, called ‘metamorphosis’ (Elkins 1999, 28). In Sacco’s The Great War the representations of bodily pain are used to initiate an embodied discourse of vulnerability. Represented bodies appeal to our ‘visceral seeing,’ and as part of our reading experience our own bodies respond to the depicted annihilation. Our bodies are involved in the performance of reading The Great War not only due to the unconventional physical interaction with the material features of the printed panorama, which I elaborated in the previous section, but due to the frequent sensation of bodily empathy as a response to what is represented. The topic of wounding (and death) as a response to the dialogue initiated by the condition of vulnerability is raised on multiple levels, and the reader is invited to think about it in a visual and in an embodied way simultaneously. There is a further layer in The Great War which engages the reader’s body in interpretation and in which a discourse of vulnerability appears: some images follow a different representational logic, that of haptic visuality. As the smoke of exploding shells becomes thicker and thicker, an increasing percentage of the surface of the plates is devoted to intricately curving lines, groups of dots creating waves and the seemingly empty white surfaces complicating the pattern. These elements create a texture-like visual quality, and they encourage the eye to graze over the

98  Eszter Szép texture and spend time with the representation without any specific aim. They appeal to a sensual mode of interpretation, a mode of visual perception where ‘the eyes themselves function like organs of touch’ (Marks 2000, 162). Haptic vision can be, but is not necessarily accompanied by the physical act of touch. Laura U. Marks shows that haptic vision is directly connected to sense perception, and one does not need actual physical contact to perceive a representation in a haptic way (Marks 2000, 163). Marks contrasts haptic perception to the normal mode of looking, optical visuality. Whereas optical visuality aims at distinguishing forms and focussing on specific detail, haptic looking moves over and along a surface. Haptic images do not reveal depth or perspective, nor do they offer any highlighted elements. Our look grazes aimlessly, and the surface ‘pull[s] the viewer in close’ (Marks 2000, 163). The visual strategies of haptically charged images and representations of bodies eliciting ‘visceral seeing’ call the reader’s attention to the role of her body in making meaning in different ways. Haptical reading strategies are invited when the night falls on Plates 8–10, and darker tones start dominating the surface. Looking for figurative elements in acts of optical visuality becomes increasingly difficult. The greyness gradually spreading over the plates directs the reader’s attention from figures to the surface. This visually distinct section of the narrative builds on the haptic mode of reading by its monotonous grey tones and its lack of contrast. From this part on The Great War will increasingly rely on haptically charged modes: as daylight returns, and the contrast in representation is restored to help distinguish visual elements, patterns created by smoke and exploding bombs in the background will be always present, appealing to our haptic mode of perception. On Plates 13 and 14 the soldiers’ bodies are represented as individual units, as they have climbed out of the trenches and started their attack in the open fields. They are no longer represented as elements in a big, tight and complex system of bodies. Rather, by Plates 15 and 16, these bodies have become elements in the haptically inviting textural surface that the plates have become. These plates offer an abundance of texture, smoke and bodies, all of which contribute to the intensive sensory and haptic input. However, the bodies represented here are no longer those of healthy soldiers but are wounded, broken or dead bodies. I believe it is not a coincidence that the most haptically charged plates (14–18) introduce the body as injured and broken. These plates appeal to the reader’s body in all possible channels: via visceral seeing, via haptic vision and via the bodily interaction with the accordion. Figurative representations of so many different kinds of pain activate in the reader ‘that mode of awareness that listens to the body and is aware of its feeling’ (Elkins 1999, 23). In acts of empathy, our bodies react to pain, and, simultaneously, the haptic ‘affection-image’ (Marks 2000, 165)

Embodied Reading  99 establishes a sensual connection to the image. In the centre of both strategies, we find the experience of how vulnerable the body ultimately is. The experience of vulnerability is an underlying motive of each plate of The Great War, though certainly it is articulated and felt most clearly in the above plates showing the chaos of the battle. As indicated at the beginning of the paper, readerly performances and different experiences of vulnerability are influenced by whether the reader unfolds the accordion or not. If we disregard the division of the narrative by the folds and unfold the accordion of the 24 plates, we get an overview of what is happening. Unfolding is not as easy as this description might imply. Caution is needed to balance the massive cover and the fragile ribbon of paper in a concentrated series of interactions with the materials of the publication. A lot of space is also required. Once The Great War is unfolded, however, the spatial experience is shocking: one is encircled and entrenched by and within the work. The ribbon-like structure evokes a metonymical similarity to the rows of trenches represented in such great numbers on the plates. Thus, the story entrenches the reader in itself, in its own materiality. When reading in this way, the position of the reader’s body evokes the soldiers fighting in battle: lying or squatting behind endless and fragile shelters that fail to provide protection. Physical interaction between book and reader can elicit an embodied understanding via a bodily realisation of mutual vulnerability. Out of the 24 plates of The Great War we see soldiers in trenches, especially in the middle, on Plates 9–12. As discussed already, on the next three plates soldiers leave the trenches as part of the offensive and are slaughtered (13–15), while on the next four pages the bombs come closer and explode. The explosions, smoke and dead bodies on Plates 16–19 activate the reader’s performance of bodily empathy and haptic reading most strongly; these are possibly the most disturbing and chaotic parts of the panorama. The array of limbs and helmets is swarming in the trenches and ditches without any hope of escape. If we unfold The Great War, our position will be very similar to those of the soldiers hiding behind walls. This way, at the climax of the narrative the position of the reader resembles that of the soldiers’ minutes before they are sent to certain death. The reader is painfully aware of her own body as the narrative and the materiality of the accordion never allow her to take reading and the actions of the body for granted. At this point, and in this position, a true dialogue based on the mutual nature of vulnerability takes place. The end of the narrative does not bring any bodily consolation: trench scenes are followed by scenes of medical help and burial. The site of the labyrinth of trenches is left behind, but their structure of geometrically organised rows is repeated. Trenches are substituted by the rows of beds that the injured are placed on, while the rows of mass graves being dug on the last plate finalise the feeling that there is no escape.

100  Eszter Szép

Bibliography Brillenburg Wurth, Kiene, Sara Rosa Espi, and Inge van de Ven. 2013. “Visual Text and Media Divergence”. European Journal of English Studies 17 (1): 92–108. doi:10.1080/13825577.2013.757014. Bryson, Norman. 1983. Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze. London: Macmillan. Bukatman, Scott. 2009. “Vivian Sobchack in Conversation with Scott B ­ ukatman”. e-Media Studies 2 (1). Accessed 10 February 2017. doi:10.1349/PS1.1938– 6060.A.338journals.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/ WebObjects/Journals.woa/ 1/xmlpage/4/article/338. Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London, New York: Verso. Comment, Bernard. 1999. The Panorama. London: Reaktion Books. Crary, Jonathan. 1994. “Unbinding Vision”. October 68: 21–44. Diprose, Rosalyn. 2013. “Corporeal Interdependence: From Vulnerability to Dwelling in Ethical Community”. SubStance 42 (3): 185–204. Drichel, Simone. 2013. “Introduction: Reframing Vulnerability: ‘So Obviously the Problem…’?” SubStance 42 (3): 3–27. doi:10.1353/sub.2013.0030. El Refaie, Elisabeth. 2012. Autobiographical Comics: Life Writing in Pictures. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press. Elkins, James. 1996. The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace &Company. ———. 1999. Pictures of the Body: Pain and Metamorphosis. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ellenbogen, Josh. 2015. “Joe Sacco. The Great War: July1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme. Review”. Critical Inquiry 41 (3): 705–707. Eslava, Louis. 2017. “The Materiality of International Law: Violence, History and Joe Sacco’s The Great War”. London Review of International Law 5 (1): 49–86. doi:org/10.1093/lril/lrx001. Gallace, Alberto. 2013. “Chapter 3. Somesthetic Mental Imagery”. In ­M ultisensory Imagery. edited by Simon Lacey and Rebecca Lawson, 29–50. New York, Heidelberg: Springer. Gunning, Tom. 2014. “The Art of Succession: Reading, Writing, and Watching Comics”. Critical Inquiry 40 (3): 36–51. Hague, Ian. 2014. Comics and the Senses: A Multisensory Approach to Comics and Graphic Novels. New York: Routledge. Hatfield, Charles. 2005. Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Hayles, N. Catherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Keen, Suzanne. 2006. “A Theory of Narrative Empathy”. Narrative 14 (3): ­207–236. doi 10.1353/nar.2006.0015. Lacey, Simon, K. Sathian. 2013. “Chapter 11. Visual Imagery in Haptic Shape Perception”. In Multisensory Imagery, edited by Simon Lacey and Rebecca Lawson, 207–219. New York, Heidelberg: Springer. Lakoff, George, Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Embodied Reading  101 Manovich, Lev. 2001. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Marks, Laura U. 2000. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mediacontainer. 2014. “Weltkrieg als Panoramazeichnung – Joe Sacco”. Y ­ ouTube Video. Accessed 19 June 2014. www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Pjqmtm BEQ&t=73s. Oettermann, Stephan. 1997. The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium. New York: Zone Books. Orbán, Katalin. 2013. “Embodied Reading: The Graphic Novel, Perception, and Memory”. The International Journal of the Humanities: Annual Review 11: 1–11. ———. 2014. “A Language of Scratches and Stitches: The Graphic Novel between Hyperreading and Print”. Critical Inquiry 40 (3): 169–181. Panofsky, Erwin. 1991. Perspective as Symbolic Form. New York: Zone Books. Sacco, Joe. 2000. Safe Area Goražde. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books. ———. 2004. The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo. London: Jonathan Cape. ———. 2013. The Great War: July1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme. London: Jonathan Cape. Sacco, Joe and Adam Hochsild. 2013. On the Great War. London: Jonathan Cape. Scherr, Rebecca. 2013. “Shaking Hands with Other People’s Pain: Joe Sacco’s Palestine”. Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 46 (1): 19–36. doi:10.1353/mos.2013.0004. Sobchack, Vivian. 1992. The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Humour

6 ‘Boiled or fried, Dennis?’ Violence, Play and Narrative in ‘Dennis the Menace and Gnasher’ Christopher J. Thompson The Beano has a tricky relationship with violence. As a children’s comic, especially a British one, violence is strictly off limits, and yet, perhaps also as a children’s comic, violence provides much of its subject matter and exerts a powerful effect on its narrative structure. This problematic relationship is nowhere demonstrated more clearly than in The Beano’s iconic strip, ‘Dennis the Menace and Gnasher.’ Unlike its North American and European counterparts, the British comics industry was dominated by children’s humour comics for much of the 20th century (Sabin 1993, 23). This genre is characterised by an irreverent and slapstick sense of humour in stories about a variety of characters, many of whom are school-aged children, collected and published in weekly anthology periodicals. Given the longevity of many titles (with some measured in decades), it is unsurprising how strongly children have come to be associated with the medium in Britain and with how fiercely the romanticised notion of comics as a medium for children is defended (Sabin 1993, 23). The Beano was an early pioneer in the genre from the Scottish publishing powerhouse DC Thomson. First appearing on 30 July 1938, it initially contained a mixture of comic shorts and illustrated stories, though it eventually gravitated almost exclusively towards comic strips or ‘sets,’ as they were known (Barker 1984; Baxendale 1989). In the genre’s 1950s heyday, The Beano’s weekly circulation was nearly 2 million (Baxendale 1989, 12). By the end of the 1960s, children’s comics sales had begun their gradual decline. By the end of the 1990s and early 2000s even the most well-known and long-running titles, such as The Beezer (1956–1993), Buster (1960–2000) and The Topper (1953–1990), as well as girl’s periodicals like Bunty (1958–2001) and Mandy (1967–1991), had folded. The Beano’s sister publication, The Dandy (1937–2012), made a short-lived transition to a digital format in 2012, but was suspended indefinitely in June the following year. This made The Beano the UK’s longest-running periodical children’s comic, currently resting at a circulation of just over 30,000 issues a week (ABC 2016, 1). ‘Dennis the Menace’ debuted in Issue #452 of The Beano, dated 17  March 1951,1 and is the comic’s longest continuously running series. The strips, now titled ‘Dennis the Menace and Gnasher,’ are about

106  Christopher J. Thompson a school boy, Dennis, and his dog, Gnasher, who cause various kinds of trouble, mischief and mayhem in their suburban hometown. Dennis comics involve a host of other characters, including his parents (Mum and Dad); school teachers; police and army personnel; members of his gang (Pie-Face and Curly); characters from other strips in The Beano; and other pets, such as Rasher the pig. Celebrities crop up on occasion as well. However, the most significant character after Dennis is his nemesis, Walter the Softy. It is with Walter and the other ‘softies’ that Dennis and his gang of ‘menaces’ have most of their violent or quasi-violent encounters.

Violence, Power and Play in Context Comics in Britain did not escape the controversies experienced in the USA during the 1940s and early 1950s. In the USA, an anti-comics campaign arose, initially in response to the moral outcry directed against the popular genres of crime and horror comics, which eventually came to target comics in general as a medium providing dangerously unregulated content to children. A similar campaign took hold in the UK (Barker 1984, 18, 188–205). Unlike the US campaign, which resulted in a congressional hearing that forced publishers to implement the Comics Code as a form of self-censorship, the UK campaign resulted in actual legislation with the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act 1955 (Pumphrey 1952, 1964; Barker 1984, 1989; Tilley 2012). This Act prohibited depictions of ‘acts of violence or cruelty’ in comics that would plausibly fall into the hands of children. While it wasn’t until 1970 that the Act produced any prosecutions (and even then, this resulted in only two convictions (Hansard 1974)), it had a dramatic impact upon the contemporary comics market, with most horror comics disappearing from the shelves in a matter of weeks (Barker 1984, 9). The unease at adult-themed comics reached fever pitch just as children’s humour comics hit record circulation (Barker 1984; Baxendale 1989). Indeed, with most issues being read by several children (some suggesting as much as eight children read any one comic (Pumphrey 1952, 3)) the reach of the medium across the British childhood population likely presented a perilously slippery slope from one genre to the other to concerned parents. George Pumphrey became an early figurehead of the British anti-­ comics campaign and identified as just such a concerned ‘parent and teacher’ intent on protecting children from the influence of ‘a diet of horrors and brutal comics [that would] dull the sense of right and wrong and lead jaded appetites to seek even greater horrors and more sordid crimes’ (Pumphrey 1952; 19). Nearly a decade after the 1955 Act, Pumphrey continued his work in a follow-up study that listed of some of the most popular comics with a very brief analysis and recommendation as

‘Boiled or Fried, Dennis?’  107 to their suitability. Together with other widely popular comics, such as The Beezer, Bunty and The Dandy, The Beano was ranked ‘C-Average, for entertainment only with no positively good or bad features,’ with the cryptic remark ‘Traditional stories. Ugly faces of characters curious’ (Pumphrey 1964, 38–39). Let’s consider an example of some of the content Pumphrey might have encountered. The Beano #966, dated 21 January 1961, shows ­Dennis crafting himself a super-sprung pogo stick that enables him to jump high into the air. So high, in fact, that he can snatch a bite from a large pie in a window several stories up. And jumping even higher, he can reach the clouds and spray a glider with peas from his peashooter. But as is typically the case, he eventually finds himself caught. In a cruel twist at the end of the comic, Dad uses the very same pogo stick to get extra momentum when ‘spanking’ Dennis with his slipper. While Pumphrey clearly takes a dim view of the comic, his evaluation is that it is mostly harmless (‘neither good nor bad’). By contrast, he makes the bold claim that Superman’s crime-fighting would promote vigilantism amongst children and disregard for common law and order (1964, 12). There is, of course, no way of knowing whether this particular strip from The Beano featured in Pumphrey’s evaluation. Yet the sort of delinquency it presented through Dennis’s antics is broadly representative of the comics Pumphrey would have encountered. What is it that causes Pumphrey to judge it neither good nor bad? It is plausible to conclude this might relate to how violence is structured in these comics: Dennis’s misbehaviour is counteracted by Dad’s ‘spanking,’ whereas Superman’s attempts to counteract the behaviour of criminals is outside of the law and hence equally transgressive to the social order. While this analysis is speculative, it fits with growing anxieties surrounding childhood at the time. The 20th century marked a turning point in the experience of children that had been brewing in Europe since the 1700s: at the turn of the century, childhood took on a form distinct from adult life, to be ‘preserved and protected,’ and liberated from the need to contribute to the family economy (Cunningham 2005, 185). In the latter half of the century, this shift entered a new phase in which parents were increasingly disempowered, and child-rearing became a negotiation between parent, child and state (Cunningham 2005, 194). The 1963 and 1969 Children and Young Persons Acts formalised how the state should promote welfare of the child and intervene where parents were unable to control their children. At the same time, parents became anxious that the child-centred approaches to parenting, which accepted bad behaviour as a norm and downplayed the role of discipline, would lead to a generation of selfish delinquents (Tisdall 2016). During the 1960s and 1970s, then, British society was struggling to mediate between, on the one hand, ‘the “best interests of the child” and [.  .  .] the protection of society [from children],’ on the other hand (Cunningham 2005,

108  Christopher J. Thompson 182–183) This emerging struggle is evident in the structure typical of the Dennis comics, between what Ian Gordon (2016, 81) describes as ‘two essential features’: ‘slapstick mayhem’ and ‘the inevitable punishment by the slipper.’ It’s this seesaw structure between two types of violence that is my object of study. Though violence may seem like a simple, common-sense term it is in fact quite complex: from whose perspective is an act violent? Should it be defined by physical injury, or by intention? What about imperceptible injuries and psychological violence? Can violence be directed to a people, or just a person? Cultural inflections on what are accepted forms of violence, such as the corporal punishment of children by parents or the methods used by law-enforcement in preventing the harm of others, similarly challenge a shared understanding of violence (Tolan 2007, 9; Herrenkohl et al. 2011, 14–15). The World Health Organisation (1993) attempts to define violence by focussing on the ‘intentional use of physical force or power’ but stops short of an expansive view of violence in which any power can be construed as violent. The role of the state also complicates matters. Slavoj Žižek (2010, 1) argues that the very nature of a state is dependent on what he terms ‘objective violence,’ which relates to the social structures and relations, and not just the oppressive forces through which they are maintained, in support of the economic system of capitalism. Conversely, Steven Pinker (2011) attributes the overwhelming decline in violence (measured per capita) through human history to the ‘civilising process’ of the state. This characterisation of the state here promotes anti-violent values such as empathy, delayed gratification and thought of one’s actions that leave the state to act as an arbiter or bystander in violent encounters in the populous. With these definitions in mind, it would be tempting to therefore explore violence in The Beano through the authority of objective state power on the one hand, and violent corrective ‘civilising processes’ on the other. Yet neither of these approaches to violence and authority seems satisfactory in describing what’s going on in the Dennis comics. Leo Baxendale, creator of The Beano classics ‘Minnie the Minx’ (1953), ‘Little Plumb’ (1953), ‘The Bash Street Kids’ (1953) and ‘The Three Bears’ (1959), proposes an alternative linkage between authority figures, potential representatives of the state, such as teachers, and violence and power. Baxendale was dissatisfied by the simplistic punishment-­ reward structure put forward by the 1988 BBC Arena documentary The Dandy-­Beano Story to describe the formula of his Beano comics, which suggests that each comic functions with a simple formula of punishment being meted out for bad behaviour, and a reward—in the form of a ‘feed,’ a pile of grub—for good. Baxendale contends that no such structure exists, a contention which he backs up with a detailed catalogue of comics during his tenure at The Beano (1952–1962). In its

‘Boiled or Fried, Dennis?’  109 place, instead of punishment, he sees the violence—the ‘whacks’ meted out by Teacher in the Bash Street Kids as revenge, that is, as forming part of this playful sequence of violent interactions between children and Teacher (1989, 57). It is this version of violence in which I am interested. It is one of power and play, both in the hands of children and adult authority figures, in which, importantly, both parties are equally capable. This nuanced understanding of violence is perfectly encapsulated in The Beano’s notion of ‘menacing’—the term to describe the ‘realm of wild slapstick’ in which the comic operates (Gordon 2016, 73). ‘Menacing’ bundles together the exercise of power that Dennis exerts on those around him, the playfulness needed by him to render such actions permissible and how adults participate in the game.

The Means of Menacing This chapter began as a small-scale study into the representation of violent encounters in Dennis comics that was presented at the 2014 Comics Forum in Leeds, UK. With this study, I wanted to test whether this definition of violence could be adequately applied to these comics with a view to then explore how violence and play relate to contemporary notions of childhood. As my corpus, I took 352 of The Beano comics published between January 1971 and January 1979 (owing to the unavailability of some issues, this corpus represented 84% of The Beano comics published in this period). My approach was to undertake a reading of the sample of Dennis comics to determine (1) the prevalence of violence in the comics, (2) the participants and whether they were victims or instigators of violence, and (3) the methods through which violence occurs. This study found that, of the 352 Dennis comics surveyed, 189 (54%) contained some form of intentional conflict between individuals or groups. In 170 of these 189 comics, children (typically Dennis and his friends) were instigators of violence. In 112 comics adults (predominantly Dennis’s Dad) were instigators of violence. It should be noted that these instances are not mutually exclusive: most of these comics include multiple instances of conflict between numerous individuals, many of whom start off as victims and then retaliate in revenge or begin as perpetrators and end up on the receiving end of corporal punishment. These initial results are perhaps unsurprising. After all, these comics are well known for conflict being the key point of interest, and the nature of this conflict is between Dennis and his parents, other children and the wider community. However, what becomes interesting is how the methods and means of conflict differ depending upon the relationships between characters. Across the period studied, methods of violence or conflict used by children as active participants tended to fall into one

110  Christopher J. Thompson of three categories: (1) mess, such as food, water or mud, unpleasant noise or music, and smells; (2) instigating a proxy or other to commit acts of violence, typically Dennis’s pet dog Gnasher, but also manipulating others into causing trouble, even enlisting the help of the reader; and (3) distance by setting traps, shooting or throwing objects, and sending menacing letters or messages. For example, in The Beano #1746 (17 January 1976) Dennis and friends scare Walter and the softies with their pet ‘Montague Mouse’; then, the menaces give the softies a soaking with water pistols as they cower in a treehouse. This comic shows how a proxy (the pet mouse) and then mess and distance (shooting water pistols from afar) are used to harass the softies. Similarly, in The Beano #1489 (30 June 1973) Dennis throws a rotten apple at Walter, while he plays teacher; later, Gnasher knocks Dad to the ground, while Dennis plays bullfighting—Dennis lifts the red cloth just at the right time for Gnasher (who is wearing bullhorns) to hit Dad from behind. Here, again mess (the apple) and distance (being thrown) are combined in an act of menacing on Walter, and Gnasher is used as a proxy by Dennis to menace his father. One final example in The Beano #1778 (14 August 1976) shows a more insidious usage of distance: Dennis and his gang intimidate Walter with a red hand symbol that marks him out for future menacing (just like the Black Spot in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 Treasure Island). This causes Walter to tremble, ‘terrified’ beneath the covers of his bed. The strip continues the ‘red hand’ motif up to its inevitable conclusion where the boys are finally caught ‘red-handed’ and receive a ‘whack!’ from their parents’ raised hands. This does not mean that the physical fighting between children does not occur at all in this corpus. The Beano #1749 (24 January 1976) shows Walter and the softies dancing in a circle in the playground game ‘Ring a Ring o’ Roses.’ Dennis jumps into the circle and spins the softies so fast that they fly off and hit their heads. Dennis gets his comeuppance later, when he challenges ‘Mr Softie’ to a boxing match, believing him to be a weakling. Quickly he discovers Mr Softie is actually a tall, thuggish parttime ice-cream seller, and Dennis receives a black-eye and ‘ringing ears’ for his mistake. Similar physical fighting can be seen in The Beano #1792 (20 November 1976) where Dennis hits Walter over the head with a chess board after a very physical game of rugby. Overall, however, instances of physical violence between children are relatively rare, accounting for only 22 strips (6%) in the sample. On the other hand, physical violence directed at children by parents, typically with a ‘whack’ from a slipper, is common. This adds a fourth category to the three identified so far. Each of these types and their frequencies are delineated in the table (see Table 6.1). Dennis and his gang are amazed at the number of tourists a haunted mansion attracts, and dream of the income-potential such a venture has. Dennis has a bright idea: soon, after dumping a bag of flour over Gnasher, the menaces have their own ‘Haunted Hut’ (a garden shed) complete with ‘Ghost-dog’ for a 2p entrance fee (two-fifths the going rate

‘Boiled or Fried, Dennis?’  111 Table 6.1  C  ategories and frequency of violence between children and parents in Dennis comics (Total number of violent comics = 189. Total number of violent events = 339). Number of Percentage of violent events total violent by category events By children Mess Food (flour, rotten eggs etc); water; paint, soot mud; music/noise (Dennis’s band); small. Proxy/other Pets (Gnasher, Rasher the Pig, Montague Mouse etc); getting others into trouble; the reader. Distance Setting traps, hiding, watching accidents happen; shooting, throwing, catapulting; letter, messages.

