In this essay, I examined the significance of graphic novels as polyvalent texts that hold the potential for creating an aesthetic sense of flow for readers and consumers. In building a justification for the rhetorical examination of comic book culture, I looked at Kenneth Burke's critique of art under capitalism in order to explore the dimensions between comic book creation, distribution, consumption, and reaction from fandom. I also examined Victor Turner's theoretical scope of flow, as an aesthetic related to ritual, communitas, and the liminoid. I analyzed the graphic novels Green Lantern: Rebirth and Y: The Last Man as case studies toward the rhetorical significance of retroactive continuity and the somatic potential of comic books to serve as equipment for living. These conclusions lay groundwork for multiple directions of future research.

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This research thesis is an exploration into what possibilities lie beyond the representation of analog material when it transcends into the digital realm. Specifically, how printed comics can be altered in realtime by creator- allowed user interaction, when adapted for presentation within the digital sphere of mobile smartphones and computer tablets. Using legacy computer-game techniques like parallax scrolling with modern digital layer filters, device sensors and applying them in realtime to the comic creators digitally layered content, alternative forms of presentation arise.This is an investigation into the comic creator’s will of allowing possibilities of added depth perception, interactivity and alternative visual narratives in their comic, manga or graphic novels when employing new techniques based on sensor data input from a reader, like accelerometer-, gyroscope- or eye-tracking sensors. Several different techniques are evaluated. The focus is mainly on the context of creators of comics or manga who use digital tools and layer compositions when producing their work. Several aspects of the user-centered experience are also explored.Although mainly an interaction design project, most of the design methods are used from a service design approach, emphasizing co-design techniques like interviews, observations and user tests. The results are digital prototypes and proof-of-concepts featuring technology tests that support final design conclusions.The results will show both enthusiasm and reluctance from test subjects towards the new technologies presented. The professional craft of comic, manga and graphic novel creation has a deeply rooted aesthetic and production cycle in its history of the printed form. It could be difficult to alter its standard, reverence and nostalgia in the eyes of its readers and creators, when pursuing the digital format and narrative possibilities of the future. A video explaining the project’s “Drawn To Life” technology is available online.

Le territoire de l’album de jeunesse contemporain, multiforme, inventif paraît fluctuant. Partagé entre l’image et le texte, il se présente comme une forme hybride aux frontières mouvantes entre livre illustré, album de bande dessinée, roman graphique. Notre corpus volontairement restreint concerne, parmi l’album de langue française tel qu’il se développe de 1945 à nos jours, une sélection significative d’œuvres d’auteurs illustrateurs. Il nous permet d’interroger les influences qui ont façonné son visage d’aujourd’hui : statut de l’enfant dans la société, impact de la technologie, des impératifs commerciaux, des grands courants artistiques. A partir de l’analyse des rapports entre l’image et le texte, il nous conduit à questionner la place de l’album dans l’environnement iconotextuel. Est-il possible de dégager sa singularité et de nous poser la question du genre ? Après avoir repéré aux sources de l’album la rencontre mouvementée de l’image et des mots de la Renaissance au XIXe siècle, nous analysons l’émergence de l’album contemporain, sa séparation avec l’album de bande dessinée entre 1900 et 1939. Nous voyons dans le rapport très particulier qui s’installe entre le support du livre et le fonctionnement de l’iconotexte, la constitution d’un genre de l’entre-deux. / The domain of contemporary picture books for children, in their multiple forms, is inventive and without formalized borders. It is shared between image and text, and presented as a hybrid form at with movable frontiers between illustrated books, picture books, comic books, and graphic novels. Our references are deliberately restrained to concern French language picture books and their development from 1945 to today, with a significant selection of works from author-illustrators. This makes visible the influences that have shaped today’s position: the status of the child in society, impact of technology, commercial needs, and major artistic trends. The analysis of the relationship between image and text takes us to question the place of the album in the iconotextuel environment. Is it possible to separate its singularity and for us to ask questions of the genre? After tracing the sources of picture books with the meeting dynamic of images and words from the Renaissance to the XXIst century, we analyze the emergence of the contemporary picture book, and its separation from comic books between 1900 and 1939. We can see that the very particular relationship that has developed between the physical book and the functioning of the iconotext, has led to the creation of a type between the two.

