Alternative comics

Grice's proposals have aroused much interest in researchers during the last
decade, especially since Sperber & Wilson applied those ideas to a new
Principle of Relevance. Grice developed a set of conversational postulates -
maxims in his terminology- that accounted for the speakers' overall effort to
develop their conversational interactions in a cooperative way (his so-called
Cooperative Principle). In this article we propose a new application of
Grice's maxims in a medium which is both verbal and visual: English
alternative comics. The main hypothesis underlying this paper is that comic
artists, willing to outline a clear-cut three-fold picture of English social
classes (low, middle, high), tend to characterize their characters' speech in
such a way that Grice's maxims are violated in class-specific ways according
to what social stratum they belong to. Therefore, Grice's maxims turn out to
acquire a social significance which was not intended in Grice's conversational
maxims.

Resumo: Este trabalho apresenta um estudo da produção editorial alternativa de histórias em quadrinhos no Brasil na década de 1980. A pesquisa teve como objeto três pequenas editoras de São Paulo da época (Circo Editorial, Editora D-Arte e VHD-Diffusion) e objetivou analisar as publicações de quadrinhos dessas editoras e relacionar seu conteúdo com as transformações ocorridas no âmbito das narrativas sequenciais impressas e à conjuntura política, econômica e cultural do país e do mundo.

Abstract: This article presents a study of the alternative editorial production of comics in Brazil in the 80s. The  researchfocusedthreesmallpublishingcompanies of that time (Circo Editorial, EditoraD-Arte e VHD-Diffusion) and intended to analyze the comics publications of thesepublishers and to relate its contents with the transformations in the field of sequentialgraphic narratives and with the political, economical and cultural conjuncture of the country and the world.

Link: http://seer.uscs.edu.br/index.php/revista_comunicacao_inovacao/article/view/1023

Alternative comics are typically defined by the supposed absence of superheroes and other mainstream genres, yet these genres have appeared repeatedly in key examples of alternative comics, including works by Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns, Art Spiegelman, and Jaime Hernandez. These cartoonists' use of mainstream genres takes the form of what I call 'genre-splicing,' the combination of two or more genres in a way that fragments the fictional reality of the work or violates the norms of the genres employed. Genre-splicing provides a vehicle for many effects and aims, including thematic development, narrative pleasure, self-reflexivity, and disjunctive disruption. Alternative cartoonists' use of genre-splicing not only punctures the myth that alternative comics are defined by mainstream genres' absence, it also challenges the description of alternative comics as adult, literary, and artistic, in contrast to the juvenile and commercial nature of most mainstream comics. Despite their contradictions , however, alternative and mainstream are nevertheless useful terms whose ambiguities and contradictions mirror those of the cultural practices they describe.

Critiques of the objectification of female characters in comics have often focused upon depictions within the superhero genre (cf. Avery-Natale 2013; Cocca 2014; Nelson 2015). Such arguments adopt the framework of Laura Mulvey's 'Male Gaze' (1975) to assess the costuming, physical physique, and narrative role given to such characters. In one comment on similar controversies, Neil Cohn (2014) has argued for a greater emphasis upon the visual language used in objectifying depictions that does not get caught up in debates over realism since, he argues, comics are unconcerned with reality. Autobiographical comics, however, now form a significant part of the comics market and scholarship (cf. Schlichting and Schmid 2019). A tension exists between the rhetorical mode of visual metaphor exploited by comics (cf. Venkatesan and Saji 2021) and the appeal to authenticity made by non-fiction (cf. El Refaie 2012). Focusing on autobiographical comics-here, some published between 1991 and 2018-allows us to assess how sexual objectification operates within comics without the issue being clouded by irresolvable appeals to reality in the fundamentally escapist/ fantastic superhero genre. The visual language in the comics by Chester Brown, Joe Matt, and David Heatley has been criticized for reducing the 'other' to a series of more stagnant, occluded, and restrictive graphic patterns than afforded to their author surrogates. Ariel Schrag's work, meanwhile, points towards possible means of avoiding such tendencies in future autobiographical comics.