 79

23%

 54

16%

 85

25%

120

35%

By parents Physical Corporal punishment (wacking, beating with slipper etc).

Note: multiple instances of violence can occur per comic.

of The Beano). A small crowd of children assemble but quickly flee in terror as ghost-Gnasher runs amok—until, that is, the inevitable sneeze literally blows his cover. The cowering children quickly realise it’s a ‘swiz’ and chase after Dennis and the menaces, who clutch their ill-gotten gains. A sudden ghostly call stops the boys in their tracks: ‘this is the phantom whacker – return home or I’ll haunt you!’ Of course, it’s Dad using a megaphone to give himself a scary voice and call Dennis back home. In the final panel Dennis smarts, sitting on three cushions to sooth his backside as his father leaves the room clutching a steaming slipper. These comics present excellent examples of Dennis’s inventiveness in ‘menacing’ those around him. Yet what calls for this inventiveness? If Dennis wanted to cause trouble, the quickest way for him to do so would be to pick a fight. Instead of an egg in the face, why isn’t it a punch? The comic seems comfortable enough with physical violence, if not to depict it directly, then at least to show that it has taken place in the gutter between panels. Clearly, certain kinds of violence are off limits for the boy, and to get around these rules, some inventiveness is called for. In the corpus studied, these three types enable Dennis to get around these rules, but how? Each of these categories provides Dennis with a kind of buffer or

112  Christopher J. Thompson cushion mediating the space between him and his victims. So, Gnasher might be provoked into biting someone, Walter might be covered in soot or mud, or a passer-by might be shot with a sling shot, all to create a degree of separation between Dennis and his targets. Dennis’s punishment by Dad falls into the same pattern. It’s not just a ‘whacking’ that Dad gives Dennis: the mechanism of Dad administering punishment links directly to the menacing. The punishment fits the crime. Hence, Dad takes part in the boys’ ghost game in The Beano #1837 to trick Dennis into coming home, and uses the very same wall as Dennis in The Beano #1486 to conceal his ‘whacking.’ This can also be seen in the earlier example of The Beano #966 where Dad uses Dennis’s pogo stick to give extra clout to his ‘whacks.’ Violence forms an integral part of the game of menacing, and it is a game that both Dennis and his Dad play. Structurally, Dad’s participation in the game is an inversion of Dennis’s—using his very methods against him. Before we move on to consider the nature of this game in relation to the experienced reader, let us first examine how violence is structured as part of a narrative. In addition to the content analysis described earlier, this corpus was also subject to a methodological analysis of narrative developed by Neil Cohn. Cohn proposes that comics should be understood as narratives expressed in a visual language (2014, 57); such narratives are composed of five basic building blocks which constitute a canonical sequence or phase which he categorises as: an establisher – sets up an interaction without acting upon it an initial – initiates the tension of the narrative arc a prolongation – marks a medial state of extension, often the trajectory of a path a peak – marks the height of narrative tension and point of maximal event structure a release – releases the tension of the interaction. (Cohn 2013, 8) Except for the ‘peak,’ narratives do not need to have all or any of these categories to function. Further sequences can be nested within each of these categories; so, the ‘release’ of a narrative sequence might be composed of another nested sequence with its own narrative arc. The practice of this analysis is to decipher and apply one of these categories to each narrative component, typically a panel or group of panels. This can be demonstrated with The Beano #1746 (03 January 1976). We open in the first panel with ‘Soft Walter [. . .] doing his knitting’ (functioning as an ‘establisher’); in the second panel Dennis suddenly appears at the window armed with a balloon (functioning as an ‘initial’).

‘Boiled or Fried, Dennis?’  113 Gnasher obligingly bursts the balloon in the third panel, causing Walter to jump out of his seat in fright (functioning as the ‘peak’ of the narrative phase). But in the fourth panel we find that Dennis’s Dad has seen the incident and looks on angrily; finally, in the fifth Dennis’s backside is smarting, and Dad’s rolled-up newspaper steams with heat (which functions as the ‘release’ constituted by a further narrative phase in the final two). A similar pattern can be discerned in other comics in my corpus. Again, the results of this analysis are what might have been expected: panels in which Dennis or others engaged in menacing activities tended to fall into the ‘peak’ category, and those with Dad punishing him tended to be either ‘peak’ or ‘resolve’ categories. Cohn’s approach is contentious in Comics Studies. Criticisms stem primarily from the privilege linguistic analysis has in his treatment of comics. For instance, Hannah Miodrag (2013, 34–42) expresses caution when applying purely linguistic models to comics given that images function without the minimal units and arbitrariness commonly associated with semiotic approaches to language. Similarly, Barbara Postema (2013, xvi) argues against proposing grammar-like rules governing the relationships between panels on the basis that relationships between images scale with the near-infinite possibilities of their content. Cohn (2014, 58–61) dismisses both criticisms, amongst others, on the basis that they depend on an outdated structuralist model of language that is rooted in the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure; such approaches, he argues, tend to highlight issues with structuralist linguistics, such as arbitrariness, and the shortcomings of applying it to multimodal mediums like comics rather than in linguistic models per se. Taking a cognitive approach to language and image comprehension in comics enables us to understand how the ‘mind of a speaker [. . .] governs the production and reception of an expression,’ be it in verbal or visual form (Cohn 2014, 63). More recently, Simon Grennan (2017, 37–42) has challenged Cohn’s approach by highlighting its unproblematic reliance on ‘likeness’ and how he marginalises ‘stylistic modulations [to] outside the system’ of narrative meaning, which Grennan sees as fundamental to how a narrative drawing functions (2017, 41). Against Cohn’s model, Grennan (2017, 36–37) contrasts his own nuanced notion of ‘seeing in,’ which describes two aspects of a narrative drawing: (1) the object of depiction and (2) its expression, such as in marks on paper. Grennan (2017, 69–75) goes on to argue that such depictions draw on the ‘general potential resources of the body’ in the creation of narrative; in which case, drawn narratives (or indeed any narratives) bear the trace of the body or bodies that created them, what Grennan terms ‘narrative subjectivity’ (2017, 153). Monika Fludernik (1996, 12) similarly places human embodiment as a core feature of narrative, arguing that the fundamental feature of narrative is not sequence, but the ‘the quasi-mimetic evocation of real-life

114  Christopher J. Thompson experience.’ This refers to a reader’s cognitive ability to recognise in narrative that which is meaningful as a human experience. This opens common ground in which both Cohn’s ‘peak’ and Grennan’s ‘seeing-in’ can be extended to encompass the points at which a narrative is most able to activate a reader’s interest in a human experience. This common ground enables a deeper understanding of how violence in these narratives relates more directly to the experiences of children reading them. In an analysis of a little-known comic called Scream Inn (1973–1977), in which an innkeeper and entourage of ghouls and ghosts scare guests at a haunted hotel, Martin Barker (1989) relates a similar inversion formula that holds an ‘absurd power over the characters’ to the childhood readers of the comic (85). In Scream Inn, each guest has the challenge of staying overnight at the inn, with the reward of a million pounds. However, no guest ever succeeds, and their downfall is directly related to the apparent strength or bravado they bring to meet the challenge: an army major falls through the rotten floor as he stamps his feet to attention; a girl guide is sent off on a badge hunt; and, in highly metatextual shift, the writer of the strip appears as a challenger with seemingly omnipotent control over the narrative yet fails to stay the night at the hotel by being tricked into writing the hotel (temporarily) out of existence. Each comic in this series unwaveringly adheres to this formula—a strength becomes a weakness. Such a formula determines the narrative structure: the story builds to heighten the apparent strength brought to the hotel only for it to become inverted and come crashing down in the final panels. And Barker argues that these kinds of comics are ‘about children’s experiences of adult power and authority’ and that this formula exists as a ‘historically and socially specific contract between publisher, genre, and audience,’ best described as a ‘game’ (1989, 85–89). Children’s experience is embedded in the formula of the comic’s narrative structure. In The Beano comics we have considered, then, the way in which violence operates links intimately with children’s own experience of adult power, their response to which is one of play, of subverting the power such that even Dad cannot help but engage with it in order to punish.

Political Correctness and Violence It is the very nature of a childhood experience that drives and resolves the violence and conflict in the comic. This system is not chaotic. Such a ‘contract’ (Barker 1989, 88–89) must come with rules, and the foremost rule in this game is to be a willing, active participant. In closing, then, I would like to examine the role of comic’s most challenging character, whose unwillingness to play is rarely in doubt: Walter the Softy. Walter appears nearly two and a half years after Dennis in The Beano #577 (8 August 1953). Early on, Walter represents everything that Dennis is not: good-mannered, high-achieving and well behaved. This naïve

‘Boiled or Fried, Dennis?’  115 and innocent bystander is also an aspirational figure. In The Beano #642 (13 November 1954), Dennis makes a succession of failed attempts to imitate Walter’s helpful and obedient nature to gain the praise of his parents. Yet each failure brings closer the eventual beating from Dad, and in the end Dennis looks on at Walter while rubbing his throbbing behind, thinking to himself ‘Grr! Wait till he’s alone. He got me into awful trouble!’ This innocent, good-natured Walter does not last, as he quickly develops into a child perhaps more deserving of the decades of wrath Dennis will inflict on him. His snobbish and jealous traits can be seen in The Beano #1202 (31 July 1965), where, in an uncommon happy ending for Dennis, Walter seethes with jealousy at Dennis, who has borrowed a record-player or, in The Beano #1362 (24 August 1968), where Walter boasts about his new colour television set that ‘cost a lot of money.’ From here, Walter’s victimisation follows a clear pattern: as a structural opposite to Dennis, their conflict is as inescapable as it is arbitrary. From the early 1970s onwards, he is depicted as increasingly effeminate, playing with dolls, pressing flowers or knitting, compared with Dennis’s rough and aggressive behaviour, propensity for mess and destruction. It is at this point that Dennis and Walter’s relationship becomes most troubling: their conflict becomes increasingly based on a self-­reinforcing perfect storm of gendered stereotypes, in which Walter emerges as distinctly girlish compared to Dennis unproblematic boyishness. Walter’s association with flowers continues well into the early 2000s: #3344 shows Walter defending himself with a moat infused with flowers giving off a ‘sweet pong’ and ‘flowery smell.’ The Beano Editor (1984–2006) Euan Kerr reflects on this relationship between Dennis and Walter, referencing (clearly unsurprising) ‘accusations from certain quarters that it was a little like gay-bashing’ (Cramb 2008). While he dismisses this interpretation of the conflict between Dennis and Walter, Kerr nonetheless expresses concern about it; under his editorship, measures to deflect this interpretation were taken, such as clumsily giving Walter a girlfriend on the predicate that he would therefore not be gay (and hence couldn’t be an object of ‘gay-bashing’) and (perhaps more sensitively) to ensure Walter was portrayed as ‘completely happy about who he was’ regardless of how he was treated (Cramb 2008). Kerr’s final remark is that the ‘comic has certainly changed over the years to come in line with political correctness.’ These ‘accusations’ perhaps indicate a changing of the tides with regards to how comics affect young children. Pumphrey’s concern, that offensive content might be harmful to children and should be removed, has given way to the notion that ‘political correctness’ might now be harmful to children because it removes offensive content. Writing in 2010, Times columnist Chloe Lambert ‘pleads’ concern ‘that anxious adults are “softening up” children’s literature because they are worried that anything violent will upset their offspring,’ referring to how the

116  Christopher J. Thompson depiction of Dennis the Menace was revamped to fit with the BBC requirements for a new animated series. This BBC series, which aired in 2009, prompted a broad revamp of the comic as a ‘modern-day makeover to reflect politically correct concerns’ (Sherwin 2007). Steven Pinker (2011, 347–348) cannot resist joining the furore against the ‘decedent’ protection of children from even the slightest of risks, though, unlike others, he ventures to highlight the potential detriments such ‘absurdities’ might have: namely, ‘constricting childhood experience, increasing childhood obesity, instilling chronic anxiety in working women, and scaring young adults away from having children.’ To sheds light on these concerns of ‘political correctness’ and the detrimental effects they might have on the development of a child, I wish to examine a final strip in which Walter’s unwillingness to participate in games of The Beano is most clear. This strip exemplifies the ‘contract’ that Barker describes as existing between ‘publisher, genre, and audience,’ which determines the rules of the comic’s ‘game’ (1989, 85). In The Beano #2253 (21 Sept 1985), Dennis explains to Dad that Walter carried a heavy satchel overloaded with notes from his ‘mumsie’ excusing him from all sorts of school activities. Teacher reads some out—‘a note to excuse you playing with the rough boys – sitting in a draught – sitting in the sun – being naughty. . .’—later, Walter imagines the hardships of his classmates as they slog away at the cross-­country run, while he sits in the warm classroom doing extra homework; next day, Dennis and Gnasher ambush Walter on his way to school and sneakily swap Walter’s usual excuse notes with their own; Walter skips off unknowingly. Later, when it gets to sports class, instead of being relegated to cutting the oranges as he expected, Walter’s excuse letter says he should be the goalkeeper—20 goals from Dennis’s team, and later Walter clings to the net in fear. Another excuse letter instructs Teacher to ensure he plays rough games with the other boys—Dennis invites him to play knights (as Dennis’s steed)—another letter instructs the school cook to ensure he has double helpings of burgers and chips (what a school dinner!) rather than the usual lettuce leaf. Each of the children perfectly enjoys the ruckus of school life, except for Walter. Why is it that he refuses to participate? As an opposite of Dennis, he represents the refusal to participate in the anarchic energy of play in The Beano. Violence in The Beano is intimately tied up with play. The sense of violence is expansive, determining the nature of interactions and relationship between most of the comic’s characters. As seen in my corpus analysis, each of the typical methods of violence (mess, distance and proxies) enables Dennis and other children to circumvent the rules and engage in violent interactions with one another through play. Each of these methods occur in the highest point of narrative interest in the comic and correlate directly to the material of childhood experience: they are not arbitrary, they are the toys, mess and circumstances of childhood

‘Boiled or Fried, Dennis?’  117 and form the nature of what Barker identifies as the core ‘game’ of the comic. The title of this chapter comes from Dennis’s Mum’s involvement in the game: upon catching Walter in a moment of his own mischief she captures him in a giant saucepan, hovering over a cooker, exclaiming ‘boiled or fried, Dennis?’ In just the same way, her participation in the game draws from the material most readily available to her character: the space to which her gendered role as mother is most closely associated, the kitchen. This is the case with other characters too; in later comics the police, who previously appeared as a generalised group, become crystallised in a single police officer named after the symbol of authority itself: Sgt Slipper. The Beano presents a rich corpus of British culture spanning very nearly 80 years. It acts as a touch point across generations into the lives and attitudes of its child readership in a century in which childhood underwent revolution. Violence offers an avenue in understanding how play formed the basis of how a child can conceptualise and engage with authority, and how authority can engage back.

Note 1 DC Thomson comics typically went on sale on Mondays with the following Saturday’s date, meaning that this issue would have hit the shelves on or around 12 March 1951. These are a crucial few days as, in perhaps one of the greatest coincidences in comics’ history, a newspaper comic strip created by Hank Ketcham with the same title appeared in the United States on 12 March 1951. This strip is generally known as Dennis when on the shores of the United Kingdom.

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118  Christopher J. Thompson Cunningham, Hugh. 2005. Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500. 2nd ed. New York, Harlow: Pearson Longman. Fludernik, Monika. 1996. Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. Gordon, Ian. 2016 Kid Comic Strips: A Genre Across Four Countries. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US. Grennan, Simon. 2017. A Theory of Narrative Drawing. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hansard HC Deb 05 December 1974 vol 882 cc588–9W 1974. Accessed 14 N ­ ovember 2017 http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1974/dec/05/ childrens-publications-prosecutions#S5CV0882P0_19741205_CWA_237 Herrenkohl, Todd, et al. 2011. Violence in Context. New York: Oxford ­University Press. Lambert, Chloe. 2010 “Dennis the not a Menace”. Times, 15 February. ­London: Times Newspapers Limited, p. 19. Miodrag, Hannah. 2013. Comics and Language: Reimagining Critical ­Discourse on the Form. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Mitchell, W. J. Thomas. 1986. Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Pinker, Steven. 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of ­Violence in History and its Causes. London: Allen Lane. Postema, Barbara. 2013. Narrative Structure in Comics: Making Sense of ­F ragments. Rochester: RIT Press. Pumphrey, George E. 1952. Comics and Your Children London: Comics ­Campaign Council. ———. 1955. Children’s Comics a Guide for Parents and Teachers. London: The Epworth Press. ———. 1964. What Children Think of Their Comics London: The Epworth Press. Sabin, Roger. 1993. Adult Comics: An Introduction. Routledge: London. Sherwin, Adam. 2007. “Watch out softies — Dennis the Menace is Back. But this Time He is Spared the Slipper”. Times, 4 October. London: Times ­Newspapers Limited, p. 25. Tilley, Carol. 2012. “Seducing the Innocent: Fredric Wertham and the ­Falsifications that Helped Condemn Comics”. Information & Culture 47 (4): 383–413. Tisdall, Laura. 2016. “Education, Parenting and Concepts of Childhood in ­England, c. 1945 to c. 1979”. Contemporary British History 31 (1): 24–46. Tolan, Patrick. 2007. “Understanding Violence”. In The Cambridge Handbook of Violent Behavior and Aggression, edited by Daniel J. Flannery, Alexander T. Vazsonyi and Irwin D. Waldman, 5–18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. World Health Organization. 1993. Injury: A Leading Cause of the Global ­Burden of Disease. Geneva: World Health Organization. Žižek, Slavoj. 2010. Violence. London: Profile Books.

7 Humour as a Strategy in Communicating Sexual and Domestic Abuse of Women in Comics Nicola Streeten The difficulty I had with my first reading of American artist Phoebe Gloeckner’s A Child’s Life (1998) was that it sexually aroused me. This response made me recoil from the book and myself in horror. I was ashamed and intellectually repulsed by my physical reaction to a graphic depiction of sexual abuse of a young girl by her mother’s male partner. Had I lost my moral compass? Was I reading the comic as a ‘how-to book for pedophiles,’ which was how Gloeckner’s work was described by the Mayor of Stockton, California, in 2004 accompanying his decision to ban it from the public library (Kinsella 2004). I had been directed to Gloeckner’s work as one of the most wellknown graphic narratives of sexual abuse in comics form by a female auteur. My reaction is key to the importance and success of the work in communicating how one form of sexual abuse can take place and be sustained. According to the American literature scholar Hillary Chute, Gloeckner’s teenage protagonist Minnie experiences physical arousal and interprets it as ‘romantic love’ rather than paedophilia or abuse (2010). Like myself as reader, Minnie is depicted as knowing the sexual relationship is ‘wrong,’ and her guilt is conveyed. However, she feels physically it is ‘right.’ It is through presentation of Minnie’s experience as ‘love’ that the reader is shown how and why a child can become complicit in an abusive sexual relationship whilst also feeling a guilt. The graphic nature of Gloeckner’s portrayal offers the reader understanding through a sense of guilty enjoyment of the drawings. This is the success of Gloeckner’s work. My allusion to Gloeckner’s text is by way of introduction to the wider subject of sexual and domestic abuse and its visual representation in comics form. Chute notes that American cartoonist Robert Crumb’s sexually explicit comics were not banned for being pornographic, yet Gloeckner’s comic was (2010). However, Crumb’s drawing represents sexual behaviour between two consenting adults, while Gloeckner’s representation does not.1 Chute’s argument is that the banning of ­Gloeckner’s work is gendered, suppressing an important female experience. I propose the issues raised are more complex. My own understanding of Gloeckner’s comic was generated from questioning my discomfort. This led me to

120  Nicola Streeten engage with Chute’s analysis, which offered me a different reading. The Mayor of Stockton’s reaction did not include reading scholarly analysis but was to the visual per se. My point is that, whilst not necessarily the correct action to take on the mayor’s part, it can be understood and is perhaps a typical reaction of many readers to A Child’s Life. The problem, then, is that the media presentation of sexual abuse has the power to turn an instructive and/or cautionary tale into one of titillation. As a consequence, the focus on the sexual act itself can become interpreted as the locus of the problem of abuse. I contest this, and the comics I consider here invite the reader to move towards a more in-depth understanding of abuse without relying on sexually explicit graphic depiction. In this chapter I will consider three Western comics demonstrating contemporary use of the comics form to interrogate and to visually convey the process, experience and effects of sexual and domestic abuse. I look at British comics illustrator Katie Green’s contribution to British psychologist Dr Nina Burrowes’s edited collection The Courage to Be Me (2014), Scotland-based Canadian designer and illustrator Maria Stoian’s graphic novel Take it as a Compliment (2015) and Canadian artist Rosalind B. Penfold’s graphic memoir Dragonslippers (2005). I have selected examples that address a wide spectrum of what we may classify as ‘sexual’ and/or ‘domestic’ abuse. Whilst I am wary of using these terms interchangeably my approach is to see the terms ‘sexual abuse’ and ‘domestic abuse’ as relying on abusive behaviour patterns, and the comics I have chosen visualise these patterns. My intention, then, is to consider how the comics form is being used to support and inform wider debate around abuse, in particular how successfully they show that abuse is symptomatic of underlying power structures in Western consumer culture. My purpose here is not to engage in a theoretical debate around the definition and distinctions of types of abuse, but to demonstrate how comics are contributing positively to the subject. In particular I will examine the importance of humour in the comics works, and theories of humour will be key in my analysis, including works by John Morreall (2005), Michael Billig (2001) and Ruth Waterhouse (1996). In each example, explicit sexual imagery is avoided, yet the ambiguity, as well as periodic horror surrounding abuse and its consequences, is successfully communicated. The Courage to Be Me (2014) is a compilation of women’s personal stories collected by Dr Nina Burrowes in her research into the psychological effects of sexual abuse. Burrowes commissioned four illustrators to depict the stories visually. She illustrated the fifth story herself. Burrowes’s objective was to use the comics form to present her research results to a wider audience to create understanding. I will look specifically at Katie Green’s contribution which depicts a young woman’s experience of the long-term effects of sexual abuse.

Humour as a Strategy  121 Maria Stoian’s Take it as a Compliment (2015) is a collection of anonymous narratives of sexual violence, gathered and visually portrayed as part of her research towards a Master’s Degree in Illustration at Edinburgh College of Art. The varying experiences highlight the ambiguity surrounding the term and its definitions. Experiences that may not at first appear sexually abusive or violent are presented to create a spectrum of how power abuse can become normalised in society. Canadian artist Rosalind B. Penfold’s graphic memoir Dragonslippers’s (2005) invites us to reflect on entrenched stereotypes that inform a common comprehension of domestic abuse. She visually shows us the invisibility of domestic violence portraying the violence and power disparity. I will use close visual analysis of specific images to demonstrate how myths surrounding abuse can be squarely contested through the use of the comics form. I examine the role of humour in the works and as an inherent characteristic of the comics form. As a tool in communicating these experiences I question whether it is an element that potentially replaces sexual titillation. The implication of my enquiry is that where explicitly graphic communication of sexual abuse risks condoning sexual violence, by confining it to a specifically defined set of practices, as in the example of Gloeckner, the comics form can also offer alternative readings. In this way, the form can invite a deeper understanding and interrogation of the experience of sexual and domestic abuse and its ramifications. The comics I have selected as examples are not ‘mainstream’ comics, such as those produced by DC Comics or Marvel, that at times rely on violent visual imagery and action. Instead, my choices are more nuanced auteur works, produced by one person as both writer and artist. As I will show, they use different drawing and narrative styles to address the theme of abuse of women.

The Effects of Abuse: The Comfort and the Cute Without the graphic visualisation of the sexual act made explicit to the reader, the discussion of the effects of sexual abuse becomes a challenge. It is one that Dr Nina Burrowes addressed in The Courage to be Me (2014). I will show how British illustrator Katie Green’s contribution uses visual strategies to successfully support Burrowes’s intentions. My choice of Green’s work is because of her subtle use of humour. The associations prompted by her drawing style imbue the work with a t­ ragi-comic characteristic through the use of the aesthetic of cute. Green’s character displays the long-term effects of sexual abuse. The stippling background can be read as snow falling. Dressed for cold weather, the duffle coat, pom-pom woolly hat and mittens establish her protagonist as a school girl (see Figure 7.1). Whilst Gloeckner’s child protagonist depicts a young woman becoming aware of her sexuality,

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Figure 7.1  ©  Katie Green, The Courage to be Me, 2014, Chapter 5 (Green 2014).

