Graphic novels in popular culture

• Autores: Raluca Marginas
• Localización: Visiones multidisciplinares sobre la cultura popular: actas del 5.º Congreso Internacional de SELICUP / coord. por Eduardo de Gregorio Godeo, María del Mar Ramón Torrijos, 2014, ISBN 978-84-617-0400-2, págs. 33-43
• Idioma: español
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• Resumen

  • This essay covers critical writing about how the �graphic novel� and its variations are consumed by the two paddles of highbrow and lowbrow culture. The popular manifestation of Lit comics comes to mind when one tries to inscribe them in the specific process of communication. Beyond formulaic forms or moral upliftings, suggested by Wertham & co. we are witnessing some visionary occurrences. By means of creative impetus and because of the development of the publishing establishment, the comfortable niche becomes less comfortable. Leaving behind obsolete postulates and embracing multimodality, we can observe that some skills of reading comics are very much alike the techniques used by the new media. The industry�s retaliatory force used an economic gimmick, the direct market: a welcomed shift in distribution that lead to a changing audience in a now torrential market for �the graphic novel�. No longer seen as an object of commodity, the revitalised visual showmanship illustrated an eschatological maelstrom, with a redefined narrative consistency of the new comic books. We thus need to understand the public�s view of reality, its perceptual filtering, in order to delineate the reader�s response to this leap. Then, by adding a closer look to this medium of fragments, conjunction and semantic fetching I am interested in bringing forth some comparative samples from different media platforms and even discuss the controversial theory of medium-specificity by following the challenges of Noel Carroll or Henry John Pratt et alii. Study cases consist of relevant episodes and, in Gröensteen�s terms, �the collaboration between arthrology and spatio-topia� of the first insular works that received critical acclaim, such as Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Maus: A Survivor�s Tale by Art Spiegelman and The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson, but also some recent publications, such as Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware etc.