The Comics Journal, the premiere venue for comics criticism in the United States since its inception in 1977, built its reputation on its harsh criticism of mainstream comics and its championing of alternative comics, but the Journal did not arrive fully at this position for two decades. During this time its critical perspective was complex and contradictory, with the Journal continuing to hold out hope for the eventual improvement of superhero comics. However, the Journal focused most of its critical energies on what were known at the time as groundlevel comics, small, independently published comics that utilised the genres of science fiction, fantasy, horror and superheroes. The Journal largely ignored alternative comics until the late 1980s, and it wasn’t until the 1990s that the Journal fully embraced them as the driving force for the evolution and improvement of American comics.

Between 2006 and 2007, L’Association have published the three issues of L’Éprouvette. These are, among other, illustrated by thirty-four images that are hugely enlarged fragments of comic’s panels. By comparing this with similar realizations (the exhibition Bande dessinée et Figuration narrative, the column « Cases mémorables » of the journal Les Cahiers de la bande dessinée), this paper asks about what it means reproducing comics’ fragments. It also tries to analyze the role played by these images within the journal and the links with the rest of the content. Endlessly, still by putting it in prospect with the realizations here above mentioned, it tries to see in what extent these images reflect a certain view about the history of the comic.

Entre 2006 et 2007, L’Association a publié les trois numéros de la revue L’Éprouvette. Ceux-ci sont notamment illustrés par trente-quatre hors-texte présentant des fragments de cases fortement agrandies. En les confrontant avec des réalisations comparables (l’exposition Bande dessinée et Figuration narrative, la rubrique « Cases mémorable » dans Les Cahiers de la bande dessinée), cet article s’interroge sur ce qu’implique la reproduction de fragments. Il tente aussi de déterminer le rôle joué par ces images au sein de la revue et les liens qu’elles entretiennent avec le reste du contenu. Enfin, toujours en les mettant en perspective avec les réalisations évoquées plus haut, il analyse dans quelle mesure ces images esquissent les contours d’une certaine histoire de la bande dessinée.

The philosopher Paul Grice outlined several Maxims around a Cooperative Principle that accounted for speakers' cooperative attitude in the conversations in which they participate. His ideas have been applied extensively to discourse analysis from a pragmatic perspective. However, in the case of alternative comics the flouting of the Maxims is not so much an overt expression of cooperation, as an effective tool of social stratification. The hypothesis underlying this book is that when comic characters violate the Cooperative Principle in class-specific ways the boundaries between the social classes are reinforced, and therefore a clearer threefold picture of English society (low, middle, high) is presented to the reader simply because of the exploitation of several uncooperative discourse strategies.

En este artículo nos centramos en dos libros de reciente aparición, "Informe: Historieta Argentina del Siglo XXI" y "La Historieta en el (Faulduo) Mundo Moderno" para trazar una evolución de la historieta argentina en relación al problema del canon, el vínculo con el arte, la influencia de Oscar Masotta como primer teórico nacional de la misma y el relevo generacional. Ambas obras establecen una relación con el pasado y con el futuro que apunta a la introducción de nuevas influencias en la historieta nacional y a su más estrecho contacto con el campo del arte, a la vez que dan visibilidad a nuevas expresiones estéticas y plásticas dentro del arte del comic.

The philosopher Paul Grice outlined several Maxims around a Cooperative Principle that accounted for speakers' cooperative attitude in the conversations in which they participate. His ideas have been applied extensively to discourse analysis from a pragmatic perspective. However, in the case of alternative comics the flouting of the Maxims is not so much an overt expression of cooperation, as an effective tool of social stratification. The hypothesis underlying this book is that when comic characters violate the Cooperative Principle in class-specific ways the boundaries between the social classes are reinforced, and therefore a clearer threefold picture of English society (low, middle, high) is presented to the reader simply because of the exploitation of several uncooperative discourse strategies.

"Grice's proposals have aroused much interest in researchers during the last decade, especially since Sperber & Wilson applied those ideas to a new Principle of Relevance. Grice developed a set of conversational postulates - maxims in his terminology- that accounted for the speakers' overall effort to develop their conversational interactions in a cooperative way (his so-called Cooperative Principle). In this article we propose a new application of Grice's maxims in a medium which is both verbal and visual: English alternative comics. The main hypothesis underlying this paper is that comic artists, willing to outline a clear-cut three-fold picture of English social classes (low, middle, high), tend to characterize their characters' speech in such a way that Grice's maxims are violated in class-specific ways according to what social stratum they belong to. Therefore, Grice's maxims turn out to acquire a social significance which was not intended in Grice's conversational maxims."