Green’s character is rendered as a swaddled child who emits innocence. The drawing style is that of children’s book illustration. Although drawn as simple dots, her eyes, just visible through her spectacles, communicate acute anxiety. Green’s representation of woman as girl signifies a lack of power. The visual strategy of presenting women as children has been used historically to highlight gender inequalities. A cartoon by the Suffrage Atelier ‘Vote Girl’ was a bleak reminder that legally in the 1910s women only had the status of children. The header of the cartoon reads, ‘The Vote Girl,’ with the caption, ‘I want the vote, and I mean to have the vote, that’s the sort of girl I am.’ The image is of a boy and girl playing tug of war with a paper entitled ‘conciliation bill,’ representing the tug of war over the demand for women’s right to vote. A document sticks out of the boy’s back pocket labelled ‘Manhood, Suffrage.’ It is this detail that reminds us that even as a boy, it is he who holds the legal power in his back pocket. The depiction of the suffragette as a prepubescent girl represented her as playful and charming. It was a way of using humour to make a serious political point. This was a tactic also used in the 1970s to subvert the stereotype of feminists as angry and humourless, such as British cartoonist Jacky Fleming’s iconic girl with the big bow in her hair (see Figure 7.2).

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Figure 7.2  © Jacky Fleming cartoon, 1978 (Source: jackyfleming.co.uk).

In one of her most popular cartoons drawn and produced as a postcard in 1978, the girl is shown standing next to a policeman strung-up in a neatly parcelled bundle (see Figure 7.2). By mixing childish and adult behaviours Fleming’s girl drew attention to the absurdities in the way women were viewed socially. As with ‘Vote Girl’ it injected an incongruity as the children addressed adult subject matters. The incongruous situation must be resolved, that is, understood by the reader, before it can be funny, and in a cartoon this is the equivalent to the punchline of a joke. In American social psychologist Jerry Suls’s analysis of the appreciation of cartoons, he argues, ‘A joke or cartoon is constructed to lead the recipient astray and produce surprise’ (Suls 1972, 84). This can only take place if the recipient understands the context and will have ‘expectations about the picture disconfirmed by the caption’ (Suls 1972, 82). The suffragette cartoon is clear in the context of women’s suffrage, and Fleming’s cartoon can only fully be understood in the context of attitudes to sexual violence in 1978 in Britain. The popularity of Fleming’s cartoon and the relevance of the debate around self-defence, particularly in Leeds where Fleming was based, must be understood in relation to the activity of Peter Sutcliffe in Yorkshire, who sexually attacked and murdered 13 women between 1975 and 1980. Returning to Green’s work in The Courage to be Me, it reflects a focus on the girl and her psychological position. The violence of anger directed at the perpetrator in Fleming’s cartoon now appears to be directed

124  Nicola Streeten inwards in Green’s comic. Green’s visual absence of the perpetrator repositions the debate to the effect on the perpetrated, herself. Knitting symbolises domestic creativity, cosiness, safety, nostalgia and maternal care. In the left panel, the tight hugging of a huge bundle of balls of wool semi-obscures the girl’s face. Held as protection from the cold it is also perhaps protection from her own inner terror. In the right panel the scarf is wrapped around her neck, swamping her. Though comforting and protecting it simultaneously threatens suffocation, self-suffocation. As a teenager in the early 1980s I carried knitting in my bag as a potential weapon in case I was attacked. This reflected the popularity of self-defence at this time referenced in Fleming’s cartoon. As Fleming commented, there was a strong belief ‘That self-defence classes were the answer to male violence. . . the cartoon was an indictment of that’ (Fleming 2014). The first Rape Crisis Centre in Britain opened on 15  March 1976, and the first annual report in 1977 stated that ‘self-­ defence classes have always been an integral part of our scheme’ (Rape Crisis Centre 1977, 23). They were considered to be advantageous for channelling anger and gaining confidence and control. It was a response to the idea in society of man seen as the aggressive predator and woman as passive prey. The word victim for the raped woman was considered inappropriate, reinforcing the idea of the woman as passive. The central aim was to challenge the identity of the raped woman as passive and to fight back. In 1974, feminist journalist Angela Phillips noted that the first thing police looked for before pressing a rape charge were signs of a struggle as evidence of a women putting up a ‘fight for her virtue,’ but it was worse for a woman to struggle as violence was met with greater violence by perpetrators (Phillips 1974, 30). In 1973, feminist Maggie Lomax criticised the enthusiasm for promoting the teaching of self-defence to women, ‘we are too conditioned into believing ourselves to be the guilty ones, perpetually internalising our hurt, terrified of that moment in court when the prosecutors suggest that you were a willing party to the rape’ (Lomax 1973, 32). She referred to the Chiswick Women’s Aid Centre, pointing out that women did not go there to ask for defence: we women have had so much violence perpetrated on us, that to learn defence is like accepting ‘their’ system, entering into their violent world – when what we are surely striving for is birth, life, love where one shall not dominate over the other, most of all physically. (Lomax 1973, 32) Fleming’s cartoon can be read as satirising this debate around self-­ defence and relies on the idea of laughter as a more powerful weapon than violence. However, the success of the cartoon’s humour is in the duality of its reading. It also visualises the anger and violence women

Humour as a Strategy  125 feel towards men who attack. In this reading self-defence is endorsed as something even a small girl is capable of, affirming the idea that women can do anything. Yet the female fight results in the comic parcelling up of the attacker into a neat and simple string bundle, rather than a bloody mess on the floor. I have reflected in some detail on the context of Fleming’s cartoon to position Green’s comic produced nearly four decades later. The violence is still present. How quickly we can turn our thoughts from the softness of the wool, to the sharpness of the needles. What a short journey of associations it is from knitting and homemade jumpers to knitting needles and the dangerous and desperate violence of illegal homemade abortions. But in Green’s comic, the reading of the knitting needles is the potential of damage she could impose on herself rather than on the perpetrator. As feminist scholar Karen Boyle notes, ‘making men’s violence visible was a crucial aspect of early feminist work’ (Boyle 2005, xiii). The reasons were to make the gendered nature of the violence explicit and to make the hidden visible so it became recognised as violence (xiii). In Green’s (2014) depiction, it is the psychological effects which are visibly conveyed as the invisible violence imposed on women after the perpetration. What the ‘weapons’ of the everyday objects of Fleming’s ball of string and Green’s knitting needles remind us of is the location of violence within the everyday female experience. It is the everyday experience of the after-effects of sexual abuse that Katie Green displays so powerfully in her valuable contribution to Burrowes’s work. The laughter in Fleming’s cartoon is angry laughter, drawing on a superiority theory, yet softened by the incongruity of the cute child protagonist. In Green’s drawing style there is also a reliance on the cute to ensure humour. In her theorising in Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (2012) feminist academic Sianne Ngai describes cute as a contemporary aesthetic category that creates ‘a desire in us not just to lovingly molest but also to aggressively protect them’ (Ngai 2012, 4). For example, we use language such as ‘so cute I could eat it.’ This cuteness, she argues, is the commodification of everything. It is a cuteness that sparks a love-hate relationship: the sickly sweet, a manipulative aesthetic. Whilst evoking a desire for intimacy, cuteness offers commodification instead, so inviting a paradoxical response to cuddle and crush. Green visualises this paradox through the cute aesthetic of the style in her drawing of the cuddle crush of the girl and her scarf. Green’s knitting girl on the right is obsessive in her compulsive production as she transforms her armful of wool on the left into a scarf on the right. The wool consumes the girl as she consumes it. More than adequate as a scarf, the girl continues to anxiously knit with the harsh, spiky knitting needles perhaps as harsh as spiky memories. Through production and consumption, she tries to protect and comfort herself. What is clearly depicted is the conflict of comfort and danger. This emotional paradox

126  Nicola Streeten or cuteness aggression of the drawn serves to visually mirror elements of such contradictory emotions shown in her everyday life. Her emotional and consumer relationships illustrate Ngai’s claim of being controlled by a cycle of ‘everyday practices of production, circulation and consumption’ (Ngai 2012, 1). The cuddle and crush paradox has a psychological explanation in a phenomenon referred to as ‘cuteness aggression’ or ‘dimorphous expressions.’ Research at Yale University found participant responses to cute stimuli triggered a combination of positive emotions such as smiling with negative emotions such as tears. The research provided preliminary evidence that the function of these contradictory emotional expressions was to regulate emotions, to prevent the feeling of being out-of-control or unmanageability of the emotion (Aragón et al. 2015). As the reader may respond to Green’s drawing with empathy for her anxiety, yet with a smile at the cuteness of the drawing, in turn, this enables the effects of abuse to be interpreted. When I refer to the element of humour, it is therefore not an audible laugh that is produced, but in Green’s case, the contradictory emotion of a smile that the aesthetic produces.

But What Do We Mean By ‘Sexual Abuse’? I have looked at Katie Green’s work to demonstrate the role of the comics form as a way of effectively engaging with the debate around the effects of sexual abuse. In this section I continue with a focus on how the comics form supports and disseminates debate around our understanding or misunderstanding of sexual abuse or violence, as addressed by Maria Stoian in Take it as a Compliment (2015). The book is a collection of 20 short stories in comics form, each drawn by Stoian in a different style. Stoian developed these from data collected for her Master’s Degree. Gathered mostly anonymously online, some in response to interviews, ‘The process was a constant discussion and sharing of experiences’ (Stoian 2015, 94). Her hope for the work is that through sharing of experiences, we can ‘create a society that does not tolerate sexual violence’ (94). As with Green’s work, Stoian challenges our understanding of sexual abuse with an insistence that we consider it as part of the everyday. What Stoian’s comics highlight is that sexual abuse exists and/ or is sustained by a wide spectrum of behaviour, from cat calls to rape. A page from one of the stories directly engages with how humour can function to reinforce a status quo, Stoian uses humour in critiquing the implicit assumptions in the expression ‘just’ joking (see Figure 7.3). Humour theorist Michael Billig calls attention to the unease in the potential justification of offensive ideas as ‘just a joke’ in Humour and Hatred: The Racist Jokes of the Ku Klux Klan (Billig 2001). Exploring the link between extreme hatred and humour, he challenges the assumption that hatred is humourless2 (2001, 3). He cites German philosopher

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Figure 7.3  © Maria Stoian, Take it as a Compliment, 2016:87 (Stoian 2016).

Theodor Adorno’s work on authoritarianism, which ‘depicts the bigot as being “mean-spirited”’ (Billig 2001, 4). This, Billig asserts, strengthens a wider association of the real bigot as humourless. His point is that a cultural belief is nurtured that dictates hatred as incompatible with humour. In the first panel in Figure 7.3, the offence is referred to, and in the second panel we see the male character denying the possibility of offence or hatred. The third panel visually conveys through the symbolism of the tick box, how the process of harassment is condoned or approved.

128  Nicola Streeten In using this visual shorthand of the tick box, Stoian takes the anecdotal comment and makes a link between the everyday and the enforcement of harassment through bureaucratic methods—in other words, how sexism may operate at an institutional level. British sociologist Christie Davies supports the view contested by Billig (1990). He maintains that stereotypes presented in jokes are not necessarily believed because they are too exaggerated, too extreme to take seriously. Therefore, a contribution to anti-Semitism, for example, in the form of a joke is so trivial that it is negligible (Billig 2001, 5–6). Davies therefore distinguishes between anti-Semitism and the ‘playfulness’ of jokes. Billig disputes Davies, contending that if a joke is primarily a type of communication, then it has the capacity to convey a social and political message, whatever that may be (7). Although Billig’s study is on extreme racist jokes, his argument is applicable to understanding extreme misogynist humour. Whilst Stoian’s work may not appear as an example of extreme misogyny, I have drawn on Billig’s argument around ‘just a joke’ to explain the possible implications of humour in the everyday. Stoian’s inclusion of form-filling associations depict the connection between everyday comments and institutionalised structural misogyny. It is such connections that Laura Bates gathered together when she created the ‘everyday sexism project’ in 2012 (Bates 2017). Just as Bates’s blog developed a powerful voice through the recognition of her many followers, Stoian’s portrayal uses the same strategy of humour or the ‘getting’ of a joke to combat the ‘just a joke’ justification of misogyny. In the case of Stoian’s comic the humour relies on an assumed knowledge and understanding of experiences of everyday misogyny. The laughter is a shared women’s laughter of recognition. Her comic therefore represents a community building among women based on female experiences. In Humour and the Conduct of Politics (Morreall 2005), humour theorist John Morreall considers the idea of people laughing, ‘more often in groups than when alone’ (Morreall 2005, 67). He applies American neuroscientist and psychologist Robert Provine’s ideas on laughter to accommodate the incongruity theory of humour. Provine proposed that when a group (tribe) is faced with a danger that passes or does not materialise, they laugh for pleasure. Morreall identifies the incongruity between ‘a perception of danger and an actual danger’ (67). Applying this to contemporary humour, he sees this in terms of our experience of enjoying our ideas. So, we laugh at ideas that will not ‘cause belief or action, but for the pleasure that entertaining those ideas will bring’ (68). In the final panel of Stoian’s work, the female protagonist looks out directly at the viewer. She is surrounded by laughter she does not join in with, and in recognition, we, her viewers, laugh or smile with recognition at her non-laughter. Her hands gesture a brushing off of the surrounding misogynist comments. In doing so, she invites her viewers to join her in her critical challenge. In other words, ‘Laugh, smile, wryly grin, but

Humour as a Strategy  129 remember our first step is to understand society; the second step is to change it’ (Betty Boothroyd quoted in Atkinson 1997, xv).

Romantic Love in the Cultivation of Relationships and Abuse Rosalind B. Penfold’s narrative in Dragonslippers conveys the cultivation of abusive relationships without reliance on graphic sexual scenes. It differs from the previous examples I have considered because it is unclear from the narrative whether physical violence or ‘wife-beating’ takes place. It can be more accurately described as a narrative of ‘domestic’ abuse, where the intricacies of controlling and belittling behaviours are scrutinised and visually represented. Yet the violence and sense of abuse conveyed is extreme. What Penfold successfully uses the comics form to demonstrate is the invisibility of the machinations of abuse. Penfold’s work complements the works more specifically concerned with sexual abuse and violence by offering an understanding of how and why abusive relationships can become established and sustained. The similarity of Penfold’s work to the previous two works is the immersion of the narrative within the realm of the everyday. My particular interest is in how Penfold shows how the abuse continues unseen. The visible framework for the relationship is the Western myth of romantic love which assumes heteronormativity and supports and is supported by economic consumption. This establishes and reinforces a power dynamic where the male can become positioned as predator and the female as passive victim. This is visualised in Penfold’s image which introduces the chapter ‘The Honeymoon.’ There is an association, from the title, with marriage, historically a predominantly heterosexual institution. A young woman, Roz, is shown sitting cross-legged in a field, with the cityscape in the far distance. She is pulling petals off a daisy to determine whether her love will be reciprocated. The play implies courtship or ‘love,’ for which the ultimate aim must be marriage. Yet it also signifies female passivity, with the outcome dependent on a male decision. The juxtaposition of the field with the distant cityscape positions her game with nature—the flower; within nature—the field. She has literally turned her back on her position as a ‘Happy, successful 35-year-old with an award-winning business of my own and an apartment in the city’ (2005, 12). Instead, we can read her as embracing a ‘natural’ role for female as subservient to male. This conflict in Roz’s status is introduced to us over the page as we learn her career status alongside Brian’s invitation to dinner. Brian arrives at the date with a red rose, orders 30-year-old wine and sends luxury flowers after the date. The relationship is thus established through an equation of romantic love with monetary expenditure. It continues in this vein with further dates and trips. ‘The summer passed in a haze of romantic love’ (2005,  24)

130  Nicola Streeten could also be described as a haze of economic consumption. The culmination of a marriage proposal is accompanied by the announcement of a pre-purchased honeymoon and expensive ring. In anthropologist Marcel Mauss’s theorising of the gift (1969) he shows how the apparent spontaneity of gift giving can be analysed as relying on obligation to repay with a foundation in economic self-interest. As Roz’s relationship with Brian develops, she is shown living with him and his three children. Later in the story the obligation is revealed, showing Brian pressuring Roz to sell her company, stating, ‘I need a partner in life, Roz, not this career shit’ (2006, 65). We can read this as his need for an unpaid carer for his children and home, and positioning himself as more economically powerful in the relationship. To clarify, I am not suggesting that romantic economic consumption and dependency within a heteronormative relationship is love, merely that one dominant Western notion and judgement of romantic love is its material manifestation.3 Additionally I am not saying that romantic economic consumption and dependency within a heteronormative relationship is a necessary condition for abuse, rather that it can operate to obscure abusive behaviour. Finally, Penfold’s narrative is of a heterosexual relationship; however, I acknowledge that such violence is not exclusively the domain of heterosexual relationships. My purpose is to show how a measurement of ‘love’ within a consumerist framework enables the existence of violent abuse to remain invisible and undetected. It is within the unvalued and unseen everyday realm of love where such abuse can be cultivated and flourish. The everyday, as described by feminist cultural theorist Rita Felski, is ‘the essential, taken-for-granted continuum of mundane activities’ (1999, 15). It is by looking at love within this sphere that the cultivation of abuse can be detected. Yet this is ‘the realm of the insignificant, invisible’ (Felski 1999, 17). What Penfold’s narrative demonstrates so deftly is how a process of abuse can begin undetected and be simultaneously disguised by a ‘wealth’ of love. It is her visual depiction in comics form that so eloquently captures the abusive process, through the minutiae of the everyday. A poignant example of this is shown in a panel where the emanata around ‘SLAM’ and the surprised ‘?’ from Roz immediately communicate the abusive process in the smallest of moments. The juxtaposition with the everyday love between the other couple, their friends, in the preceding panels adds to the clarity of the message (see Figure 7.4). And yet the scene takes place in a restaurant on holiday in Greece, positioning Roz and Brian in a relationship of ‘romantic love’—one of economic consumption. By visually presenting the quotidian details, the creation of three-­ dimensional characters and situations is enabled. This can challenge and replace a potential for stereotypes that may exist of domestic abuse as taking place within the domain of the working class and being restricted

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Figure 7.4  ©  Rosalind B. Penfold, Dragonslippers, 2005:46 (Penfold 2005).

to ‘wife beating’ with visible signs. For example, Penfold’s comic positions Roz as a successful independent executive. The references to theatre, holidays and meals imply the cultural capital of the privileged. A part of Penfold’s success in detailing the mundane is her drawing style. The drawing uses a simple black line that suggests a lack of

132  Nicola Streeten refinement in the style. The effect is a rawness of emotion, as if drawn in haste, on an everyday pad of paper. Indeed, the provenance of the work was a secretly kept, roughly sketched diary. Yet the drawing style and use of tools such as panels and gutters position the work as a comic. In my introduction to this chapter I suggested humour could replace the graphic sexuality of scenes as a way of engaging the reader. But it is difficult to identify humour in Penfold’s comic narrative. Yet, by utilising this form, rather than for example illustrating text, Penfold injects the narrative with a humour through association. The comfort afforded to the reader is through recognition of the comic form itself with its Western historical associations. A lightness is offered to entice the reader into what is a harrowing narrative. Once drawn in, the focus on the everyday increases the reader’s recognition. But we do not laugh, so surely this cannot be humour. Penfold’s work may not make us laugh, but there is a quiet process of recognition in the subject matter. For example, who has not experienced the embarrassment and discomfort of a tension played out in public between friends, relatives or partners, allowing us to recognise the social situation from both Roz’s position and that of the friends witnessing the friction. Yet such strains in our everyday relationships do not necessarily equate with abuse. Nor is it a scene that we would immediately recognise as ‘funny.’ As humour theorist Simon Critchley points out (Critchley 2002), humour will not be humorous to everyone but only to those who ‘get’ and share the political message. Critchley explains the context-­specific nature of humour in terms of the British philosopher, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury’s (1671–1713) ideas of ‘humour as a form of sensus communis. . . humour reveals the depth of what we share. . . not through the clumsiness of a theoretical description, but more quietly, practically and discreetly’ (Critchley 2002, 18). It is the visual of the comics form that, as in the process of the telling of a more obvious joke, ‘makes explicit the enormous commonality that is implicit in our social life’ (Critchley 2002, 18). Through this sharing of commonality, a solidarity can be formed. The pleasure from the enjoyment of the form offers empowerment through quietly opposing a stereotypical depiction.

Conclusion What the three comics discussed demonstrate is how successfully the effects, process and varying experiences of sexual and domestic violence can be conveyed through the comics form. They use different strategies in approaching the wide subject of sexual and domestic violence’ with the visual as a key element in making visible what is often unseen. The comics form in particular provides an accessible platform for difficult subject matter and allows, by the historical associations with the form, the inclusion of humour. I have considered how each example uses

Humour as a Strategy  133 humour in different ways. In all cases the comics have concentrated on the everyday, a domain perhaps growing in recognition as a platform for scrutiny and a vehicle for activism. I have referenced the everyday sexism project as an example of this within wider popular culture, and Stoian’s work in particular appears to sit comfortably within this new focus. The #MeToo campaign in 2017 was predicated on works such as Stoian’s. Using social media to bring to attention a catchphrase introduced in 2007 by feminist activist Tarana Burke, founder of youth organisation Just Be Inc, the campaign was originally created by Burke ‘as a grass-roots movement to reach sexual assault survivors in underprivileged communities’ (Vagianos 2017). In October 2017, American actor Alyssa Milano used #MeToo on social media in response to the allegations of sexual misconduct and assault made against the American Film producer Harvey Weinstein (France 2017). Women were invited to tweet their experiences of sexual abuse. It was a call to arms to women to say no to misogyny, and the hashtag has been used by over 500,000 people (Petit 2017). The use of the everyday and the inclusion of humour have made the subject matter recognisable to a wide range of people. It is these elements that have been used effectively in comics form in the works cited here, and the place of such visual works is to reinforce feminist activism being widely disseminated on the internet. In December 2017, American cartoonist Diane Noomin invited me to contribute to a comics anthology with the working title ‘Graphic Voices’ and a working subtitle, #Me Too. Noomin will edit the book for publication by Abrams Comic Arts, New York (Noomin 2017b). Her editorial role is significant because of her position in publishing the first American women’s underground comics in the 1970s. Driven by feminist ideologies, in 1976 she co-edited the first issue of the Twisted Sisters anthologies of women cartoonists with Aline Kominsky Crumb. She was also one of the early contributors to Wimmen’s Comics (1972– 1992) (Noomin 2017a).4 Her involvement ensures the voice of women comics artists continues to be heard as part of current feminist activism. In ­doing this, comics contribute to the transformative power in communicating an understanding of sexual and domestic abuse. 5

Notes 1 However, since Crumb’s comics can be classified as pornographic, a gendered double standard is still evident, which it is not my intention to condone. 2 Billig claims this assumption exists within some psychological theories, which he does not specify. 3 Indeed I suggest that even the love of interpersonal relationships is quantified in material terms in the West. 4 Eleven women attended the first meeting of the Wimmen’s Comix Collective in Berkeley, California, USA. The collective published Wimmen’s Comix no. 1 (Robbins 1999, 91).

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Humour as a Strategy  135 Ngai, Sianne. 2012. Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting. ­Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Noomin, Diane. 2017a. About Diane Noomin. Accessed 29 December 2017. www.dianenoomin.com/pages/AboutDianeNoomin.html. ———. 2017b. Email correspondence with Nicola Streeten. 22 December. Penfold, Rosalind B. 2005. Dragonslippers. New York: Grove Press. Petit, Stephanie. 2017. “#MeToo: Sexual Harassment and Assault Movement Tweeted Over 500,000 Times as Celebs Share Stories”. People, 16 October. Accessed 26 December 2017. http://people.com/movies/me-too-alyssa-­ milano-heads-twitter-campaign-against-sexual-harassment-assault/. Phillips, Angela. 1974. “Rape”. Spare Rib 20, January. Rape Crisis Centre. 1977. Rape Counselling and Research Project First Annual Report. March. Robbins, Trina. 1999. From Girls to Grrrlz: A History of Women’s Comics from Teens to Zines. New York: Chronicle Books. Stoian, Maria. 2015. Take it as a Compliment. London: Singing Dragon. Suls, Jerry M. 1972. “A Two-Stage Model for the Appreciation of Jokes and Cartoons: An Information-Processing Analysis”. In The Psychology of ­Humor: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues, edited by Jeffrey H. Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee, 81–100. New York: Academic Press. Vagianos, Alanna. 2017. “The ‘Me Too’ Campaign Was Created By A Black Woman 10 Years Ago”. Huffington Post, 17 October. Accessed 5 March 2018. www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/the-me-too-campaign-was-createdby-a-black-woman-10-years-ago_us_59e61a7fe4b02a215b336fee. Waterhouse, Ruth. 1996. “Mixed Feelings: Ambivalence, Sexuality and Cartoon Humour”. In The Social Faces of Humour: Practices and Issues, edited by E.C. Paton, Chris Powell and Stephen Wagg, 163–193. Hants: Arena.