The genre of comics has had a tumultuous career throughout the twentieth century: it has careened from wildly popular to being perceived as the source of society’s ills. Despite having been relegated to the lowest rung of the artistic ladder for the better part of the twentieth century, comics has been gaining in quality and respectability over the last couple of decades. My introductory chapter provides a broad, basic introduction to the genre of comics––its historical development, its different forms, and a survey of comics criticism over the last thirty years. In chapter two I clarify the nature of comics by comparing it to literature, film, and pictorial art, thereby highlighting its hybrid nature. It has elements in common with all of these, and yet it is a distinct genre. My primary focus is on Chris Ware, whom I introduce in chapter three, a brilliant creator who has garnered widespread recognition and respect. His magnum opus is Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, the story of four generations of Corrigan men, most of whom have been negligent in raising their children. Jimmy Corrigan, as a result, is an introverted, insecure thirty–something–year–old man. Among comics creators Ware is unusual in that his story does not address socio–political issues, like most of his peers, which I discuss in chapter four. Jimmy Corrigan is an isolated tale with a very specific focus. Ware’s narrative is somewhat like those of William Faulkner, whose stories have a narrow focus, revolving around the lives of the inhabitants of Yoknapatawpha county, rather than encompassing the vast landscape of national socio–political concerns. Also, in chapter five I explore the intriguing combination of realist and Gothic elements––normally at opposite ends of the generic continuum––that Ware merges in Jimmy Corrigan. This feature is especially interesting because it is another way that his work explores aspects of hybridity. Finally, in my conclusion I examine the current state of comics in American culture and its future prospects for development and success, as well as the potential for future comics criticism.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:29:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2010-09-03Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:18:25Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 silva_gmm_me_sjrp.pdf: 1107453 bytes, checksum: b7c1601dff0b23fa733972829d44ecf6 (MD5) / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) / O presente trabalho analisa a descentralização do paladino super-heróico na narrativa Invincible (2003), de Robert Kirkman. Para tanto, toma a personagem Super-Homem como arquétipo narrativo de super-herói e modelo criador do conceito paladinesco nos comic books e, por isso, recorta algumas das variadas histórias desta personagem que é narrada desde a década de 40. O enfoque da seleção foram as recriações e re-narrações do universo diegético do Homem de Aço, que, em conjunto com o estudo comparativo da narrativa gráfica de Kirkman, forneceram elementos para observar e comprovar a descentralização do conceito do super-herói paladino. O conceito de descentralização foi retirado das teorias sociais de Zygmund Bauman (2005) e de Stuart Hall (2009), acerca da crise de identidade do sujeito pós-moderno, e compreendido aqui como o deslocamento da identidade, sua liquidez. Portanto, sua aplicação como ferramenta de análise de narrativas é desenvolvida pela evidenciação das relações intertextuais que o universo de Invencível possui com as histórias do Super-Homem, dessa forma, demonstrando por meio das referências textuais, como a mudança dentro do paladino está relacionada a crise de identidade / The present work analyses the super-heroic paladin decentralization in Robert Kirkman‘s narrative, Invincible (2003). Because of this, it takes the Superman character as the narrative archetype and the creator model of the paladin concept in the comic books, so it selects some of the many stories of this character narrated since the 40s. The re-creations and the retelling of the Man of Steel‘s diegetic universe were the focus of the selection to, in union with the comparative study of Robert Kirkman‘s graphic narrative, Invincible (2003), look and prove the super-hero paladin concept‘s decentralization in Kirkman‘s narrative. The decentralization concept is taken from the social theories of Zygmund Bauman (2005) and Stuart Hall (2009) about the post modern subject crisis and its understood here as the identity‘s displacement, it‘s liquidity. Therefore it‘s application as a tool to narrative analyses is developed by the demonstration of the intertextetual relationship that the Invincible universe shows towards Superman stories, thus showing by textual references how the paladin changing is related to the identity crisis

This thesis is a study of four graphic novels that depicts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Palestine (1993) by Joe Sacco, How to Get to Know Israel in 60 Days or Less (2011) by Sarah Glidden, Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me (2014) by Harvey Pekar and JT Waldman, and Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City (2011) by Guy Delisle. By comparing the graphic novels, I study the differences and similarities in regard to postcolonial aspects by applying the theoretical framework of Edward Said concerning the “Other” and the Orient. I study the making of the “Other” in the graphic novels by analyzing the use of time in comics, as well as narratological aspects such as focalization. The making of the “Other” is complicated in graphic novels due to its complex use of time and narratology, where a multitude of perspectives and aspects of time can exist simultaneously. Moreover, the theme of the conflict and concept of the “Other” and is further complicated in the graphic novels’ since the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an ongoing and complex conflict.  This thesis aims to deepen the understanding of how the “Other” is depicted in the material. It also has an ambition to expand the knowledge of the medium by analyzing comics in regard to stereotypes and simplification as well as the comic’s subversive strategies. Furthermore, I analyze the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity in the graphic novels which are often categorized as journalistic comics. In regards to the genre I discuss its relationship with traditional journalism and the school of “New Journalism”.