Gendered and Sexual Violence

8 The Risks of Representation Making Gender and Violence Visible in The Ballad of Halo Jones Maggie Gray Introduction: Making Gender Violence Visible Violence, its relationship to patriarchy and its inflection of lived social experience as inscribed by gender has been a key theme in feminist activism and thought. Among the core aims of second-wave feminism was making visible the violence against women that was hidden from public view; gendered forms of violence that were ignored, denied or trivialised in political discourse, including domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment, exploitation and violence against women by the state. Questions of violence, its connection to masculinity and the exercise of power within the family were also at the heart of the intense debates within the British women’s liberation movement that saw it fracture in the late 1970s and early 1980s.1 A key area of contention was the relationship between violence and cultural representation; between coercion and compulsion, and ideology and imagery. Themes of violence, gender, sexuality and their interconnection have recurred in Alan Moore’s work. As a result, significant critical attention has been paid to the presentation of gender violence in comics he has scripted. On the one hand, comics Moore has written have been argued to expose the relationship between discrete acts of violence against women and larger patriarchal structures, insisting on gender violence as socially embedded. In a special issue of the Journal of Graphic N ­ ovels and Comics on the subject, Lorna Piatti-Fanelli (2017) analyses the depiction of sexual assault in Watchmen in relation to its wider examination of gender and nationalism. In the same issue, Michael J. Prince (2017) discusses how From Hell maps instances of violence against women onto systemic sexual violence as a manifestation of institutionalised misogyny. On the other hand, Moore’s work has also been argued to reproduce sexist tropes common to the representation of gender violence in comics. The incapacitation and implied sexual assault of Barbara Gordon in Batman: The Killing Joke has been identified as an example of ‘­fridging,’ in which acts of violence against women are used to expedite the development of male characters while eliding women’s trauma (Curtis  and

140  Maggie Gray Cardo 2017, 6–7). The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series has faced criticism for both the trivialisation of sexual violence and its graphic portrayal, as has Moore’s work with Jacen Burrows on the Lovecraft mythos. Moore has responded to debate about the representation of gender violence in his work, arguing that while other forms of violence like murder are over-represented in comics, much more common crimes of rape and domestic violence are disregarded, amounting to the ‘denial of a sexual holocaust’ (Ó Méalóid 2014, no pagination). He can therefore be seen to share the second-wave feminist commitment to make gender violence politically visible. The divergent critical interpretations of his oeuvre raise questions about violence and its representation more broadly: as Bruce B. Laurence and Aisha Kim put it, ‘how does one speak about violence without replicating or perpetuating it?’ (2007, 10). This maps onto correlate debates about gender—how can the experience of women and girls be depicted in ways that testify to the lived reality of systemic subordination without reinforcing repressive constructions  of sexual difference? What are the risks in making gender, violence and their intersection visible in popular media? This chapter explores these questions by focussing on ‘The Ballad of Halo Jones’ by Moore, Ian Gibson and others, originally serialised in 2000AD between 1984 and 1986. The strip aimed to redress the widespread invisibility of female characters in British comics, while challenging prevailing sexist modes of depiction. Like many 2000AD series, it used science fiction to comment on the political reality of Thatcherist Britain through its critical estrangement. As a result, ‘Halo Jones’ can be read as an exploration of contemporary gender relations that highlighted various forms of violence against women conventionally unseen in both mainstream comics and politics. In doing so, it engaged with the strident debates of second-wave feminism—in particular those focussed on questions of violence and representation—taking up critical positions within them that contested how both violence and gender are culturally articulated. As such, ‘Halo Jones’ negotiated the contradictions of making violence against women more visible—the tensions between exposing gender violence and reifying it as spectacle; between challenging standardised portrayals of women and reproducing harmful gender norms; between bearing witness to the reality of women’s lives permeated by violence, and naturalising that violence so as to disavow alternative ways of imagining and doing gender.

The Girl Who Got Out: Halo Jones and 2000AD ‘The Ballad of Halo Jones’ related its 50th-century protagonist’s efforts to escape a series of restrictive situations, symbolised by repeated circles and webs. Halo is described as somebody ‘cramped by the confines of

The Risks of Representation  141 her life. . . somebody who had to get out’ (Moore et al. 1985a, 7). In the first arc or ‘book,’ she tries to escape the poverty of The Hoop, a huge floating estate and ghetto for America’s unemployed and migrant underclass. In the second she is trapped in the only available work as a hostess on a luxury space liner; in the third, she joins the army, caught up in colonial occupation and interstellar war. Moore and Gibson had six months for development, and the whole series was plotted in advance. This allowed for the creation of a richly detailed storyworld, complete with coherent intergalactic economy, futuristic slang and working alien languages. This fully realised future, with its high social inequality, racial tension and xenophobic militarism, was a clear extrapolation of Britain in the early 1980s—a period that saw waves of urban riots prompted by police racism, the jingoism of the Falklands War and the class confrontation of the Miners’ Strike. The satirical exploration of such topical issues through their dystopian defamiliarisation was characteristic of 2000AD. However, ‘Halo Jones’ differed from the usual 2000AD fare significantly. The creators declined to explain this complex future with thought balloons, captions or glossaries, meaning it had to be decoded through attentive, inferential reading. More unusual still was the female protagonist. ‘Halo Jones’ intended to confront the gender imbalances and stereotypes of mainstream comics, reflecting ongoing debate about sexism in the UK scene. Moore had intervened in this discussion with the threepart article ‘Invisible Girls and Phantom Ladies’ published in Marvel UK monthly The Daredevils in 1983. It explored both the absence of comics for and about women, and the history of sexist imagery in the field, within the context of patriarchal culture. Invisible Girls Moore was keenly aware that 2000AD lacked major female characters, but with the rapid decline of girls’ comics, was becoming the only British title with a sizeable female audience. Its letters pages attested to a significant female readership, yet one which felt marginalised, particularly regarding the representation of women. One reader wrote, ‘I think your comic isn’t for girls. All the women in your stories get killed off’ (Watson 1983, 2). Moore and Gibson aimed to redress this erasure with a strip in which the ‘central characters would all be female’ and men ‘would largely be relegated to the sort of walk-ons that women usually get’ (Bishop 2007, 101). This inversion enabled the portrayal of a diverse range of female characters and their social interaction. It can be seen as an acknowledgement of the frustrations of 2000AD’s female readers by deliberately incorporating elements of the defunct girls’ comics tradition, with its focus on the dynamics of all-girl friendships.

142  Maggie Gray Phantom Ladies The women characters that did appear in 2000AD, readers argued, tended to be ‘drawn from imagination rather than reality’ (Chapman 2011, 165). Judge Anderson, for example, had been designed by Brian Bolland explicitly in terms of erotic appeal—‘a great opportunity to draw a sexy looking girl’ (Bishop 2007, 70). Alongside the general absence of female characters, it was this kind of restrictive stereotyping that motivated ‘Halo Jones.’ Halo was designed as a counterpoint to standard modes of portraying women at the time; she was to be neither ‘a pretty scatterbrain who fainted a lot and had trouble keeping her clothes on’ nor ‘another Tough Bitch With A Disintegrator’ (Moore 1986). The first part of ‘Invisible Girls and Phantom Ladies’ traced the historical emergence of diminutive superhero companions, who served little function other than comic relief founded on their feminised powers or romantic activities. Its second instalment noted the rise of assertive, hypersexualised superheroines who appropriated masculine traits of aggression and physical prowess, yet were marked by their ‘voluptuousness’ (see Taylor 2007, 352–353). The Politics of the Personal: Violence and the Everyday In contrast, Moore and Gibson wanted to create a relatable, non-­heroic female protagonist—to take ‘a totally unexceptional character’ and ‘show the sort of triumphs that ordinary people have’ (Hull 1986). This approach drew on girls’ comics, but also feminist comix, which developed alternatives to sexist imagery by candidly narrating the everyday experiences of unidealised, ‘ordinary’ women. Moore discussed the role of female underground cartoonists in challenging representational norms in the final section of ‘Invisible Girls and Phantom Ladies.’ The fact that ‘Halo Jones’ dealt with the unremarkable experiences of a young woman who ‘wasn’t that brave, or that clever or that strong’ (Moore et al. 1985a, 7) equally indicates its debt to the wider women’s movement. In feminist consciousness-raising participants described their everyday lives as a way to reconstitute gendered social relations as a totality, enabling them to see personal experience—including experiences of violence and trauma—as embedded in the larger social fabric and thus ‘reject explanations which stressed failures in their individual personalities’ (Rowbowtham 1990, 8). Exploring the day-to-day texture of women’s lives was a way to highlight structures of oppression and violence that were routine and thereby hidden. This approach was echoed in ‘Halo Jones’ through the prevalence of first-person narration and subjective point-of-view, and the use of Halo’s diaries and letters in place of captions. Such epistolary storytelling was a common feature of the romance genre, which feminist

The Risks of Representation  143 cartoonists valued for its focus on female subjectivity, psychological realism and emotional depth, even while they satirised its narrow codes of gender and sexuality (Sutliff Sanders 2010, 158). As Kate Flynn argues, ‘Halo Jones’ consistently engaged with the ‘clichés of popular romance,’ particularly soap opera (2012, 52). However, this also harked back again to the conventions of British girls’ comics, and the success of 2000AD has been attributed to the adoption of such ‘“girls’ comic” thinking’ in terms of plotting, characterisation and emotion (Mills 2017, 21–22). Like women’s comix, the reader was also implicated in the experiences of female characters by subverting gendered conventions of visual storytelling. Women tended to appear far less frequently in close-up, and facially were near-identical. Marvel’s style-guide suggested ‘keep your female faces simple. Use no extra expression lines on the forehead, or around the mouth or nose’ (Lee and Buscema 1986, 100). The received wisdom in British comics was similarly never to heavily shade a female face, ‘as it made them look masculine’ (Talbot 2003, 39). This reserved many of the visual means for asserting individuality, narrative centrality and emotional agency for male figures alone. By contrast, characters in ‘Halo Jones’ were often shown in tight close-up, with a range of facial expressions portrayed through heavy hatching (see Figure 8.1). Halo visibly aged as the series progressed, reflecting the commitment to creating credible female subjects rather than inert, idealised types. While its debt to girls’ comics segued with aspects of 2000AD more broadly, the divergence of this approach was noted by readers. The strip’s early reception was lukewarm, with initial reader responses logging a distinct lack of ‘action’ (Parkin 2013, 157). The first arc’s plot was comparatively low-key, revolving around the daily lives of Halo; her flatmates Rodice, Ludy and Brinna; and their robot dog, Toby. A large part dealt with Rodice and Halo’s attempt to go shopping, taking over 24 hours as they evade hoop riots and navigate a baffling public transport system. This presentation of exaggerated yet quotidian events elaborated the boredom and hopelessness of life on The Hoop, probing the characters’ different reactions to their constrictive situation. As James Chapman asserts, girls’ comics afforded ‘greater prominence to character motivation’ rather than relying on direct action to resolve all problems (2011, 110). It was this shift away from conventional action, towards intersubjective relationships and a ‘discourse of feeling’ (Moeller 2011), that enabled exploration of the fantastically ordinary lives of these characters. However, readers complained that ‘very little happened.’ Crucially, Moore took this to mean ‘very little violence happened’ (Parkin 2013, 157). Yet the arc’s plot includes Halo being injured in hoop riot, a threatening confrontation with the aggressive ‘Different Drummers’ (addicts to ‘the beat’), and the murder of Brinna in their home. The crucial distinction is that it is the psychological and emotional

144  Maggie Gray

Figure 8.1  A lan Moore, Ian Gibson and Steve Potter. 1984. ‘The Ballad of Halo Jones’ Book 1 Part 8: ‘When the Music’s Over.’ 2000AD Prog 385 (15 September), p. 11.

impact of violence shown rather than violent action, which is implied or off-panel. This speaks to one way the comic negotiated making violence against women visible—in exploring women’s everyday lives, it presented violence which is routine rather than exceptional, stressing its protracted effects rather than its dramatic instantiation. Yet, having met resistance from readers, this approach didn’t sit well with editors either. The second book was only green-lit provided the strip became more typically ‘action-orientated,’ implying the depiction of spectacular violence. The creators therefore had to insert ‘the prescribed amount of violence

The Risks of Representation  145 into the narrative’ without turning Halo into an action character and negating her crucial ‘ordinariness’ (Moore 1986).

The Violence of Poverty: Gender and Class Halo’s presentation as an ordinary woman, subject to unremarkable, everyday violence, highlights the ways in which the comic refracted British feminism’s core debates. Halo was conceived explicitly as working class. Once more, this drew on trends within girls’ comics away from affluent characters towards working-class heroines (Gibson 2008, 2010). Halo’s particularity as a working-class woman, rather than a figure of political authority or economic privilege, reflected how, by the late 1970s, the universalising feminist notion of sisterhood had been criticised for its denial of the intersectional differences within women’s oppression. The arrival of the first female Prime Minister in 1979, who enacted social and economic policies that adversely affected women, threw differences within the British movement into sharp relief. Socialist and radical feminists cautioned against liberal notions of equality that saw some women elevated to positions of power, while the institutionalised exploitation of capitalism and patriarchy remained unchallenged. Book 2 explicitly drew attention to class disparities of economic, social and cultural power between women in its juxtaposition of Halo’s undervalued labour as a hostess with the glamourous lifestyle of the VIPs she serves. A distinct socialist strand of UK feminism had coalesced in the 70s around issues of production and the reproduction of labour. Alongside workplace struggles over low pay and intensifying casualisation, socialist feminists were concerned with the gendered division of domestic labour and lack of welfare provision that created a double burden on working women, with shift work, long hours, housework and childcare taking a combined toll on women’s health. This slow, grinding violence of poverty, linked to stress, addiction and disability, was closely related to the disciplining threat of unemployment, equally inflected by gender. Being more likely to work in informal conditions, working-class women’s labour was more depreciated and insecure, which put them at greater risk of redundancy and unemployment. Tracing Halo’s trajectory through a string of low-paid, precarious jobs, interspersed with periods of vagrancy, low-level criminality, unemployment and reliance on credit, the comic interrogated this feminisation of poverty as a form of economic violence. As well as representing unspectacular economic violence, ‘Halo Jones’ also explored the ways in which class inequality increased women’s ­exposure to physical violence. ‘Poverty, marginalization, and lack of protective mechanisms make women easy targets for abuse’ (True 2012, 31) and the accelerated gendered inequalities of economic crises

146  Maggie Gray are risk factors for increased violence against women and girls (101). The Hoop is crime-ridden, with a perfunctory police force. It is so insecure the standard parting is ‘safe day’ or ‘safe night,’ and the threat of violence is so pervasive it pushes Halo’s flatmate Ludy into addiction, joining the Different Drummers because she was ‘sick of being scared all the time’ (Moore et al. 1984, 10). In this tense, confined environment, women arm themselves before going out and dress in layered clothing to avoid sexual harassment. When Rodice bares her skin it is a deliberate exhibition of toughness and challenge to a patriarchal culture in which women’s bodies, particularly working women’s bodies in the contested public space of the street, are deemed sexually accessible by default. In stark contrast to the concealing, cyberpunk costumes of the first book, in the second arc Halo and her fellow hostesses wear matching skimpy uniforms and blonde wigs. This visual disparity is self-reflexively noted when Halo communicates her discomfort to her new roommate Toy: ‘showing my feet and everything! I mean, on the Hoop, if a woman did that. . . well, we just didn’t’ (Moore et al. 1985b, 4). This highlights how ‘social expectations about women’s sexuality constrain women’s working lives’ and how women sell their physical appearance alongside their labour (Rowbowtham 1990, 192). The expendability of both Halo’s labour and her body in this workplace is emphasised in the arc’s first ‘violent action’ when she is held hostage by terrorists and the captain shows far more concern for the ship’s navigator. The hijackers demean her as an ‘Earth-concubine of the rich,’ and the contrast in costume between the two books equally draws attention to contradictory ways in which women are simultaneously expected to make their bodies visually available yet are blamed for inducing gender violence in rape myths surrounding dress.

Gender Violence and Symbolic Violence: Image, Body, Look ‘Halo Jones’ thus highlighted connections between the cultural inscription of gender and the threat of physical violence in the experiences of working-class women, the relationship between direct coercion and the symbolic violence of gender norms imprinted through cultural representation (True 2012, 30). Yet, in so doing, it sat in an ambiguous relationship to the standardised visual presentation of the female body for erotic display. Moore criticised how women’s bodies in comics were presented in passive, contorted poses to service an implicit male gaze: ‘if a comic book woman were to change a fuse she would do so with her head thrown back, lips slightly parted and with one arm extended in a graceful delicate curve’ (Moore 1983a, 18). Yet the second and third books often featured Halo and others in various states of undress, allowing for the voyeuristic perusal of their bodies, and women were more frequently

The Risks of Representation  147 shown in submissive poses, with one dropped hip or a head half-tilted. Moreover, despite challenging conventional presentations of gender expression and hierarchy, notably with Toy’s height and soft butch image, the positioning of Halo as ordinary ‘constructs “ordinariness” as compliance with narrowly defined bodily norms’ (Flynn 2012, 57). Halo’s ‘ordinary’ body complied with many of the restrictive standardisations Moore criticised in ‘Invisible Girls and Phantom Ladies.’2 Such contradictions in the visual representation of female characters, whereby gender stereotypes were at once undermined and reinscribed, echoed broader feminist interventions in media. ‘Attempting to turn around the presentation of women’ risked ‘demonstrating what you actually opposed’ (Rowbowtham 1990, 249). As Flynn argues, this futuristic estrangement of a social reality in which women are predominantly ‘for men to look at’ is supported by invitations for the reader to look at female bodies in ways that reproduce patriarchal gender dynamics (2012, 57). This risk was self-consciously acknowledged in Halo’s final 2000AD appearance in ‘Tharg’s Head Revisited,’ December 1986. In their contribution (see Figure 8.2), Moore appears, asking Gibson if he holds the artwork to the unrealised Book 4, to which he replies, ‘No! This is Page Three,’ referring to topless glamour photographs in British tabloid The Sun. A campaign against Page 3 launched that same year in many ways emerged from preceding feminist activism focussed on the media’s role in socialising women to subordinate gender roles and appropriating the female body as a site for the projection of male sexual fantasy. The group Women in Media interrogated the prevalence of sexist representations of women across broadcasting, comics, novels, pop music and the press (King and Stott 1977), and feminist campaigns against sexist advertising ranged from defacing misogynist imagery with spray paint, to lobbying regulatory bodies to ban objectifying images (Klorman-Eraqi 2017, 236–237, 231). Moore drew on such work in ‘Invisible Girls and Phantom Ladies’ by relating the representation of women in comics to the broader sexism of film, television and stand-up comedy, and ‘Halo Jones’ metafictionally highlighted the disjuncture between the melodramatic ‘holosoaps’ the characters consume and the dismally prosaic violence they endure. Moving on in his article to condemn Good Girl Art (GGA) for intimating rape fantasies, Moore also refracted radical feminist interventions in this ‘images of women’ debate. He criticised the ‘startling regularity’ of sexualised torture, and related such sadomasochistic imagery to the reinforcement of rape myths in the Sword and Sorcery genre: ‘the message . . . is that women enjoy rape and that they say “No” when they mean “yes” [sic]’ (1983b, 19). Radical feminists increasingly linked gender violence to its promotion through visual representations that reinforced structural disparities

148  Maggie Gray

Figure 8.2   A lan Moore, Ian Gibson and Q. Twerk. 1986. ‘Tharg’s Head ­Revisited.’ 2000AD Prog 500 (13 December), p. 32.

of power, with a specific focus on pornography. This strand of feminism had a particular significance in Yorkshire, where between 1976 and 1981 Peter Sutcliffe beat, raped and murdered 13 women. Feminists were outraged, not only by the state’s failure to protect women from such brutal violence, but by police advice not to venture into the street at night, and the media’s treatment of the case as lurid spectacle, where gender violence went typically unreported (Coote and Campbell 1987, 223). In Leeds, the revolutionary feminist group Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW) was established, organising ‘Reclaim

The Risks of Representation  149 the Night’ marches across different cities in which strip clubs and porn shop windows were vandalised. Angry Women, an offshoot of WAVAW, went further, setting fire to several sex shops in West Yorkshire. Drawing on thinkers like Andrea Dworkin, Susan Brownmiller and Catherine MacKinnon who argued coercion was integral to male sexuality, such groups theorised a direct link between pornographic images as a form of symbolic abuse and control, and acts of sexual violence. Pornography was positioned as a central facet of male violence ‘operative within the same system of dominance and control’ as sexual assault and rape (Coote and Campbell 1987, 223). ‘Halo Jones’ similarly explored violence against women as a continuum by linking sexual violence to routine harassment, throwing open questions of how rape can be culturally visualised without sublating it as spectacle and thereby reinforcing myths that facilitate it. On-board the Clara Pandy, Halo is attacked by Toby after she discovers his sexual obsession with her, in an assault that extended over three weekly episodes. Toby aims to possess Halo sexually through violence, brutally killing Brinna, so Halo can inherit him. When she discovers his plan, listening to his audio-memory tapes of the murder, he attempts to kill her too. She is pursued through the ship in a protracted violent chase with a strong sexual subtext—dressed in a nightgown, she tries to hide, but Toby engages infrared vision, and the panel perspective shifts to shots of Halo’s naked legs with his eye-screen as frame, presenting his enhanced view. In figuring the aggressor’s perspective, in Toby’s othering as an extraordinary machine-animal and in dramatising the assault as one way to get the editorially mandated action into the strip, this could be seen to reinforce rape myths about survivors and perpetrators, and sensationalise gender violence (see Garland et al. 2016). Yet the fact that Halo is assaulted by a pet she shows affection to and the only male figure within her nontraditional family structures of female kinship challenged the myth of ‘stranger-danger,’ highlighting the prevalence of acquaintance rape and rape within the home. This reflected radical feminist critiques of the family and connection of women’s subordination within it to their exposure to violence. Toby’s role within these female collectives was as protection against male aggression. His calculated use of brutal force to ensure sexual access to Halo and to punish her non-compliance demonstrates how patriarchal protective paternalism is underwritten by violence. The dramatic action of Halo’s assault is intercut by scenes of runof-the-mill social interaction in ways that connect gender violence to commonplace sexual harassment, emphasising its systemic nature. ­Halo’s ordeal is interwoven with Toy’s rejection of the belittling, sleazy advances of a date, who warns, ‘Don’t play hard to get.’ Toy’s aggravation at such routine sexist maltreatment, ‘Men! What do you have

150  Maggie Gray to do before they get the message?’ is counterposed with Halo’s terror (Moore et al. 1985d, 7). This draws an emphatic link between shocking gender violence and ubiquitous harassment, highlighting the pervasive use of the threat of rape to regulate gender behaviour. The strip therefore represented not only a challenge to the invisibility of sexual violence against women in comics but the way that the media focussed only on unusual cases, eliding the ‘ordinary sexual violence endemic in everyday life’ (Kitzinger 2004, 28). Although there are instances where the reader ‘must adopt Toby’s perspective of looking’ (Flynn 2012, 57), the attack is not exclusively presented from his viewpoint. Opening with a focus on Halo’s rapidly changing expressions as she listens to Brinna’s murder, the reader continues to witness the terror and pain etched on her face during the assault. Several pages involve a switch of perspective whereby Toby advances menacingly towards the viewer. Others are composed from Halo’s subjective viewpoint, including one where she sees herself reflected in a tight close-up of Toby’s eyes (see Figure 8.3). The consistent focus on the characters’ eyes and looks, and movement between perspectives, emphasises the visual positioning of the viewer in relation to the scene, raising uncomfortable questions about the representation of violence and the act of witnessing it. This destabilises comics’ usually transparent gendered conventions of looking and being looked at. Both addressing and dislocating the male gaze, it can be read as a reflexive criticism of the ways in which male heterosexuality was commonly encoded in spectacular violence against hypersexualised female comics characters (Sutliff Sanders 2010, 154–155), challenging readers’ genre expectations of ‘violent action.’ However, while ‘Halo Jones’ navigated the connection between the cultural objectification of the female body and gender violence, it also diverged from revolutionary feminism significantly. The argument that violence was implicit to masculinity and heterosexual relations faced criticism from other feminists for its ‘profoundly conservative pessimism’ (Rowbowtham 1990, 253), tending towards an ahistorical essentialism that naturalised oppressive gender relations. In line with the casting of pornographic images as objectively exploitative and causally linked to violence, this was seen to also deny women’s sexual agency and disavow the possibilities of figuring female desire outside abusive frameworks of shame, fear and domination. ‘Halo Jones’ can be seen to reflect the stance of opposing ‘sex-positive’ feminists, in its exploration of sexualities traditionally invisible in boy’s comics. Halo is presented as a sexually autonomous and active subject in contrast to both the general erasure of female desire in British comics, and the sublimation of sexuality in ultra-violence or the fetishising imagery of GGA. While framing Halo’s love life through romance genre clichés, the strip situates the reader within a circulation of female desiring

The Risks of Representation  151

Figure 8.3   A lan Moore, Ian Gibson and Steve Potter. 1985. ‘The Ballad of Halo Jones’ Book 2, Part 7: ‘Puppy Love.’ 2000AD Prog 412 (6 April), p. 5.

looks that ‘queers 2000AD’s male gaze’ (Flynn 2012, 58). This includes not only Halo’s heterosexual desires, but Toy’s sexual attraction to her in face of a culture of compulsory heterosexuality. This echoed radical feminist concerns with liberating female sexuality through the intersubjective discussion of female fantasy, sensuality and pleasure. Anti-pornography feminism was criticised for threatening sexual freedoms and foreclosing alternative configurations of sexuality. Lynne Segal argued that censorship would likely be used by the state against

152  Maggie Gray feminists, lesbians and gay men, as seen in the 1982 ‘Clean Up Soho’ campaign, used by police to attack gay venues. Many feminists were uncomfortable with aligning themselves with right-wing ‘moral decency’ campaigns, which had been directed against the underground and gay press, as well as comics like IPC’s Action. Envisaging female and queer sexual desire within a boys’ adventure comic thus had an important resonance in relation to struggles around gender, sexuality and censorship. Moreover, ‘Halo Jones’ undermined the essentialism trailing revolutionary feminist constructions of male violence. The demotion of male characters in some ways mirrored separatist aspirations which extended in the late 1970s to the advocacy of political lesbianism. However, the comic challenged essentialist conceptions of gender difference and their own symbolic violence through the trans character the Glyph, Halo’s other cabin mate on-board the Clara Pandy. The Glyph, not identifying with the sex ascribed to hir at birth, undergoes a series of total body remoulds but fails to find gender congruence within a reductive polarity of gender expression. As a result of hir failure to conform to culturally inscribed norms, ze has become invisible, ignored by everyone including Halo, who ze sacrifices hir life to save from Toby. The Glyph’s genderqueer body is culturally unintelligible, a ­cipher—doctors cannot categorise hir according to regulatory taxonomies of dimorphic sex and a correlate gender binary. In a series of flashbacks of heteronormative families conforming to binary gender presentation, the Glyph is shown to become progressively erased from social perception. Halo and Toy similarly ignore and elide hir, questioning idealised constructions of female homosociality. However, the reader sees the Glyph, sharing hir viewpoint and bearing witness to hir death. This facilitates a critical awareness of the contingency of other characters’ interactions on performing binary gender. The Glyph’s self-identification emphasises that, in fact, ze is a pictograph, as are the other characters so easily categorised male or female. Conceptually glyphs are only readable, and therefore meaningful, within an agreed set—sitting outside of culturally intelligible categories of sex and gender, the Glyph not only highlights their constructedness but stands as a metafictional commentary on their visual inscription and the difficulties of escaping a restrictively gendered semiotics. This denaturalises the correlation of sex and gender within hetero- and cis-normative structures, undermining revolutionary feminist notions of innate male violence, and challenging the wider prevalence of essentialist views, later dubbed cultural feminism. ‘Halo Jones’ thus represented the inconspicuous symbolic violence enacted against trans people, as well as the connection between the everyday cultural effacement precluding their access to liveable lives and their disproportionate exposure to physical violence. In its efforts to make violence against trans people visible, however, ‘Halo Jones’ reinscribed cissexist tropes, while it worked to subvert

The Risks of Representation  153 them. That the Glyph’s most significant act is one that leads to hir death reproduces the trope of the tragic queer character (Kidder 2012, 183), echoing the similar fate of Toy. Nevertheless, the attempt to explore the violence of hetero- and cis-normative constructions of sex and gender was significant in the context of the widespread preclusion of queer and trans issues from second-wave feminist debate and the outright transphobia of feminists like Janice Raymond, who linked transsexuality to male violence.

A Woman’s Life in the Modern Army: Violence, Colonialism and War This challenge to gender essentialism was extended in the third book which further explored gender and violence within the context of future war. Cultural feminist views that women were ‘by nature’ more empathetic and peaceable became central to discourse surrounding the peace camp initiated in 1981 at Greenham Common. Although there was great feminist support for the camp, many rejected its ‘elevation of the “feminine” . . . into a “natural” force for peace’ (Liddington 1989, 259–260). Matching its aim to challenge sexist comics norms, ‘Halo Jones’ also intended to subvert standard depictions of war. Again facing prolonged unemployment, Halo enlists in the army, which promises good pay, new skills and adventure. She becomes entangled in an imperialist war waged by Earth to revive its failing economy and is party to systematic abuse of civilians and the killing of child resistance fighters, and ultimately accessory to genocidal war crimes. Showing a conflict in which both the killers and the killed are mostly female was intended to overcome desensitisation to violence: Moore imagined readers used to seeing men cut down ‘might perhaps be more affected by the prospect of frightened women being crushed into viscous red puddles because of its comparative rarity’ (Bishop 2007, 110). This relates to the strip’s depiction of sexual violence—reflexively critiquing comics’ conventional spectacularisation of violence and militarisation of masculinity. The strip was distinguished by its focus on the day-to-day experiences of ordinary privates. As such, the depiction of the effects of warfare on the female combatants was striking. The reader follows Halo from initial training, first combat experience, withdrawal and re-enlistment to her ultimate escape, witnessing her increasing brutalisation. Visualising violence perpetrated by and upon female fighters refuted ideas of women being essentially more peaceable, but equally challenged the militarisation of ultraviolent superheroines. Once more the comic not only represented shocking acts of violence but connected them to institutionalised cruelty, culturally inscribed—­ emphasising the continuities of war and ‘non-war,’ particularly for women (Jacobs et al. 2000, 11). Drawing on post-Vietnam science fiction, ‘Halo

154  Maggie Gray Jones’ related military conflict to systemic colonial violence. Guerrilla attacks on Halo’s unit on an occupied planet are precipitated by invasive house searches, ‘search and burn missions’ and ‘kappa bomb’ attacks that have devastated the environment. The occupation itself is justified by a racist ideology that dehumanises the ‘natives’ as ‘degenerate sub-­ human she-devils’ who ‘only understand force’ (Moore et al. 1986a, 9). The visual representation of violent action is again framed to interrogate the act of viewing itself, particularly in episodes on the planet Moab. In the stronger gravity of its battlefield, if anti-gravity suits fail, combatants are squashed into pools of blood, and at a distance objects

Figure 8.4  A lan Moore, Ian Gibson and Richard Starkings. 1986.  ‘The Ballad of Halo Jones’ Book 3, Part 11: ‘Slow Death.’ 2000AD Prog 463 (22 March), p. 4.

The Risks of Representation  155 appear to be at a stand-still. The reader’s perception of the violence, as a sequence of static frames where moments of death are frozen (see Figure 8.4), is thus aligned with that of the fighters themselves (Di Liddo 2009, 71–72). Temporal distortions mean minutes of fighting actually amount to days on base. Correspondingly, episodes read in five pages represent years of conflict, yet seconds of fighting stretch across several pages. This slows down violence in an appalling manner that again reflexively questions the appetite for dramatic action, presenting violence’s protracted effects alongside its instantiation—not only the bloody mess of combat but the ‘mess in people’s head, in people’s lives: all that loss and pain’ (Moore et al. 1986d, 4).

Conclusion ‘Halo Jones’ can be read as a critical estrangement of social relations of gender and their ideological construction, which aimed to make the systemic violence hidden behind them visible, in alignment with the British women’s liberation movement. Navigating many of its key debates, particularly over gender violence and cultural representation, it took up critical positions within them: centring the intersection of gender and class, affirming a liberated female sexuality and challenging essentialist correlations of binary sex and gender. To that end, the strip contested how both gender and violence were articulated in comics and culture more broadly: using defamiliarisation to emphasise the unremarkable ubiquity of violence against women as a structural process, to reflexively trouble the conventions of showing and viewing it, and to highlight its differential allocation—how ‘certain human lives are more vulnerable than others’ (Butler 2006, 29). However, the strip remains contradictory—in making women visible in comics it both subverts and reproduces restrictive gender norms. In representing the habitual violence they face, across symbolic, psychological and physical manifestations, it both exposes that violence to political scrutiny and risks its sublation and naturalisation. Comics ‘have the potential to be powerful precisely because they intervene against a culture of invisibility by taking the risk of representation’ (Chute and DeKoven 2006, 772). ‘The Ballad of Halo Jones’ takes the risks of representation at the heart of feminist debates about violence and visualisation—the question of how to show the dystopian reality of what is, while sketching utopian possibilities of what could be.

Notes 1 The 1978 Women’s Liberation Conference divided acrimoniously over the issue of male violence, one of several fault lines emerging within the movement between and within radical, socialist and liberal strands.

156  Maggie Gray 2 Flynn’s more substantive point regards the way this ordinariness is racially marked as white, although the strip featured a higher number of non-white characters than many contemporaneous mainstream comics.

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9 Unmaking the Apocalypse Pain, Violence, Torture and Weaponising the Black, Female Body Joseph Willis When the apocalypse comes, it comes in a wave of violence. Whether an onslaught of zombies or the bloody death of every mammal with a Y chromosome, the first step for those not annihilated by the initial violence is to survive; the second is to break down and destroy the new world structures and clear a space for the return of the pre-apocalyptic society the survivors have lost. In post-apocalyptic narratives, the survivors are faced with new rules, new power structures, and new ways to die. While different individuals may survive based on their already existing abilities, many survivors have to develop new skills, new muscles and new senses. For some, this means constructing a new identity and honing a new body, while others have their identities and bodies honed and constructed by their new world and other survivors. These new identities and bodies need to be ones that are useful and reflect back the violence that this new self is constantly being inundated with. Uniquely, for the black female body in the apocalypse, this means having their former selves displaced and their new bodies and identities transformed into bodies of violence and pain, so much that it spills out into the realm beyond the body and makes them a tool of resistance to the apocalyptic world. Within apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic narratives, after the defining cataclysmic events, stories tend towards the trinity of human depravity: rape, murder and cannibalism. Most frequently, these actions are directed at female bodies, and serve as shorthand for how evil the world has become. The inhabitants of this new world are the perfect villains for the predominantly, white, male saviour figure to stand against and defeat, all while saving the girl. This sets up a return for humanity to a safe and expected patriarchal world structure. The damsel in distress, and the heroic man that will come to save her, sets up a dynamic as the female body as a prize or trophy. Another aspect of this dynamic though, is its glaring whiteness. When examining the intersection of race and gender, the way that black female bodies are perceived and treated in these narratives is very different than their white female counterparts. As Ahir Gopaldas asserts in his essay on intersectionality, cultural indicators such as race, class and gender are often perceived as independent variables, when they

160  Joseph Willis should actually be viewed as interdependent (­Gopaldas 2013, 92). While both white and black female bodies are often seen as commodities or possessions to be used, black female bodies are historically marked as literal property. Because of the history of enslavement, not only are black women marked as items to be won, but they are bodies to be bought, sold, used up and disposed of. Because of the historical and cultural ways that black women have so often been left out of both women’s movements and black movements, scholars such as Patricia H. Collins and Bibi Bakare-Ysuf have pointed out that black women have been forced to create their own structures of identity independent and separate from the attempts at classification that had been forced on them. In structuring these identities, the body has become a major point of conflict and pain. Since the black female body has been targeted as a space of oppression and discrimination, it has also become a powerful site of resistance and opposition. This is why, in predominantly white worlds of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic narratives, black female characters, their identities and their bodies become unique and powerful spaces of resistance and survival. Agent 355 from Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s Y: The Last Man and Michonne from Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s The Walking Dead are two survivors in post-apocalyptic narratives that have their bodies and identities honed to make them better instruments in unmaking the apocalyptic world. Not only must they sharpen themselves, or be sharpened, into weapons of violence to survive, they must also become useful weapons to the other, predominantly white, survivors. Agent 355 and Michonne are tools for unmaking the apocalyptic world so that other survivors can eventually make a new one. As so often happens to black female bodies, Michonne and 355’s bodies are disposable, and structured as usable possessions. In these narratives, once they are no longer useful weapons, once emotion pushes out the ceaseless pain they have endured, they are no longer needed. Written by Brian K. Vaughan with art, predominantly, by Pia Guerra, Y: The Last Man began publication in September 2002. It is a post-­apocalyptic series focussed on what the series refers to as the ‘­Gendercide’ or ‘Unmanned World’ (Vaughan 2008, 39). In 2002, an unknown event instantly kills every sperm, foetus and developed mammal with a Y ­chromosome. Only Yorick Brown and his monkey, ­A mpersand, survive the plague. Because of the world’s reliance on men, the world is plunged into the apocalypse. In order to bring the world back from the brink, and ensure the continuation of humans, Dr Allison Mann, a geneticist, is recruited to figure out how Yorick and Ampersand survived. Agent 355 is also recruited to insure Yorick, Ampersand and Dr Mann get where they need to go and arrive there alive. Agent 355 is a member of a secret, clandestine, American organisation, The Culper Ring, that has been around since

Unmaking the Apocalypse   161 the American Revolution and answers directly to the President of the United States. Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard’s The Walking Dead follows in the footsteps of its Zombie Apocalypse forbearers. With its first issue hitting stands in 2003, the narrative focusses on Rick Grimes and his fellow survivors. After being shot and slipping into a coma, Rick wakes up in a hospital bed. Abandoned and left for dead, the zombie apocalypse has broken out and spread while he was out. After escaping the hospital, finding supplies and weapons, and eventually his family, Rick and his group of survivors find a moment of safety inside an abandoned prison. As one of the survivors returns from a supply run, they are saved by Michonne, a woman carrying a katana and dragging two armless and jawless zombies behind her on leashes. After gaining the trust of Rick and the other survivors at the prison, Michonne is allowed to join their group and travels with them. Even before the zombie apocalypse or the Gendercide, Michonne and 355 have bodies that are already marked and inscribed as other or different. As Michel Foucault asserts, the body is always in a political field, ‘where power relations have an immediate hold upon it. They invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, for it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies to emit signs’ (1991, 173). The black female body is already under a pall of violence and potential death. From white racist violence, diseases, perverse heterosexism and unemployment, it is culturally marked by racial, sexual and class constructions (Bakare-Ysuf 1999, 313), and is already subjected to systemic pain and torture inscribing and incorporating power onto the body, forcing it into a new and more useful body through these modes of subjection. Though, Foucault contends, this new body and the power inscribed on it facilitates resistance, rebellion and disruption. This system of inscription is already in effect for Michonne and 355 well before the initial waves of apocalyptic destruction and annihilation. Though in different ways, both of them are having their bodies, and by extension their identities, constructed into useful bodies. When the Gendercide hits, 355 is already an active member of the Culper Ring. She has been trained in combat and has successfully completed a mission when the pause hits. Her body has already been honed into a weapon to support and protect the Western, governmental apparatus and system that is inscribing her. Conversely, before the zombie apocalypse, Michonne is a lawyer, and her life and profession don’t require her to be violent. Michonne’s body is shaped during the apocalypse into a form that is acceptable to the new dominant system in the apocalypse. What little the comics have given us about Michonne’s life before the zombie apocalypse paints the picture of someone not necessarily suited to surviving the apocalypse. She was a lawyer who had a small bit of talent when it comes to fencing. By her own admission, she ‘had two kids.

162  Joseph Willis Two girls. I also had a boyfriend, a father, a mother, a brother, two sisters, an ex-husband, a job, a mortgage. . . and a whole lot of other stuff’ (Kirkman 2008, 231). Michonne, by all accounts, didn’t have a history of violence and was initially wary of any violent acts. While the culture inscribes the body of the black man as an uncivilised savage, the body of the black woman is inscribed with a hyperbolic submissiveness and sexuality, which marks her as a sexualised animal (Gilman 1985, 158). Culture dictates that Michonne’s boyfriend, a black man, should be the aggressive, violent survivor, while Michonne is the helpmate, the damsel in distress or even the racist mammy caricature. As the dead come to life and consume the living, Michonne is required to initially rely on her boyfriend Mike to rescue her. After he is turned, Michonne’s first reaction is to give up. ‘There was nothing to do but watch them and starve. I was going to die in that house’ (Kirkman 2012, 7). Through the pain of loss and the perpetual torture of forced submissiveness brought on by controlling images and expectations of black women, Michonne begins to be shaped and reshaped into a body and identity that can survive. ‘The voices of African-American Women are not those of victims but of survivors’ (Collins 2000, 98). Michonne’s decisions to survive, to let herself become reshaped into something that can survive, is in line with a tradition of black women’s long-standing rejection of controlling images as individual acts of resistance. Her first step towards this requires her to pour out some of the pain that has built up in her. As the constant pain has increased and destroyed emotion, she is able to cut away at the pieces of her old self and body. In this case Michonne literally does this when she cuts the arms and lower jaws off her zombified boyfriend and his best friend. With the shambling bodies of her past chained up and following her, Michonne is able to escape from her house and get on to the business of surviving. For Agent 355, the initial act of surviving is much easier. Leading up to the Gendercide, 355 has already been turned into a body of violence. Her training as a spy in the Culper Ring is a process of making her body a literal weapon. But even before that, her upbringing and life as an orphan is a series of events that inscribes her body as a violent and dangerous one. In the foster care system, we are shown an environment that has already marked 355’s body as a target of white racial bias and potential violence. The sign next to the centre’s door reads, ‘Boston Care Center for Foster Teens’ (Vaughan Book 4 2010, 104), but a swastika has been painted over the word ‘Teens.’ When 355 hears two white young men use a racial epithet, she responds quickly. Unlike Michonne, who will eventually need the apocalypse to turn outward the pain and violence directed at her, 355 has already endured enough that all else is displaced and a violent response has become the omnipresent nature of her existence prior to the Gendercide.

Unmaking the Apocalypse   163 Where power as a form of terror or pain is exerted against the body, eventually there will be resistance. Since the narrative does not provide any background on the two young white boys, we can only assume that they have been able to terrorise and slander other children of colour without retribution up to this point, but as these incorporations of power work to mark 355’s body as other, disposable or an expected recipient of violence, this moment also marks the ultimate ending of one type of body—the passive body—and the beginning of a new kind of body—a useful and violent body. As one young man brandishes a knife and dares 355 to take a swing with the baseball bat she had hidden away in her bag, we don’t see that transformative moment, but we do see the after-effects. The next panel shows us 355 handcuffed and sitting behind a table. Her sweater is splattered with blood that we are sure is not hers. It is in this interrogation room where she meets the Agent 355 that preceded her and begins the journey into refining her body into a useful weapon that allows her to ‘Get people where they need to be’ (113). As her body is honed and constructed over time, and as she progresses from Probationary, to Agent 86, to 355, violence is part of her progress and transformation into the person known as Agent 355 of the Culper Ring. For any black body, the eventual moment where they move against power, pain and terror to become agents of resistance and rebellion is most often met with redoubled efforts to make them suffer. Eventually, the one that is forced to suffer will shift from the role of sufferer to being the agent of their own and other’s annihilation. As Audre Lorde put it, ‘In order to survive, those of us for whom oppression is as American as apple pie have always had to be watchers’ (1984, 114). To stop watching and resist, carries with it the constant threat of retaliation. For a black female body though, not only must they suffer under racial terror and pain, but also gendered terror and pain. A portion of Agent 355’s training and the honing of her body into a weapon is designed specifically to resist gendered pain and violence. As her trainer states, ‘Nine times out of ten, a man is gonna be stronger than you. Biology’s a bitch, but there you go’ (109). The way to disrupt these biological differences means understanding what the female body can do, understanding how it can become the most useful weapon. ‘Use your balance, your flexibility,’ and ‘Average human bite strength is two hundred pounds, but some women can crunch up to a grand’ (110). Soon enough, everything human about 355 becomes weaponry that refers to pain or violence. This new violent, weaponised body comes into stark form when 355 is forced to stop her predecessor and trainer from assassinating President Clinton. Dazed and disarmed, 355 is pulled close to her trainer where she whispers in her ear, ‘Haven’t forgotten the strongest muscle’ (117). And with that she proves that her new body is a lethal weapon by biting

164  Joseph Willis down on her former mentor’s neck and carotid artery, then watching as the predecessor bleeds out. Though 355’s face shows shock and surprise, eventually she will become so useful and effective at violence, all emotion will be pushed out, and all that will be left is the violence she is capable of inflicting. Though Michonne’s bodily transformation begins when she finally leaves her house and travels through the zombie apocalypse, her body isn’t completely honed until she and other survivors are taken prisoner in the town of Woodbury. When investigating the potential of other survivors, Michonne, Rick and Glenn are taken prisoner by The Governor, the leader of Woodbury. Because of the power structures and apparatus put in place by The Governor, as outsiders all three members of the group are subject to acts of violence, but because of both her gender and race, she is also bothered. At their very first meeting, Rick’s hand is chopped off, and Glenn is locked up and beaten. Michonne, though, is subjected to far more pervasive and continual violence and pain. Locked up in a room next to Glenn, Michonne is routinely beaten and raped by The Governor. The text suggests that having to hear this repeated torture is its own form of torture for Glenn, but the body that is forced to suffer, the body that is perpetually terrorised, is Michonne’s. In her book The Body in Pain, Elain Scarry points out that pain and torture blur the lines between the private and the public. It offers the body solitude but without safety; self-exposure, but none of the shared experience (1985, 54). Though Glenn can hear what Michonne is forced to endure, it is not a shared moment. The pain and torture is not shared equally. For Michonne, this tears away any chance she had of being peaceful or reverting back to a body that is not a violent body. As she is forced to contemplate, and be reminded of, her potential annihilation, she realises that survival depends on her annihilating everything in her way. Every piece of the Michonne that existed before Woodbury is destroyed, leaving only the omnipresent violence and torture. When Michonne is finally freed, her only goal is to pour out every bit of pain that she has endured back into The Governor’s world. What this new Michonne, this weaponised Michonne, will do to The Governor will be brutal beyond anything the pre-apocalypse her was capable of. Breaking into The Governor’s home, Michonne soon inflicts on him torture and pain that almost rivals what she was forced to endure. As the pain and violence multiplies and grows, not only was Michonne’s body marked, but the world outside her became a giant externalised map of what she was forced to endure. With The Governor doubled over in front of her, and her katana raised for the killing blow, Michonne tells The Governor and the reader, ‘I didn’t want it to be this quick. I don’t want it to be over’ (Kirkman 2008, 183). If Michonne had simply killed The Governor at that point, it wouldn’t be a complete or accurate reflection of what she was forced to endure. At Michonne’s hesitation,

Unmaking the Apocalypse   165 The Governor tackles Michonne only to have her, like 355, bite down onto his neck with full force. With The Governor incapacitated and Michonne now in the dominant role of power, she is able to start her work on his body, to trace back the map of pain and torture that he inflicted on her. Michonne starts by letting him know that ‘you passed out a second time when I nailed your prick to the board you’re on’ (186). One of the primary means that these female weapons have of inflicting violence on the male bodies they resist is destruction or pain to male genitalia. Even 355 is taught this in her training to become a useful weapon: ‘When his little rod is fully extended, he’s more dangerous, but he’s also more vulnerable. . . I’m saying you can grab his boner and rip it off his pelvis’ (Vaughan Book 4 2010, 110). Because the female body is so often subjected to sexualised violence, the violence they learn to turn back on their torturers is meant to destroy their torturer’s primary tool of sexual violence. The torture and pain that Michonne inflicts on The Governor is done steadily, never wavering and always intentional. After her first rape and beating at the hands of The Governor, Michonne understood that this is what she would have to do and become. After that first session, The Governor tells Michonne, ‘You go ahead and cry it out, honey’ (Kirkman 2008, 93). Michonne responds, ‘I’m not crying for me. I’m crying for you. I think about all the things I’m going to do to you and it makes me cry. It scares me’ (93). The transition to a violent body, a weaponised body isn’t something that the sufferer wants. It is a response to the torture and pain that they are forced to endure. Agent 355 and Michonne never ask to be the targets of racial or gendered violence, but their new bodies become necessary to survive; to stay alive in the apocalypse; and, hopefully, to see a better world at the other end. The look of shock and fear on 355’s face after she kills her mentor and the tears Michonne sheds in Woodbury are because of what they know they must become and shock at what this new body can so easily do. The world of violence that surrounds Michonne and 355 becomes a space they easily inhabit, that they can freely move around in, but not easily walk out of. As Scarry asserts, after enough violence and pain, ‘there is nothing audible or visible, nothing touched or tasted, or smelled that is not a manifestation of their pain or violence’ (1985, 57). To be violent, to deliver pain becomes second nature, but it is not a nature that either woman wants. However, to give it up, to no longer be a useful weapon means not being able to survive. After drilling holes into The Governor’s arm with an electric drill, pulling out all of his fingernails, cutting off his arm, sodomising him with a spoon and then gouging out one of his eyes, her reaction isn’t like the Governor’s, boasting and revelling in torture—it is to sit down and once again cry for what she had to do to him in response to the torture she endured. Black women have often been forced to ‘become familiar

166  Joseph Willis with the language and manners of the oppressor, even sometimes adopting them for some illusion of protection’ (Lorde 1984, 114). Michonne is forced to torture The Governor as a means to unmake the world that he has tried to build in Woodbury because it is the system and order she learned as a victim of his torture. Similarly, 355 is aware that in the apocalypse, in order to not only survive, but to help Yorick, and by extension all of humanity, survive, she must become an even more deadly and effective weapon, but the world of violence that perpetually surrounds her and pours out of her eventually becomes too much. ‘I’m so fucking sick of this, of being fucking hard bullshit. I liked it better when I was slow on the trigger. When doing all this wasn’t fucking easy’ (Vaughan Book 4 2010, 209). Not being a weapon, not being an agent of violence and annihilation is the preferred course; it is the way both 355 and Michonne wish they could be, but they are also aware of the worlds they are in and the necessity of survival. ‘But there’s no room for it, is there? No room for mercy in a world where the only people left. . . [have] nothing to lose’ (209). With the apocalypse still raging around the world, with no end to it in sight, 355 must be violent, she must be effective and she must be merciless. Even as a weapon of resistance against the apocalypse, 355 and Michonne realise that violence begets violence. And as they turn the pain and violence levied against them back on their torturers, eventually more pain and violence will be directed at them. ‘I know why the girls out there have to kill me. And I’m fucking fine with it’ (209), 355 tells Yorick. And with each cycle of violence, the returned pain must be harsher and more brutal. To unmake a world that is more violent and merciless, they must be more violent and merciless than that. At one point, 355 is forced into confrontation with Anna, a member of a rival clandestine agency bent on shaping the new world to reflect their goals. Initially 355 refuses to use lethal force and instead tries to reason and bargain with them. By showing them mercy, 355 tries to deny the violent nature and existence of her weaponised body. In trying to deny this body, she tries to justify the violent actions she has taken: ‘Those were extreme situations. When I had to use lethal force’ (Vaughan Book 3 2010, 131). Agent 355’s attempts to deny or temper her violent self are at the root of all her eventual failures in the unmanned world. Because of her show of mercy to Anna, she is forced to give up a possible cure to the Gendercide, something she has protected since the beginning of the story, that Anna destroys, hoping it will assure ‘that no one can ever undo what the gods have willed’ (118). For 355, to try to remove the burden of her violent self leads to the apocalypse potentially being irreparable. It is in the face of this realisation, and the knowledge that Anna has killed 355’s mentor and friend 711, that 355 once again fully accepts her violent body and deals out a far more brutally violent punishment to Anna than just shooting her. Agent 355 snaps Anna’s neck and leaves

Unmaking the Apocalypse   167 her a quadriplegic, unable to move and with no clear signs of rescue. If 355 were to claim self-defence, or the extremes of the situation, and simply kill Anna, it would have been a sufficient and understandable act in the violent world of the apocalypse. But in this violent world, with her violent body, 355 must return pain and torture with pain and torture in kind. As all other emotions are driven out of their violent selves, both ­M ichonne and 355 flirt with the possibility of abandoning their violent bodies, but to do so would have irrevocable consequences, and possibly leave them unable to disrupt the apocalypse or even to survive. When Michonne and the other survivors reach Alexandria, the rules of the community and the perception of a safe, walled in sanctuary from the dead bring Michonne to the possibility of completely letting go of her violent body. However, Michonne understands that the world outside the walls is still dictated by violence, by the possibility of being killed or tortured at any moment. Though she may hang her katana on her mantel, an attempt to retire the object that is the external definition of her violent and weaponised body, she understands that her violent body will be at odds with the peaceful community that can barely understand, or has forgotten, the true violence beyond their gates. Though she has helped her fellow survivors get to a promised land, it is difficult for her to enter. Hanging up her sword and telling it, ‘I’m done with you’ (Kirkman 2010, 263) is symbolic at best. When she tries to transition back, to tap into the non-violent Michonne that existed before the apocalypse, she finds it grating and uncomfortable. At a quiet and welcoming dinner party hosted for her and the rest of her group, Michonne is incapable of small talk, discussing allergies or family life. She is no longer a home body, she is a violent body, a weapon among pots and pans. Because of her inability to let go of her violent self, Michonne is ready when the next threat from the violent world comes crashing into Alexandria’s walls and is able to, once again, survive. Michonne understands her new usefulness. She is a useful weapon, and when Alexandria needs to trade with the Hill Top, they are able to trade Michonne’s skill at killing violent and torturous men. Agent 355, though, does not fare as well as Michonne. With the weight of her violent existence constantly weighing her down, when the opportunity comes to let go of her violent self, she lets go of it completely. With a potential cure for the Gendercide, a plan to return men to the planet underway and all of 355’s charges delivered to where they need to go, the apocalypse seems to be at an end. The human race has survived, and 355 has aided in resisting complete annihilation. As a sign of her willingness to let go of her violent body, to create a new identity, 355 trades her gun, synonymous with Michonne’s katana as an external representation of the violent body, for a dress in a shop in France. Instead of the pant wearing, gun wielding, violent 355, she becomes someone

168  Joseph Willis new. She puts away not only the objects of her violence but the violent identity she has used for so long. Standing in her hotel room with Yorick, she leans forward and tells him her real name. Putting away the name her weaponised body has been called and replacing it with a new name, a new identity, 355 completely separates herself from her violent body. However, no longer a useful weapon, she is no longer able to survive. Though the unmanned world seems to be safe and survival assured, a violent identity is necessary to keep surviving. Having separated herself from violence, she is shot and murdered. Where Michonne cannot exist without her violent identity, so is able to live and survive, 355 is unable to survive once she lets go of violence. For both Michonne and 355, their new bodies honed and forged through pain, torture and violence, they are able to not only survive but to help those around them to survive. These new bodies become resistance and disruption to the apocalypse and the violence and pain these new worlds wish to mete out. Where 355 helps bring men back to earth by helping others survive, Michonne helps carve out spaces of safety and rest in the wilderness of the dead. It is only through their violent selves that they are able to stand against other acts of violence. Agent 355 stands in opposition to the Daughters of the Amazon, the Israeli defense forces, pirates and ninjas, all groups that want to shape the world in a different way, a shape that 355 tries to resist. Michonne also works to remove the walking dead, The Governor, the Hunters and Negan, all of whom want to reshape the world in ways that Michonne stands in resistance to. It is through their violent bodies that they are able to be points of resistance and to help push back the apocalypse from consuming everything.

Bibliography Bakare-Ysuf, Bibi. 1999. “The Economy of Violence: Black Bodies and the Unspeakable Terror”. In Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader, edited by Janet Price, 311–323. New York: Routledge. Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge. Foucault, Michel. 1991. The Foucault Reader: An Introduction to Foucault’s Thought, edited by P. Rabinow. London: Penguin. Gilman, Sander L. 1985. Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race and Madness. New York: Cornell University Press. Gopaldas, Ahir. 2013. “Intersectionality 101”. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing 32 (Special Issue): 90–94. Kirkman, Robert and Charlie Adlard. 2007. The Walking Dead: Book Two. Berkley, CA: Image Comics. ———. 2008. The Walking Dead: Book Three. Berkley, CA: Image Comics. ———. 2010. The Walking Dead: Book Six. Berkley, CA: Image Comics.

Unmaking the Apocalypse   169 ———. 2012. The Walking Dead: Michonne Special. Berkley, CA: Image Comics. Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister Outsider. Trumansberg. New York: Crossing Press. Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York: Oxford University Press. Vaughan, Brian K. and Pia Guerra. 2008. Y The Last Man: Deluxe Edition Book One. New York: DC Comics. ———. 2010. Y The Last Man: Deluxe Edition Book Three. New York: DC Comics. ———. 2010. Y The Last Man: Deluxe Edition Book Four. New York: DC Comics. ———. 2011. Y The Last Man: Deluxe Edition Book Five. New York: DC Comics.

10 Killgrave, The Purple Man Jamie Brassett and Richard Reynolds

Alias: Situating the Purple Man Killgrave,1 the Purple Man, first appeared in Daredevil # 4 (1964). The powers of this supervillain have never changed in their essentials. A former Yugoslav spy, an accident involving nerve gas caused Killgrave’s skin to be tinged a startling shade of purple, 2 and also gave him the power to make people in his immediate vicinity obey his commands without question. The exact mechanism for transmitting Killgrave’s willpower has varied: for example, Daredevil’s blindness has on some occasions given him immunity to Killgrave’s control. But in more recent years its nature has become convective and contagious: Killgrave’s skin exudes particles (pheromones or viruses) that effect obedience. Having had allegiance to a place that no longer exists, in a job that demands dissimulation and deceit, with varying functional attributes depending upon the temporalities of our encounters, and with powers that dissolve the seeming boundaries between self and other, Killgrave accentuates qualities of violence and power to an excessive degree as Foucault’s concept of biopower and its role in state violence exemplifies. Killgrave uses threats of violence against third parties in his first appearance, and surrounds himself with mind-controlled bodyguards. He uses his powers to create his own mini-kingdom—on the top floor of the Plaza Hotel—and threatens to make Daredevil’s love interest Karen Page jump off the roof. But the explicitly sexual implications of Killgrave’s power were not explored in depth during his early appearances. Daredevil # 154 (1978) hints obliquely at their potential. Killgrave tells his mind-controlled prisoner Heather Glenn (Matt Murdock’s girlfriend) that ‘later, perhaps, I will allow you to please me in other ways’ (Daredevil # 154, 10). Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos’s Alias introduced an entirely new character into the Marvel Universe. Jones is presented as a former superhero with an already complex backstory, who has taken the decision to abandon her costume and mask, and to operate instead as a private eye. She still possesses superpowers of strength and flight, but seldom uses them, and appears to find her powers—at least on ­occasions—difficult to control.3

Killgrave, The Purple Man  171 The Purple Man does not appear until the final story arc of the Alias series (Issues # 22–28), which reveals details about Jones’s origin hitherto withheld. The themes of mind control, violence and sexual abuse which inform the Purple Man story arc read as a culmination of ideas explored in the first 21 issues—as well as an explanation of the vulnerabilities and trauma which Jones has brought with her into the storyline (see Kaveney 2007). After rejecting another investigation, we see Jones playing an answerphone message from a potential client, asking her to investigate the Purple Man. Turning to the next page, four panels depict Jones rushing from the room and (through reader inference) vomiting in the bathroom. Nevertheless, eight pages later—after talking with her friend Carol ­Danvers (Ms Marvel)—Jones replays the message and takes the case. While Jones’s past history with the Purple Man becomes clearer, the reader does not yet know the exact details. Jones’s new clients have all had family and friends murdered by the Purple Man. While Killgrave is currently imprisoned, it is not for these specific crimes, and Jones comes to understand that her clients desire closure. It is not enough that the Purple Man has been removed from society—they need to understand and come to terms with what has been done to them. Killgrave is introduced via metonymy: his picture is held up to Jessica’s point of view in sequences of vertically-stacked panels. We first encounter Killgrave through Jessica’s eyes, and experience her memories of him in a series of panels inflected by a sense of déjà vu, as they repeat panel structures used earlier in the narrative. The sense that violent events are destined to repeat themselves is encoded through the repeated structure and braiding of the panels (Groensteen 2007, 147– 149), echoing the themes of control and loss of self that the narrative explores. The illustrational style of the flashbacks (by Spider-Man artist Mark Bagley) is radically different from Gaydos’s work, with panel layouts, pencilling, inking and colouring all taking on a strongly retro feel.4 This style is set against the subdued, gritty and analytical layouts which have carried the story thus far. Through this retro sequence, we learn that Jessica has previously been controlled, dominated and sexually abused by Killgrave, who was also responsible for her attacking her fellow Avengers and the consequent loss of her superhero identity and career. The panel layouts suggest that the violence of the past bleeds into the present, and also controls possible futures: the forces of power work through time as well as space. While those controlled are unable to break free—normally—they are still aware of their actions. Moreover, they desire them. Under Killgrave’s power, Jones’s loss of individuality implies her reconfiguration according to desires replaced by Killgrave that she experiences as extreme love

172  Jamie Brassett and Richard Reynolds for him lasting eight months, notwithstanding his unrelenting emotional and verbal abuse. She says to her lover Luke Cage: JONES In my mind I can’t tell the difference between what he made me do or say and what I do or say on my own. (Alias # 25, p. 16) Jones is only able to exit from this control through a combination of events that include Killgrave’s boredom with her, and intervention by the X-Men mutant Jean Grey. After exiting Killgrave’s control, Jessica Jones does not return to self, but to a new formation built upon the subjective elements to hand. Some Killgrave-related features remain, as do those that are developed, highlighted or implanted by Jean Grey as psychological seeds that will serve Jones to overcome Killgrave’s influence in any future encounter. Jones’s investigative interview with the Purple Man takes place via video link inside Ryker’s Island jail: he is too dangerous to be contacted in any other way. Jones’s trepidation is built up gradually—through her conversation with Luke Cage, and her extended arrival at Ryker’s island ‘Raft’ maximum security installation. The latter sequence inexorably draws the reader into Jones’s point of view as she walks down the prison corridor to interview her former tormentor, echoing the similar scene between Agent Starling and Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). The encounter also further breaks down and disrupts the graphic surface of the narrative, exposing the reader to the multilayered subtext and harrowing backstory that lie beneath. Killgrave’s video close-ups are depicted out-of-focus and partially greyed-out, contrasting with the more heavily-inked and coloured close-ups of Jones. Killgrave violently disrupts the conversation by suggesting that their encounter is really part of a comic book; and one that Killgrave would not bother to ‘turn to the end’ (Alias # 27, p. 2). As readers, we are obliged to observe without taking action, beyond turning the pages. Jessica, however, is ready to challenge Killgrave’s reductive and narcissistic view of both ethics and narrative: JONES Killgrave, if this is just a comic book . . . and we’re all just characters in the comic book if that’s your thing here . . . why don’t you just walk out of here? Just get up and walk out. PURPLE MAN I’m not the writer. (Alias # 27, p. 3) This appears a self-effacing moment for a character centred around control: recognising the boundaries of his power. But, as ever with

Killgrave, The Purple Man  173 Killgrave, he proves not to be as powerless as he states. Holding up his hands, Killgrave frames the image which he sees before him, like a movie director: PURPLE MAN Interior shot. Jail. Day . . . tight shot on Jessica. She stares blankly ahead. (Alias # 27, p. 3) Strangely, yet importantly for our argument, Gaydos’s artwork immediately obeys Killgrave’s instructions. The panel following the image of Killgrave’s framing hands does indeed show Jessica in close-up, staring blankly ahead. A fictional character has successfully broken free, and for a moment appears to be determining the form of the narrative in which he exists. As readers, we experience the loss of control that Jones fears. Killgrave has achieved a position condensing power from outside of his world and able, even, to control ours. In so doing, he commits violence to the reader and the text. Killgrave’s power develops a latent violence, one that affects quietly, surreptitiously insinuating itself in the core of our beings as it overwhelms our sense of self control. Once in control he is also able to commit physical and sexual violence. In this scene, violence erupts, bursts through narrative conventions and overpowers us. This is a deep, ontological violence indeed. Killgrave’s dissolution of the boundaries of self and other within the stories; the bleeding into others of his desires, which often follow violent expression; and his questioning of the margins of the created form, as we have just seen, highlight a power over life itself that we shall discuss in relation to the works of Foucault and Agamben. Power and control mobilised and enacted by the state over life itself, Killgrave’s violence and power, and our own participation in the creation of comic violence coalesce to characterise an account of life that exceeds each of these separate discussions. Before we go further into the work of Foucault and Agamben, we shall take another step into the violent nature of ­Killgrave’s power.

The Power of the Purple Man Unlike many supervillains—such as Magneto, Dr Doom or Lex L ­ uthor, for whom violence is a tool to achieve their political purposes—­ Killgrave does not appear to have any coherent agenda beyond the gratification of his immediate desires. The Purple Man is violent and abusive because he enjoys these things; it is more brutal, and difficult, to recognise that sometimes he is exercising his power for no reason, not even desire, just because he can. 5 And because the Purple Man’s

174  Jamie Brassett and Richard Reynolds actions are presented as ends in themselves there is no end to his violence and abuse: the perpetrator has absolute control over the victim’s powerless state. In this regard, there are parallels with the libertines portrayed by the Marquis de Sade, in both the comic and screen portrayals of Killgrave. The power to control others liberates Bendis’s Killgrave in the same sense that Sade’s libertines are freed to act out their most violent sexual impulses: through their cunning, their wealth and their position in society. However, while the lengths to which Sade’s libertines go to provide a space for their desires to find expression are circumvented in the case of Killgrave, his powers allow him to create miniature communities centred solely on himself and the gratification of his desires. If Sade’s libertines secrete themselves away in castles and dungeons far beyond the reach or knowledge of society, Killgrave’s powers allow him to create microcosms where he is all-powerful both publicly (in restaurants, for example) and in domestic spaces he has invaded. Killgrave has unique agency as a kind of auteur whose super biopower allows him to concentrate all the force of the modern state in one man and to live out an existential ‘state of exception’ (Agamben 1998).6 In his essay ‘Coldness and Cruelty’ (1989), philosopher Gilles Deleuze examines the characteristics of violence, power, control and education in the writings of Sade and Sacher-Masoch, whose names, via the work of psychologists/psychoanalysts Krafft-Ebing (1906) and Freud (1977), have been identified with what they characterised as ‘perversions.’ Sade’s violence, for example, is meted out in secluded spaces (the chateau of 120 Days of Sodom [1966] or the bedroom of Philosophy in the Bedroom [1965], for example), spaces that designate arenas of power and control in the double sense of characterising the actions that take place there, and of the construction and demarcation of the spaces themselves. The libertines are powerful enough to command the delineation of these spaces within, or apart from, the wider political and sociocultural milieu in order to command the actions that take place there. For Deleuze, the Sadean libertine rationalises and declaims, and then demonstrates his excessive sexual desires, showing that ‘reasoning itself is a form of violence, and that he is on the side of violence, however calm and logical he may be’ (1989, 18–19). This is most strikingly exemplified in the use Sade’s libertines make of political proclamations as digressions in the sexual tableaus: notably, the philosophical pamphlet ‘Yet Another Effort, Frenchmen, If You Would Become Republicans,’ which appears in Philosophy in the Bedroom (Sade 1965). The sadist, by enacting ‘institutionalized possession’ (Deleuze 1989 20), localises the power of the state, religion and other establishments of order and patriarchy, and does so through violent expressions of sexual desire. Thus, Deleuze emphasises that the sadist-victim relationship is one of institutionalised, hierarchical power and asymmetrical pleasure-pain production. This

Killgrave, The Purple Man  175 highlights the accentuation of the relations between political power, social, bodily and ontological control, and sexual violence. In the comics, we have noted earlier, Killgrave is described as having once been a spy (Lee and Orlando 1964): an undercover instrument in the secretive production and promotion of state power and violence. Set free from the constraints of any state agenda, Killgrave is able to use his mysterious new powers for his own ends, some are sexual—and all violent. Where Sade’s libertines keep their activities out of the public eye—albeit, we understand, with the complicity of the State and religious authorities—it is Killgrave’s powers that are private, even if their outcomes are not. This illuminates a defining characteristic of heterosexual and patriarchal political coercion, and the implicit violence that sustains it: it is everywhere present, and often invisible. Thus, the public nature of Killgrave’s crimes render them a more telling representation of oppressive patriarchy than even Sade’s libertines. Killgrave hides in plain sight, situating his violence and coercion in public spaces or unremarkable suburbs. The political implications of this are crucial. Killgrave’s power gives him an invincibility that Sade’s libertines or political dictators strive to achieve, to which we will return when dealing with resistance to power. Both Killgrave’s and Sade’s libertines tread similar paths through cruelty and control, even if their methods often differ. What unites them is power mediated through violence over biological life by political ­entities—especially as through state power, expressed by state actors, even as they are cut away from their original political milieus. Therefore, the instances of familiarity between Killgrave and Sadean libertines, which we noted earlier, need to be viewed less as instances of individualised, monstrous behaviour and more as examples of the normalisation of political, social and sexual violence and coercion. To do this, we will turn to the concepts of biopower and biopolitics, as created by Foucault and developed by Agamben.

Biopower, Biopolitics and the Violence of the State Foucault’s work shows concern with the relations between bodies and subjects and their production and control through various configurations of the forces and hierarchies of power (e.g. Foucault 2004, 2008; Bignall 2008; Collier 2009; Crome 2009). While it can be said that his early work has a particular focus upon systems of bodily discipline (e.g. Deleuze 1995a, 1995b; Collier 2009; Crome 2009), from the introduction to the first volume of The History of Sexuality (1998, originally published in 1976) to his death in 1984, Foucault focussed more on the politics, economics and cultures of biopower and biopolitics at species and population levels (Foucault 1990, 1998a, 1998b, 2004, 2008).7 In these terms, Killgrave exemplifies the violence undertaken by states, and by those who act for them.

176  Jamie Brassett and Richard Reynolds In his short piece outlining ‘Biopolitics,’ John Marks (2006, 333) notes the following: From the 18th century onwards, biological existence is no longer a neutral, unchanging substrate upon which political existence is superimposed. Consequently, a new politics emerges which relates to what it means to be a living species in a living world: biology is drawn into the domain of power and knowledge. ‘The concept of biopower,’ Keith Crome explains: designates the operation of power over life. [. . .] With the term ‘biopower’ Foucault designates the set of mechanisms, techniques and technologies through which the basic biological features of the human species become the object of political strategies in modern Western societies. Biopower is, then, for Foucault the application of power to the human considered as a living being, the application of power to the human taken as a species being. (Crome, 2009 47, 52) Both Crome and Marks, in these quotations, highlight the sense of biopolitics as an organised deployment of power acting upon humans at levels of both species and population. That is, biology becomes less a neutral substratum upon, or from, which other formations are created and more an entity that is politically constructed, organised and controlled. Not only, then, is biology ‘drawn into the domain of power and knowledge,’ as Marks states; it is constituted entirely by political power. Life itself becomes a political concern. This is noted explicitly by Agamben introducing his book Homo Sacer (1998), stating ‘that the production of a biopolitical body is the original activity of sovereign power’ (Agamben 1998 6; original emphasis). For Agamben, the state can reconstitute the experiences of, what he calls throughout his work, ‘bare life’ in extreme circumstances by designating the conditions of life as operating under a ‘state of exception.’ That is, once a state can define as exceptional the experiences of life lived within its boundaries, then its powers over life and death increase from those it would exert under ‘normal’ conditions. In a ‘state of exception,’ a state can redefine citizens as ‘bare life’ upon whom any measures, however violent, are allowed. Returning once more to biopower, Marks (2006, 333) writes: the Second World War in particular was characterized by two highly significant aspects of biopower, which remain as spectres haunting the construction of viable future global biopolitical structures: the drift to ‘total war’ pitting population against population, and the elevation of eugenics to a brutally racist state policy.

Killgrave, The Purple Man  177 This ‘elevation of eugenics’ to a state policy for Agamben allows the state to design and manage death camps as exceptional contexts for the implementation of violence upon ‘bare life’ that would not be countenanced in relation to life at other times, or in other spaces. The same is true, Agamben argues (1998), for countries, prisons or other organisations in states of emergency. In a way we have glimpsed similar places of cruelty and violence implemented as exceptional spaces by Sadean libertines, notably the chateau in 120 Days of Sodom. And while we have noticed that Killgrave bears some resemblance to a Sadean libertine, and even develops what Agamben might call a ‘state of exception’ of his own rooms populated by those over whom he has control—Heather Glenn and Jessica Jones, for example—his power also penetrates the everyday world. Killgrave’s ability to pinpoint the forces of his power deep into the psyche of his victims, and supplant their desire with his own, is an act of state-level biopolitical violence, albeit condensed and targeted through one man only. The state of exception, and the violence that it inflicts on biological life, becomes the essence of all possible relationships with Killgrave; and so characterises his being. We have mentioned already Killgrave’s comic origin as a product, and subversive agent, of the Yugoslav state, by the time we encounter him in the Alias series, he has become a loose fragment of a former state, who nevertheless contains the condensed possibilities of the violence that any state can impose. Killgrave’s superpower, then, is to gather in an intensified, compressed, excessive way the violence of the biopolitical state into, and as, himself. 8 While this origin is not used in the TV series, it is interesting that Killgrave’s power here is described as being virally transmitted, following brutal experiments performed on him as a child by scientist parents. Killgrave’s biological force, directed through his powers, allows him to control both individuals and groups; there is an occasion when Jessica and her friends worry that he might ‘overload’ and affect a wider population, like some biological weapon. Here we can see the biopower effects as noted by both Foucault and Agamben operating fully. And, just as Foucault discusses biopower over biological populations (2008), we see the same happening with Killgrave. He can focus upon individuals—­obsessing about Jessica Jones, for example—or larger groups (customers in a restaurant, say). Of key significance is the exceptional biological, insidious and violent deployment of power from Killgrave onto and through his victims.

Participating in and Resisting Biopower Because Killgrave is portrayed at liberty in far more extended narrative sequences in the TV series than in the comic,9 the audience becomes

178  Jamie Brassett and Richard Reynolds closely acquainted with the systems of power and violence (threatened or actual) which control the micro-communities over which he reigns. When Killgrave is prevented by a solemn promise to Jessica Jones that he will not use his powers on her in return for her spending time in his home, Killgrave betrays the spirit of the agreement by using his powers instead to threaten the couple he is using as his servants and housekeepers. If Jessica leaves and doesn’t return, Killgrave will compel them to cut their own throats. On another occasion, the Purple Man coerces his own father to continue working on the enhancement of Killgrave’s powers despite being overcome by exhaustion, by compelling his father to move his finger inch-by-inch towards the rotating blades of a food blender. These tangential routes to control are important as they highlight even further the Foucauldian biopower intensified through Killgrave. Even if direct control is not available, the violence remains, and the responsibility the intended victim feels for the distributed violence becomes more personalised. That is, power over violence is transferred to another victim. We see a similar form of violence emerge through threats to third parties in the final issue of the Bendis-Gaydos Alias. The Purple Man wants to attract the attention of the Avengers, in order to force a violent confrontation between them and Jessica Jones. He walks outside into a busy New York thoroughfare and uses his powers to take control of passers-by: PURPLE MAN It takes so much nowadays to get you little superheroes off your angst-ridden asses. You’ve really got to put on a show. You hear that drones?! I NEED A SHOW! Everyone beat up the person on your left until that person is dead!! (Alias # 28) The crowd immediately start to bludgeon each other, and before long the Avengers appear. The word ‘show’ links this scene to the confrontation between Jones and Killgrave in the floating prison, when Killgrave presented himself as a movie director (Alias # 27). We readers can all stand accused of being seekers after sensation, and in that regard we all collaborate with perpetrators of violence, such as Killgrave. We participate in, even need someone like Killgrave to make the stories we read, or those we watch, exciting. If there is a sense in which we, readers/ viewers, create Killgrave to satisfy our own violent fantasies, then we are reciprocally constituted in that creation—just as Sade’s libertines justify their freedom and powerful positions through the subjugation of others. Killgrave demands mindless violence, and our own world becomes constituted as one where this demand is validated.

Killgrave, The Purple Man  179 A similar scene of public violence is used as the denouement of Marvel’s Jessica Jones, series one. The location is changed to a dockside, where Killgrave is preparing to depart overseas. He is confronted by Jessica Jones. As the innocent bystanders, under Killgrave’s control, begin to beat each other to death, Jessica pretends that she too is under the Purple Man’s power, allowing him to believe that she will let him take her own sister hostage. But this is really a ruse that allows her to approach Killgrave close enough to lay hands on him. In this case, Killgrave becomes undermined by his own confidence in the potency of his abilities. For Foucault, such a moment of resistance can be articulated in terms of siding with life, as Deleuze notes in his book Foucault (1988, 76). So, while life is the focus of biopower, at many levels (species, population and even individuated bodies), it obviously works as the locus for resistance to power too. When Jessica and her sister become ‘bait’ to trap/attack Killgrave, then their own status as ‘bare life’ becomes a point of leverage against the violent abuser.10 The theme of violence as a necessary tool versus violence as an end (and a pleasure) in itself is thrown into relief in this climactic action. Jones disposes of the Purple Man in one swift action, lifting him up and breaking his neck. After all the long-drawn-out threats of torture and deferred violence, Jones’s action—in its clinical dexterity—acquires its own moral and ethical economy. Jones’s act is also an act of rebellion against patriarchal biopower. Killgrave has been shown as far too dangerous to be kept in captivity, and thus the narrative brings the viewer to the point where we become willing participants in, and consumers of, vigilante justice. But this violence is quick, clean and cathartic, and Jessica Jones does not take pleasure in it or make it a spectacle. The equivalent scene in Alias #28 allows the reader to participate in a similar spectacle of righteous justice. But instead of a simple neck-­ breaking manoeuvre, Jones hurls the Purple Man bodily into the air. Killgrave is smashed against a yellow cab, and blood spurts from his mouth. ‘Wow,’ ejaculates Captain America, whom Killgrave had been provoking Jessica to attack. ‘Fuckin’ mother-!!,’ shouts Jones, as she picks up Killgrave a second time and hurls him onto the sidewalk, seemingly killing him.11 We, readers and viewers, require acts that place us on the side of life. On the whole—unless we share a supervillain’s sociopathic tendencies— we locate ourselves with the heroine. Jessica Jones is a subversive figure, a private investigator prowling the underbelly of New York City—no longer, in Alias, part of superhero establishment, living in the Avengers Mansion alongside government organisations like S.H.I.E.L.D. Gaydos’s darkly expressionistic artwork helps us locate ourselves always in Jessica’s visceral realm of ‘bare life.’ Not only is this the world that is overpowered by Killgrave, but also demarcated by more conventional hierarchies of power and control that go beyond even him. While both our

180  Jamie Brassett and Richard Reynolds reading and viewing require an imaginative construction of the work with which we are engaging, there is a sense in which the comics require this of us to a greater extent. The reader has to move their attention from panel to panel, spending time to work out the narrative direction, turn the pages and dwell on images as may be necessary (Pitkethly 2009). With Jessica Jones—in Alias and the Netflix series—the final violence, though it may be redemptive and on the side of life rather than power, remains ours.

Final Remarks Anna Peppard (forthcoming, 2018), writing on Alias, states that: this storyline importantly foregrounds gender-based physical and psychological abuse as a problem that extends well beyond the purview of individual, outrageous villains; this storyline instead presents this abuse as a society-wide as well as an institutionalized problem, perpetrated – or at the very least abetted – by government-­sanctioned heroes whom Jessica had viewed as idols and friends. Peppard argues that the Purple Man’s abuse of Jessica Jones is merely a localised and more extreme version of the mechanisms of power and control employed by male superheroes, on behalf of the social order that they embody and defend, to control superheroines and other female characters. In reading the Jessica Jones/Purple Man as a feminist text (though the product of male auteurs), Peppard contextualises Jones’s final turning of the tables as a cathartic act of female empowerment.12 Yet any act of redemptive violence must be ‘read’ differently in the context of a comic, and the ontological difference between comic book violence and screen violence becomes clear when we are given specific page/screen analogues to compare. The reader commits the violence themselves in the comics medium, through their articulation of the panel breakdown. As an antagonist, the Purple Man becomes a roving embodiment of the biopowers of the patriarchal state and its institutions. His superpowers render visible the violent mechanisms which enforce this power—mechanisms which normally remain hidden. By situating within a supervillain, a form of power that so resembles the control of individuals by the state, both graphic novel and TV series give the reader textual permission to participate in a violent overthrow of whatever institutional powers they deem to oppress them. Yet our closer involvement with Jones’s retributive actions makes these seem more justified in the comic than in the TV series. The Purple Man’s destruction on the page is more brutal and more lingering than on screen. Retributive violence in

Killgrave, The Purple Man  181 comics is supremely seductive, proceeding as it does under the reader’s direct control and articulation. It is the spatial separation of the panels that makes willing vigilantes of us all. Beckman and Blake (2009, 2), writing of the philosophical relations between sadism and masochism, power and violence, note that it: is perhaps significant for the question of gender and the configurations of sadism/masochism that both of these films,13 as one critic (Noyes 1997) has put it, end with ‘the triumphant communal laughter of women.’ It would seem appropriate, then, even in a piece about the violence of Killgrave, that the last word should be with Jessica Jones who, while she may not be full of laughter, is nonetheless triumphant. Yet we must remember that at the same time as Jessica regains agency and the power to act in the face of an invisible, though all-pervading, power—which we have characterised in terms of the power of the state over life condensed into Killgrave—so do we. ‘But when power in this way takes life as its aim or object,’ Deleuze writes in Foucault, ‘then resistance to power already puts itself on the side of life, and turns life against power’ (Deleuze, 1988, 76). We may well regard Jessica’s overcoming of Killgrave as life’s resisting power, which may be all that any of us who have experienced biopolitical violence can do: to be on the side of life itself.

Notes 1 Also, and especially in the Netflix series, spelt ‘Kilgrave.’ 2 On the value of Kilgrave’s purpleness see Brown (2011). On disfigurement of villains see Alaniz (2014). 3 Thus, Alias aligns partially with the ‘bystander’ category of superhero narratives: a characteristic subgenre in the early 21st century—other examples being Ed Brubaker’s Gotham Central and Bendis’s own Powers. 4 Peppard (2018) interprets this retro feel to be an overt allusion to an earlier, 1970s, era of independent Marvel superheroines, thus deliberately contrasting the portrayal of empowering and/or feminist superheroines of two different eras. 5 Rayborn and Keyes (2018, 6) make a similar point concerning the nature of Killgrave’s villainy. 6 Beckman and Blake (2009, 2) note: ‘Pier Paolo Pasolini’s translation of Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom into the economy of fascism in the 1940s Italy in Salo (1975) is explicitly concerned with the dehumanizing and depersonalizing dimension of systematic mass cruelty.’ 7 See also Deleuze (1995a, 1995b, 2001) on control and Agamben (1998) on biopolitics. 8 Issues of surveillance, control and biopower are worth noting here, as Killgrave operates as a living technology of biopower whose surveillance exceeds the use of cameras. On issues of surveillance and biopower, see Smith (2016) and French and Smith (2016).

182  Jamie Brassett and Richard Reynolds 9 The Purple Man is the chief antagonist of Jessica Jones Season One (USA: Netflix, 2015). In Season Two, he appears only in Jones’s hallucinations or flashbacks. 10 Aleah Kiley and Zak Roman offer a similar reading of Jessica Jones’s resistance to Killgrave’s violent patriarchal powers (Kiley and Roman, 2018, 54). Justin Wigard also arrives at a similar conclusion (Wigard, 2018, 231). 11 Unfortunately, for this seductive reading of the scene, the Purple Man was to return in New Thunderbolts Volume 1 #10. 12 Lillian Céspedes González goes further, arguing that Jones’s empowerment represents a significant mainstreaming of a wider fan and geek culture, giving a voice to all those on the ‘stigmatized fringes of society’ (Céspedes González 2018, 78). Eva Thury, contrastingly, characterises both Jones and Killgrave as tricksters (Thury 2016, 6). 13 These films are Robert Van Ackeren’s Woman in Flames (1983) and Monika Treut’s and Elfie Mikesh’s Seduction: Cruel Woman (1985); see Beckman and Blake (2009, 2).

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Index

120 Days of Sodom 174, 177 2000AD 12, 140, 141–4, 147, 151 89/11 20, 82 9/11 Report, The 66 Aaron, Jason 45 Abel (biblical character) 8, 35–7, 39–49 Aboriginal 71 aboriginality 78 Abortion Eve 64 abuse 2, 11. 119–121, 126, 129–30, 132–3, 145, 149, 153, 171–2, 174, 179–80 abusive behaviour 120, 130 accordion fold books 92 Action 152 activism 133, 139, 147 Adam (biblical figure) 35, 39, 45, 63 Adlard, Charlie 160–1 Adorno, Theodor 127 adventure comics 11 aeroplane see plane aesthetic 4, 6, 10, 53–5, 57, 59–60, 64, 66, 72, 76, 121, 125–6 Agamben, Giorgio 173–177 age, coming of 9, 72 agency 11, 76, 80, 89, 143, 150, 166, 174, 181 Alaniz, José 181 Alias 13, 170–2, 177–81 allegory 10, 72 Alonso, Axel 20, 21 Alter, Robert 37, 50 American comics 26, 77 anagnorisis 80 Angry Women (feminist group) 149 animals (violence against) 26, 62, 83 animation 6, 23, 26 anthology 19, 53, 105, 133

anthropocene 74 anthropocentrism 73, 83 anthropomorphic 43, 62, 83 anti-authoritarianism 61 anti-comics campaign 106 anti-war 8, 19, 22, 60 antirealism 25 anxiety 116, 122, 126 apocalypse 159–62, 164–8 Arapaho 53, 55, 58, 66 army 25, 29, 60–1, 95, 106, 114, 141, 153 Arnheim, Rudolf 25 art school 25 Aristotelian 80 Asia-Pacific War 25 assimilation 71 association 115. 121, 125, 127–9, 132 atomic bomb 19, 20, 22, 24–55, 31 atrocity 4, 54, 55, 59 atrocity aesthetic 59 atrocity panel 9, 54–6, 58, 59–60 attack 29, 45, 53–4, 55–6, 64, 66, 98, 125, 150, 152, 154, 179 audience 6, 7, 19, 49, 54–6, 57, 59, 61, 64, 78, 114, 116, 120, 141, 177 auteur 119, 121, 174, 180 authoritarianism 127 authority 11, 53–4, 108–9, 114, 117, 145 autonomy 31, 71 Avengers, the 171, 178–9 B-29 bomber 29 Baetens, Jan 8, 25, 54 Bagley, Mark 171 Bakare-Ysuf, Bibi 160–1 balance 54, 58, 64, 99, 163 Ballad of Halo Jones, The 12, 140, 155

186 Index bare life 176–7, 179 Barefoot Gen 8, 19–33 Barker, Martin 2, 5, 7, 10, 56, 114, 116–7 baseball bat 163 Bash Street Kids, The 108–9 Bates, Laura 128 Batman comics 84 Batman: The Killing Joke 139 Battani, Marshall 59–60 Battle of Little Bighorn 56 Battle of the Somme 10, 89, 92 Baxendale, Leo 105–6, 108 Bayeux tapestry 93 bayonets 55 BBC 108, 116 Beano, The 1, 11, 105–12, 114–7 Beckman, Frida 181–2 Beezer, The 105, 107 beheading 79 Belting, Hans 3 Bendis, Brian Michael 170, 174, 178, 181 Bengal Blues’ 63 Bernu, Brenda 63 Bible 8, 35–7, 39–51 Biblical Comics 49 bigot 127 Billig, Michael 120, 126–8, 133 binary gender 152 Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary 53 biocultural 73–4 biology 163, 176 biopolitical violence 13, 177, 181 biopolitics 175–6, 181 biopower 13, 170, 174–81 bite 27, 107, 163, 165 Black Cat Mystery Comics 66 black-and-white 55, 89 Black, Max 21 Blake, Charlie 181–2 blood 23, 35, 40, 43, 45–6, 55, 62, 77, 154, 163, 179 bloodlust 56 boat 81 bodies 1, 9–10, 12, 24–5, 27, 29–31, 54, 57, 59, 60, 66, 89–92, 95–9, 113, 146–7, 159–62, 165, 167–8, 175, 179 body 9, 10, 37, 39, 43, 54, 59, 63, 66, 73, 84, 89–92, 94–99, 113, 146–7, 150, 152, 159–68, 176

Body in Pain, The 164 Bolland, Brian 142 bomb 19–20, 22, 24–5, 27, 31, 98–9, 154 Bonus Expeditionary Force 60 Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb, The 8, 36, 37–41 Boothroyd, Betty 129 border, absence of 85 border, page 54 border, panel 25, 40 Bosnia 65 boundaries of self 173 boys’ comics, also boy’s comics 21, 150 Boyle, Karen 12, 125 braiding 37, 50, 171 Brenner, Robin 23, 72, 76 Brienza, Casey 72–3 British Columbia 78, 79 British comics 11, 105, 120, 140, 143, 150 brother 8, 20, 23, 35–7, 39–41, 43, 45, 50, 162 Brownmiller, Susan 149 Brubaker, Ed 181 buffer 111 Bukatman, Scott 26, 90 Bunty 105, 107 bureaucratic 56, 128 Burke, Tarana 133 Burrowes, Nina 120–1, 125 Burrows, Jacen 140 Bush, George W. 82 Buster 105 Butler, Judith 12, 89–90, 155 Cain (biblical character) 8, 35–7, 39–51 camera 181 Canadian First Nations 71 cannibalism 45, 159 capitalism 74, 83, 108, 145 Captain America 179 Captain America 20 caption 21, 61, 63, 65, 92, 122–3, 141–2 caricature 10, 53, 56–7, 60, 72, 83, 162 cartoon 24–5, 27, 31, 57, 67, 122–5 cartoon line (Lamarre) 24 cartooning 6, 72, 83 cartoonish 13

Index  187 cartoonist 89, 119, 122, 133, 142 cartoony 55, 58 casual violence 23 cause and effect 24 censorship 13, 106, 151–2 Chamber of Chills 66 Chapman, James 142–3 character archetypes 21 Cheyenne 53, 55–9 Child’s Life, A 119–20 childhood 106–7, 109, 114. 116–7 children 11, 21, 45, 53, 55, 57, 61, 66, 82, 105–11, 114–6, 122–3, 130, 163 Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act 106 Children and Young Persons Act 1963 107 Children and Young Persons Acts 1969 107 children’s comics 105 children’s literature 115 Chiswick Women’s Aid Centre 124 Chitikamoltham, Chanokporn 6 Chow, Rey 80 Chute, Hillary 3, 5, 119–20, 155 cinematic 6, 7 cis 152–3 cis-normative 152–3 civilians 29, 153 civilisation 57 class 79, 130, 141, 145–6, 155, 159, 161 Clean Up Soho (campaign) 152 cliché 4, 143, 150 close-up 26, 29, 56, 61, 143, 150, 172 clubbing 63 coercion 2, 139, 146, 149, 175 Cohn, Neil 72, 112–4 Collins, Patricia H. 160 Colon, Ernie 66 colonialism 11, 73–7, 80–2, 85, 141, 153–4 Colorado Volunteer Regiment 53 colour 8, 45–6, 50, 77–9, 171, 172 Colwell, Guy 62 Comanche Moon 53, 57, 59 combat 27, 128, 153, 155, 161 comedy 6, 54, 157 Comic Books as History 53 Comics Code 13, 59, 65–6, 106 Comics Forum 109 Comics Studies 10, 76, 92, 113

Comics, Trauma, and the New Art of War 3 commonality 132 communication 9, 65, 76, 95, 121, 128 community 71–2, 77–8, 109, 128, 167 compassion fatigue 59 composition 24, 44, 50, 81 compulsion 139 conflict 3, 9, 23, 27, 36, 65, 82, 109, 114–5, 125, 129, 153–5, 160 consumer culture 120 consumption 6, 125–6, 129–30 Contexts of Violence in Comics 1–3, 13 contract 114, 116 control 4, 13, 27, 41, 44, 83, 94–5, 107, 114, 124, 126, 149, 162, 170–81 corporal punishment 23, 108–9, 111 Courage to Be Me, The 120–3 crime 2, 24, 106–7, 112, 140, 146, 171, 175 crime fiction 24 criminality 145 Critchley, Simon 132 critical estrangement 12, 140, 155 Crome, Keith 176 Crumb, Robert 37–41, 43–4, 46, 48–51, 57, 119 crying 165 Csordas, Thomas 9 cultural feminism, cultural feminist 152–3 cultural genocide 71 cultural products 49, 73 cultural representation 139, 146, 155 cultural status 7 culture 6–7, 11, 13, 36, 49, 71, 81–3, 117, 133, 141, 155, 162, 175, 182 Cultures of War in Graphic Novels: Violence, Trauma and Memory 3 cute 121–2, 125–6 cyberpunk 146 damsel in distress 159, 162 Dandy, The 105, 107–8 Daniels, Les 55 Daredevil 13, 170 Daredevils, The 141 Davidson, Reg 81 Davies, Christie 128 Davies, Dominic 3

188 Index DC Thomson 105, 117 de Sade, Marquis (Donatien Alphonse François) 13, 174 death 25, 39, 43–6, 80, 97, 99, 152–3, 155, 159, 161, 176, 179 death camps 177 decolonisation 75 deformation 26, 57, 63 Deleuze, Gilles 13, 174, 179, 181 DeMille, Cecil B. 37 demographic 11 Dennis the Menace 1, 11, 105–117 Dennis the Menace and Gnasher 105 dependency 130 depiction 1–9, 11–3, 19, 22–3, 25, 29, 31–2, 40, 54–5, 58–9, 61, 64, 66, 83, 106, 116, 119, 122, 125, 130, 132, 139–40, 144, 153 depictive seeing 21 desire 5, 13, 36, 57, 125, 150–2, 171, 173–4, 177 Diack, Heather 10 dialogue 22–3, 43, 83, 90, 92, 97, 99 DiCaprio, George 60 didactic spectacle 53–67 didacticism 54, 61–2, 67 dignity 58 Disasters of War 3 discipline 22, 24, 26, 93, 107, 175 discourse 6, 12, 19, 74, 79, 85, 97, 139, 143, 153 discrimination 85, 160 Disney 23, 25 disruption 22, 26, 33, 78, 91, 161, 168 Dittmer, Jason 8, 20, 24 diversity 3, 8, 73, 75, 85 documentary 1–4, 10, 108 Documenting Trauma: Traumatic Pasts, Embodied Histories & Graphic Reportage in Comics 3 domestic abuse 11, 119–21, 129 domestic labour 145 domestic violence 22, 121, 132, 139–40 dominance 2, 43, 76, 149 domination 10, 13, 72–3, 150 Dr Doom 173 Dragonslippers 120–1, 129 drawing style 8, 22, 24, 31, 63, 121–2, 125, 131–2 dress 58, 121, 146, 149, 167 Drichel, Simone 90 drill 165

Drummond-Matthews, Angela 23 Dworkin, Andrea 149 dystopian 53, 141, 155 E.C. Comics 66 Earle, Harriet E.H. 3, 54 ecological 9, 53, 71–3, 76, 84 ecological violence 9, 71 economic consumption 129–30 economy 24, 107, 141, 153, 179, 181 education 9, 53–4, 60, 63–7, 92, 174 effects 2, 6, 27, 29, 31, 54, 59, 78, 116, 120–1, 125–6, 132, 144, 153, 155, 163, 177 Eiji, Ōtsuka 25 Elkins, James 97–8 Ellenbogen, Josh 95 ellipsis 39 Emberley, Julia 72, 78, 84, 86 Embodied Reading 89–99 embodiment 9–10, 12, 20, 71, 90, 113–4, 180 emotion 5, 26, 29, 36, 41–2, 49, 92, 97, 125–6, 132, 143, 160, 162, 164, 167, 172 empathy 96–9, 108, 126 enactment 90 entertainment 2, 6, 9, 19, 54, 56, 60, 64–6, 107 environmental 53, 59, 63–4, 71, 73, 83, 86 environmental humanities 71, 86 epistemology 4, 76, 85 epistolary storytelling 142 essentialism 150, 152–3 Estren, Mark James 65 ethics 54, 89, 172 Eve (biblical) 35, 45–6 everyday 11, 12, 125–6, 128–30, 132–3, 142–5, 150, 152, 177 ‘everyday sexism project’ 128, 133 excess 9, 54, 56–59, 61, 63–4. 66, 179, 174, 177 exegesis 8, 36, 49 exploitation 2, 71, 81, 83, 139, 145 extinction 62, 83 face 22, 24, 26, 31, 35, 37–9, 43, 46, 57–8, 96, 124, 143, 150 Facts o’ Life Sex Education Funnies 64 factual and fictional 5 Falklands War 141 family 20–4, 26–7, 29–30, 45, 107, 139, 149, 161, 171

Index  189 fan culture 182 Fantagraphics 66 fantasy 1, 12, 147, 151, 178 father 20–1, 29, 35, 39, 45–6, 50, 111, 162, 178 fatigue 59 fear 10, 74, 82, 116, 150, 165, 173 Felski, Rita 130 female readership 141 feminism 139–40, 145, 148, 150–2 feminist 12, 53, 79, 90, 122, 124–5, 130, 133, 139–40, 142, 145, 147–50, 152–3, 155, 180–1 fencing 161 figurative representation 89, 95, 98 first murder 8, 39 First Nations 71, 81 First World War 60 first-person narration 142 flag 29, 56 Fleming, Jackie 122–5 Fludernik, Monika 113 Flynn, Kate 143, 147, 150–1, 156 foetus 55, 58, 60 fold 10, 89, 91–3, 99 foot soldier 58 forbidden fruit 35 formline 77, 81, 84 formula 108, 114 Foucault, Michel 9, 13, 161, 170, 173, 175–7, 179, 181 France 167 free love 64 frequency 111 Freud, Sigmund 174 Frey, Hugo 54 fridging 139 From Hell 139 gag manga 23 Garden of Eden 35, 45 gay 115, 152 Gaydos, Michael 170–1, 173, 179 Gebbie, Melinda 61, 66 geek 182 gender 12, 117, 119, 122, 125, 133, 140–3, 145–7, 150, 152–3, 155, 159–60, 163–4, 180–1 gendered stereotypes 115, 147 gendered violence 11–2, 139–40, 146–50 genderqueer 152 ‘Gene Shuffle’ 63 Genesis (biblical) 35–51

genitalia 62, 77 genocide 58, 71 genre 6, 8, 11–3, 19–21, 32, 76, 85, 93, 105–6, 114, 116, 142, 150, 181 geopolitics 19–20 ghost 111–2, 114 Gibson, Ian 140–2, 145, 147 gift 73, 130 Gilman, Sander L. 162 girl 105, 114, 119, 121–5, 140–1, 146, 159, 162 girls’ comics 105, 141–3, 145 Giroux, Henry 6–7, 13 Gloeckner, Phoebe 119, 121 Glyph 152–3 God 35–51 God Nose 55 Goddamned, The 8, 36, 45, 48–9 González, Lillian Céspedes 182 Good Girl Art 147 Gopaldas, Ahir 159–60 Gordon, Ian 108–9 Gotham Central 181 gothic 6 Goya, Francisco 3 grammar 76, 113 grand narrative 71–2 graphiation 25 graphic novel 7, 10, 54–5, 58, 64–6, 73, 78, 84, 120, 180 Graphic Story Monthly 66 Great War, The 10, 89–99 Green, Justin 53 Green, Katie 120–6 Greenham Common 153 Greenpeace 62–3 Grennan, Simon 8, 113–4 grid 39–40, 48, 61, 94 grid pattern 39–40, 48 Groensteen, Thierry 8, 37, 39, 50, 171 grotesque 58 Guéra, R. M. 8, 45–8 Guerin, Frances 5 Guerra, Pia 160 gun 56, 167 Gunning, Tom 8, 94 gutter 40–1, 44, 51, 111, 132 Habibi 11 Hague, Ian 9, 51, 90, 92 Haida formlines 81 Haida Gwaii archipelago 76 Haida Manga 9–10, 72–5 Haida Nation 73, 80

190 Index Haines, Robert 75, 82 Hallas, Roger 5 Hannibal Lecter 172 Hansen, Doug 63 Hansen, Ron 58 haptic 89, 92, 95–9 haptic vision 98 harassment 127–8, 139, 146, 149–50 Haraway, Donna 12 Harvey Publications 66 hatching 143 Hatfield, Charles 26 Hayles, N. Catherine 90 Henderson, William B. 71 hero 58, 79, 180 heroic 26, 77, 142, 159 heroine 12, 145, 179 heroism 19 ‘Herpes is a Virus’ 62 Herriman, George 1 Heston, Charlton 37, 50 heteronormativity 129–30, 152 heterosexual 129–30, 150–1, 175 Hiroshima 8, 19, 21, 25 history 23, 36, 49–50, 53, 55–6, 58, 60, 74, 76, 78–9, 82, 108, 117, 141, 160, 175 Hochshield, Adam 92 Hokusai Katsuhika 72 Hollywood 6, 23, 25 Holmes, Rand 63–4 home 36, 76–7, 81–2, 111–2, 130, 143, 149, 164, 178 horror 6, 12, 53, 55, 57, 60, 66, 106, 120 horror comics 106 human exceptionalism see anthropocentrism humour 10–1, 23, 29, 55, 63, 66, 72, 105–6, 120–2, 124–6, 128, 132–3 Humour and the Conduct of Politics 128 humour theory 120, 124, 126–8, 132 hunting 62–3, 83 hybrid 76 hyperbole 53, 55, 57–8, 61, 66, 162 hyperframe 50 hyperreal violence 6, 7 iconography 76 identity 9, 21, 26, 77, 79, 85, 94, 124, 159, 160, 162, 167–8, 171 ideology 25, 139, 154 illustration 37, 41, 78, 93, 122, 171

Image and the Witness: trauma, memory and visual culture, The 5 Image Comics 45 imagery 11, 55–6, 78, 120–1, 139, 141–2, 147, 150 immersion 91, 129 imperialism 60, 63, 84, 153 in ’t Veld, Laurike 3 incongruity 123, 125 incongruity theory 128 Indian (American) 56–7, 63, 77–9 Indian Act (1876), the 71 Indigenous 57–8, 71, 75–6, 78–83, 86 inequality 141, 145 infidelity 66 injury 25, 108 injustices 54, 61, 64 innocence 37, 56, 122 intention 24, 44, 95–6, 108–9, 121, 165 interaction, physical 93, 97, 99 interpersonal violence 22, 29 interpretation 8, 36, 39, 49–50, 80, 89, 93, 97–8, 115, 140 intersectionality 79, 145, 159 intertextuality 10, 50, 72 intimacy 125 intolerance 85 Inuit 71 ‘Invisible Girls and Phantom Ladies’ 141–2, 147 IPC 152 Irons, Greg 60–2, 67 It Ain’t Me Babe 53, 64 Jackson, Jack (Jaxon) 8, 53, 55, 58–9, 61, 63–5 Jacobson, Sid 66 Japan 19–20, 22, 25, 31, 72–3, 75, 85 Jessica Jones 13, 179, 182 Jessica Jones 172, 177–81 Jewish Publication Society (JPS) 37 joke 123, 126, 128, 132 Jonah (biblical) 84 Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 139 journalism 96 Judge Anderson 142 Just Be Inc 133 justice 29 kamikaze 29 katana 161, 164, 167 Kerr, Euan 115 Ketcham, Hank 1, 117

Index  191 Killgrave see Purple Man, the Kim, Aisha 140 King James Version (KJV) Bible 37 King, C. Richard 77 King, Thomas 77 Kirby, Jack 26 Kirkman, Robert 160–2, 164–5, 167 Kirsch, Scott 7 Kitchener, Lord Herbert 96 knife 46, 163 knitting 112, 115, 124–5 knowledge creation 85 Kominsky Crumb, Aline 133 Krafft-Ebing, Richard von 174 Krazy Kat 1 Kunzle, David 10 labour 26, 145–6 Lamarre, Thomas 22–5, 29 Lambert, Chloe 115 land 35, 40, 48, 73, 75, 82, 167 landscape 45–6 language 31, 36, 43–4, 49, 50, 57, 71, 72, 76, 81–2. 85, 112–3, 125, 141, 166 Last Gasp 21, 53 laughter 20, 65, 124–5, 128, 181 Laurence, Bruce B. 140 law and order 107 League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The 140 Leeds 109, 123, 148 legal 3, 82, 122 letters page 141 Levell, Nicola 73, 80 Lex Luthor 173 libertine 13, 174–5, 177–8 library 119 linguistic analysis 113 literacy 37, 93 literature 75, 77, 115, 119 Little Big Man 60 Little Boy (atomic bomb) 31 Little Plumb 108 Little Sammy Sneeze 26 Lomax, Maggie 124 Lorde, Audre 163, 166 Los Tejanos 53, 57–8 Lovecraft mythos 140 Luke Cage 172 lust 59 Macbeth 78 machine 4, 12, 24, 26–7, 31, 149 MacKinnon, Catherine 149

Magneto 173 male gaze 146, 150–1 Mandy 105 manga 8, 19–26, 29, 31, 72–6, 78, 80–1, 85 Manga Bible, The 8, 36, 41, 49 manga boom 73 Manhattan Project 31 Manovich, Lev 94 map 31, 164–5 Marey, Étienne-Jules 26 marginalia 40, 51 marginalisation 113, 141 Marion, Phillipe 25 Marks, John 176 Marks, Laura U. 98 marriage 129–30 masculinity 37, 48, 139, 150, 153 massacre 53–4, 60, 66 materiality 5, 91, 94, 99 matriarchal 80 Maus 65 Mauss, Marcel 130 McCarthy, Errol 60 McCay, Winsor 26 McCloud, Scott 8 #MeToo 133 mecha 25, 27, 29, 31 media effects 6 mediated violence 6 Melville, Herman 84 memorialization 26 menacing 43, 109–13 mess 37, 110,11, 115–6, 125, 155 metaphor 21–2, 31, 83, 85 Métis 71 metonym 80, 92, 99, 171 Mickey Mouse 27 Milano, Alyssa 133 militaristic nationalism 22, 31 military 12, 20, 24–7, 29, 31, 50, 96, 154 military aggression 11 Miller, Ann 37, 46, 48, 50 Miller, Frank 65 mimesis 113 mimicry 80 Miners’ Strike 141 Minnie the Minx 108 Miodrag, Hannah 113 misogyny 128, 133, 139 Mitchell, W. J. T. 3, 4 Moby Dick 84 Moe, Peter Wayne 84

192 Index Moore, Alan 12, 65, 139–47, 150, 153–5 moral panic 2 morality 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 22, 57, 63, 106, 119, 152, 179 Morreall, John 120, 128 mother 29, 45–6, 49, 117, 119, 162 Mother Earth 74 motif 96, 110 motion line 23–4, 27–8, 30 mouth 23, 26, 39, 43, 56–7, 179 Ms Marvel 171 multiframe 39, 50 multimodal 113 mural 10, 73, 84 murder 35–6, 39–41, 44–9, 55, 66, 123, 140, 143, 148–50, 159, 168, 171 ‘Murder, Inc.’ 61 murderer 22, 27, 40 ‘Museum Piece’ 63 mutilation 53, 55, 59, 66 Muybridge, Eadweard 26 My Lai Massacre 60 myth 45–6, 72, 76, 78, 84–5, 121, 129, 146–7, 149 mythology 77, 80 Nagasaki 8 Nakazawa, Keiji 19–21, 24, 31 narrative 10, 20–1, 27, 36–7, 41–45, 48, 50, 53, 57, 60, 65, 73, 76, 78, 80, 89, 91–6, 98–9, 112–4, 129–30, 132, 143, 171–4, 179–81 narrative drawing 6, 8, 22, 27, 33, 113 narrative structure 105, 114 narrative-dominant pattern 39–40 narrator 40–1, 43 national identity 21 nationalism 20, 22, 26–7, 29, 31, 139 native geographies 75 Navy 22, 25, 27, 29 needles see knitting Neimanis, Astrida 71, 74 Nelson, Ralph 60 neoliberal 71 Nephilim 45 Netflix 13, 180–2 New International Version (NIV) Bible 41 New Thunderbolts 182 New Wave (cinema) 24

news media 2 Ngai, Sianne 125–6 ‘Nits Make Lice’ 8, 53–60, 64–6 Nixon, Rob 86 Noah (biblical character) 41, 45 Noble Savage 78 non-fictional 64–5 Noomin, Diane 133 nostalgia 124 novels 49, 147 nudity 59, 61 obedience 115, 170 objective violence 108 Oedipus Rex 78 Oettermann, Stephan 93–4 one-baht comic 6 onomatopoeia 61 ontology 2 opera 7 oppression 142, 145, 160, 163 oral narrative 73, 76, 78, 80 Orbán, Katalin 90, 92 orientalism 11 Ostrowitz, Judith 72 Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting 125 ‘Ozean Oinken’ 63 Pacific Northwest 10, 72–4, 84 pacifist 20, 24 Pact, The 26 paedophilia 119 page border 40 pain 35, 92, 97–8, 155, 159–68, 174 Pajalache 66 Palestine 65 Palestine 1, 92 panel 37, 39–40, 48, 50–1, 113, 180–1; see also atrocity panel panorama 89–90, 92–7, 99 paper 91, 99, 113, 132 paradox 84, 125–6 paratext 21, 78 parent 29, 36, 45, 92–3, 106–11, 115, 177 parenting 107 parody 6 participants 109, 142, 179 passivity 46, 129 paternalism 149 patriarchy 80, 139, 145, 174–5 patriotism 20

Index  193 pattern 31, 39–40, 48, 97–8, 112–3, 115, 120 Penfold, Rosalind B. 120–1, 129–32 Peppard, Anna 180–1 performance 6, 89,93, 97, 99 périchamp see perifield perifield 40, 48, 51 peripeteia 80 perpetrators 54, 56–8, 66, 109, 124, 149, 178 Persepolis 1 phenomenology 21 Phillips, Angela 124 Philosophy in the Bedroom 174 photograph 147 photography 3, 26, 72, 79 photorealistic 63 physiology 90 Piatti-Fanelli, Lorna 139 pilot 26, 29 Pinker, Steven 108, 116 Pinocchio 84 plane 26–7, 29, 90 plastic line (Lamarre) 24–5, 27, 31 plasticity 24 plates 10, 89, 91, 95–8 play 11, 82, 106–10, 112, 114, 116–7, 122, 129 pleasure 11, 13, 59, 62, 90, 128, 132, 151, 174, 179 point-of-view 142 polarity 152 police 20, 31, 61, 78, 106, 117, 123–4, 141, 146, 148, 152 police brutality 2 political action 60 political 6, 9, 12, 61, 65, 73, 79–80, 122, 128, 132, 139–40, 145, 152, 155, 161, 173–6 political correctness 114–6 politics of the personal 142 pop music 147 population 8, 106, 175–7, 179 porn shop 149 pornography 148–9, 151 possession 160, 174 post-apocalyptic 12, 63, 159–60 Postema, Barbara 113 poverty 12, 141, 145 power 3, 10, 11, 13, 106, 108–9, 114, 120–2, 129, 133, 139, 142, 145, 148, 155, 159, 161, 163–5, 170–81 Powers 181

prayer 45–6 Precarious Life 89 predator 124, 129 priest 66 Prime Minister 145 Prince, Michael J. 139 prisoner 58, 164, 170 Project Gen 19 proof 4 property 21, 33, 160 Prosper, T. 66 protagonist 9, 11–2, 72, 97, 119, 121, 125, 128, 140–2 Provine, Robert 128 psychological realism 143 psychological violence 108 public space 146, 175 Pulp Fiction 13 Pumphrey, George 2, 106–7, 115 punchline 123 punishment 8, 23, 35, 40, 48, 108–9, 111–2, 166; cyberpunk 146 pure violence 24, 31 Purple Man, the 170–3, 178–80, 182 Quail, Susanna 82 Queen Charlotte Islands 76 queer 71, 85, 151–3 race 79, 159, 164 racial bias 162 racism 6, 11, 55, 61, 63, 72, 77, 85, 126–8, 141, 154, 161–2, 176 racist caricature 162 radiation sickness 27 rape 11, 45, 57, 59, 124, 126, 139–40, 146–50, 159, 164–5 Rape Crisis Centre 124 rape myths 146 Raven (mythical figure) 77, 80, 84 Rawson, Phillip 22 Raymond, Janice 153 reader 111, 114, 178–81 readerly performance 7, 40–44, 49, 72, 79, 83–5, 89–93, 98–9 readers, readerships 5, 7, 11, 19–21, 23, 33, 59–60, 64, 67, 81, 117, 141, 143 reading 95–6, 98–9, 114, 119–20, 132, 147, 150, 172 rebellion 161, 163, 179 reception 7, 44, 49, 113, 143 Reclaim the Night 148–9

194 Index recognition 21–2, 55, 80, 128, 132–3 recruitment 53, 57, 96 Red: A Haida Manga 9, 71 ‘Red Indian’ 77 redemptive violence 180 religion 174 remembrance 3 Renaissance 37, 49, 94 reportage 3 representation 2–3, 5–13, 54, 57, 59, 66, 78–9, 85, 92, 94–8, 109, 139–40, 146–7, 150, 155 Representation of Genocide in Graphic Novels: Considering the Role of Kitsch, The 3 rescue 78–9, 162 resentment 59–60 resistance 12, 26, 29, 80, 85, 144, 153, 159, 160–3, 166, 168, 175, 179, 180–1 responsibility 8, 20, 44, 71, 81–2, 178 restricted arthrology 50 retributive violence 180 revenge 78–9, 83, 109 revisionist Westerns 60 Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) 61 Ricoeur, Paul 3, 4 rights 63, 71, 73 riots 141, 143 Rip-Off Press 55 ritualistic violence 6,7 romance (genre) 142–3, 150 romantic love 119, 129–30 Sabin, Roger 10, 19, 105 Sacco, Joe 1, 10, 65, 89–99 Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von 174 sadist-victim relationship 174 safety 124, 161, 168 Sand Creek Massacre 53–4, 60, 66 satire 10, 60–1, 65–6, 72, 76 Satrapi, Marjane 1 Saussure, Ferdinand de 113 savage 11, 78, 162 Savage Within, The 66 saviour 159 scalping 55, 58 Scarry, Elain 164–5 Scherr, Rebecca 90, 92 science fiction 90, 92 Scream Inn 114 sea lion 83 seal 63

Second World War 72, 176 second-wave feminism 139–40 security 82, 172 seeing in’ 21–2, 113–4 Segal, Lynne 151 self-defence 123–5, 167 self-harm 81 self-reflexive 65, 146 semiotic 113 sensation 97, 178 sensationalism 54, 62, 64, 149 sequence 20, 22–3, 26–7, 29, 31, 37, 55, 59–60, 74, 109, 112–3, 155, 171–2, 177 sequential 4, 37, 50 sex 23, 59, 61–4, 119–20, 150 sex shop 149 sexist advertising 147 sexist imagery 141–2 sexual abuse 119–121, 125–6, 129, 133, 171 sexual violence 11–2, 59, 66, 121, 123, 126, 139–40, 149–50, 153, 165, 173, 175 sexuality 149–50 Shakespeare 7 shaman 79 shame 119, 150 shock 4, 6, 23, 33, 53, 55–6, 59–61, 64, 66, 99, 150, 153, 164–5 Shõnen manga 8, 21–24, 26, 29, 31 Shōnen Jump 19 sight 4 Siku 8, 41, 43–4, 46, 48–9 Silence of the Lambs, The 172 simulation 94 Sino-Japanese War 25 slapstick 1, 6, 10, 23, 27, 29, 105, 108–9 slavery 45, 160 slipper (spanking) 107–8, 110, 111 Slow Death 9, 53–4, 60–5 slow violence 86 smoke 26, 30, 56, 95–9 soap opera 143 Sobchack, Vivian 90 social violence 2 socialism 145, 155 soldier 22, 27–9, 55–8, 61, 89, 92, 95–6, 98–9 Soldier Blue 60 solidarity 132 solitude 164

Index  195 Sontag, Susan 3–5, 9, 59 Spanish Missions 66 spatial 4, 8, 89, 92–5, 99, 181 spatio-topical code 37, 50 species 62, 71, 83, 85, 175–6, 179 spectacle 5–7, 56, 60–1, 66–7, 94–5, 122, 140, 148–9, 179 spectacular violence 6–7, 144, 150 speech bubble 40 Spiegelman, Art 23, 65 Spiers, Miriam Brown 77, 84 Springsteen, Bruce 84 spy 162, 170, 175 state (internal) 29, 71, 107, 108, 139, 148, 151 state (nation) 29, 71, 107–8, 139, 148, 151 state of exception 176–7 state power 108, 139, 151, 170, 173–6 status 7, 43, 122, 126, 129, 179 stereotype 61, 73, 77, 79, 115, 121–2, 128, 130, 141, 147 Stevenson, Robert Louis 110 stigma 20, 182 Stockton, California 119 Stoian, Maria 120–1, 126, 128, 133 storyworld 85, 141 Stout, William 59 Strauss, David Levi 76, 81 strength 37, 40, 43, 114, 163, 170 strip club 149 structural 9, 12, 22, 25–7, 29, 128, 147, 155 structural line (Lamarre) 22, 25, 27 structural lines 26 structural violence 9, 12 structuralism 113 style 8, 22, 24–5, 27, 29, 31, 43, 53, 55, 57–8, 61–3, 65–6, 72, 75–6, 121–2, 125–6, 131–2, 143, 171 subjectivity 5, 80, 113, 143 submissive 147, 162 suffocation 124 Suffrage Atelier 122 suffragette 122–3 suicide 77, 79, 81 Suls, Jerry 123 Sun, The 147 superhero 1, 12, 21, 23, 142, 170, 171, 179, 181 superheroes 178, 180 superheroines 153, 180–1

Superman 107 superpowers 170, 180 suppression 72 surveillance 181 Sutcliffe, Peter 123, 148 swastika 162 symbolic violence 6, 146, 152 symbolism 58, 83, 127, 167 System of Comics, The 8 tactility 95 Take it as a Compliment 120–1, 126 TallBear, Kim 83 Tarantino, Quentin 6, 13 taste 165 Teacher (Character) 109, 116 technology 26, 181 teenager 124 temporal distortion 155 temporality 84 Ten Commandments, The 37 territory 81, 85 terrorism 2 testimony 4, 6 Texas 55, 66 text-image relations 8 texture 29, 95, 97–8, 142 Tezuka, Osamu 23, 25 Thatcherist Britain 140 theatre 7, 131 thick violence 71–2, 82, 85 Third Earl of Shaftesbury, the 132 Thompson, Craig 11 thought balloon 141 threat 2–3, 7, 11, 43, 124, 145–6, 150–1, 163, 167, 170, 178–9 ‘Three Bears, The’ 108 three-point perspective 94, 96 Thury, Eva 182 tiger 63 Times, The 115 titillation 59, 64, 66, 120–1 Tomb of Terror 66 Tomoyuki, Omote 19–20 Topper, The 105 Torah 36 torture 147, 161–2, 164–9 touch 91–3, 95, 98, 165 toys 19, 116 trace, graphic traces 24–5, 93, 113 tragedy 80 tragic hero 79 trans 152–3

196 Index transcultural 10, 72, 76, 78, 80, 85 transgression 8, 35, 59, 107 translation 19, 37, 50, 61, 72, 85, 97, 181 trap 110–1, 141, 179 trauma 3, 5, 9, 26, 54, 139, 142, 171 Treasure Island 110 tree of knowledge 35 trenches 89, 95–6, 98–9 tressage 37, 50 trickster 77–80, 84–5 truth 4, 54 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 71 Turner, Ron 53 Turtle Island 75 Twisted Sisters 133 ultimogeniture 36 ultra-violence 150 Underground Comix 53–5, 57, 59, 62, 64–5 Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art 8 unemployment 145, 153, 161 unicorn 46 United States 73, 82, 117, 161 universal subject 71 USA 19–20, 22, 31, 73, 106 ‘Velma Gets it Ndebele’ 62 veterans 60–1 victim 13, 27, 30–1, 41, 49, 54, 58, 66, 109, 112, 124, 129, 162, 166, 174, 177–8 video games 2 Vietnam War 19, 60 vigilantism 107 villain 58, 159, 180–1 violation 2, 13, 59 violence, definitions of 1, 2, 3 Virilio, Paul 4 virtual reality 2 visceral seeing 97–8 vision 4, 9, 40, 50, 81–2, 84, 98, 149; see also sight visual representation 2, 5, 11, 119, 147, 154 visuo-haptic processing’ 92 Vizenor, Gerald 86 voyeuristic 11, 146 vulnerability 10, 89–90, 93, 96–7, 99

Walking Dead, The 12, 160–1 Walter the Softy 106, 114 war 2–3, 8–10, 19–20, 22–3, 25–7, 31, 53, 55–6, 60, 62, 65–6, 72, 78, 89, 91, 141, 153, 176 war comics 19, 23 war crimes 153 warrior 79 Watch Me Move 26 Watchmen 139 Waterbrook Press 41 Waterhouse, Ruth 120 weapon 160–3 weaponised 163–8 weight 91 Weinstein, Harvey 133 Wertham, Fredric 2 whale 62–3, 83–4 wheat 21, 31 wife 59, 66, 83 Wild Bunch, The 60 Wimmen’s Comics 133 Witek, Joseph 53–4, 56, 59, 62, 66 witnessing 2–6, 132, 150, 153 Wollheim, Richard 21–2 women and children 53, 55, 57, 61 Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW) 148–9 Women in Media 147 Women’s Aid 124 women’s comix 143 women’s liberation movement 139, 155 Wong, Wendy Siyu 73 wool 124–5 World Health Organisation 108 wound, wounding 55, 90, 98 Wray, William York 60–1 X-Men 172 xenophobic 141 Y: The Last Man 12, 160 Yah’guudang 81–3 Yahgulanaas, Michael Nicoll 10, 71 Yorkshire 123, 148–9 Yū, Itō 19 Zimbabwe 61 Žižek, Slavoj 2, 108 zombie 159, 161 zombie apocalypse 161, 164