History of Comics

You want to study comics but are uncertain about where and how to start? In this book (in comics form!) we cover some of the main aspects to take into account when reading comics. From how comics are produced and read to the various approaches to studying them. From comics traditions and genres around the world to their distribution methods. With a Further reading section and an interview with Nick Sousanis.

Published in: Kees Ribbens & Rik Sanders, Getekende tijd. Wisselwerking tussen geschiedenis en strips (Utrecht 2006)


Ook stripverhalen dragen bij aan het beeld van het verleden. Dit boek wil daar op bescheiden wijze aandacht aan besteden, en wel aan de hand van zowel Nederlandse als buitenlandse (maar hier veelal evenzeer bekende) stripverhalen en ‐figuren. We zullen beginnen met een poging tot het definiëren van het begrip strip‐ een discussie die al geruime tijd tal van betrokkenen binnen en buiten de wetenschappelijke wereld bezighoudt. In een eerste hoofdstuk zal vervolgens, met een accent op Nederland, de geschiedenis van de strip worden verkend , waarmee de meest voor de hand liggende combinatie van geschiedenis & strips behandeld wordt. [...] In het vierde hoofdstuk wordt ingezoomd op een specifiek element uit de combinatie geschiedenis & strip en zien we hoe stripmakers het idee van tijdreizen door middel van tijdmachines gestalte hebben gegeven.

What connects two panels placed side by side? The default answer, more often than not, is ›narrative.‹ Scott McCloud, for one, calls for an unravelling of the »[m]ysteries surrounding the invisible art of comics storytelling« (74). Issue #8 of CLOSURE contests this narrative reduction and uncovers a non-narrative art of comics beyond storytelling. From a variety of perspectives, our articles show how comics subtract narrative, withhold closure, stall storytelling – and theorize the unfamiliar formal, abstract, nonfictional or poetic constellations that emerge as a result. »Must Narrative Be Renounced?« (Groensteen, 174) Our contributors experimentally answer ›yes‹ to this question and outline the logical, affective, designed connections that emerge in place of narrative.

Although our issue investigates non-narrative comics beyond the diegetic, beyond sequence, or beyond character, it is not solely dedicated to the absence of familiar modes of storytelling. Rather, we ask about the reservoir of possibilities obscured by the notion of an eventful, narrative-inducing change of state knitting together dispersed panels. ›Abstraction,‹ particularly, makes itself felt once the continuity of drawn characters and their spatio-temporal development is suspended. However, rather than a subgenre of ›abstract comics‹ deliberately poised at the experimental limits of the medium, non-narrative can be explored as an affordance that always already undergirds comics forms. From this angle, non-narrative is a substrate, a potential for story-suspension that exploits the basic building blocks of comics:
their double perspective on sequence and layout; their braiding of dissimilar signs; their changeable distribution of textual and visual elements; their marks on the page that do not have to coalesce into narrative worlds. This movement » beyond the diegetic and the narrative« (Molotiu, 87) finds prototypical expression in abstract and experimental comics, yet is not exhausted by them. Consequently, our articles also locate the possibility of non-narrative in the margins of popular storyworlds and propulsive plots.

The  boom  cycle  of  Chilean  vineyards  and heritage wines is examined through the satirical magazine Topaze    (1931-1970).    This    political    magazine    was published  in  the  period  in  which  the  patrimonial  viticulture of  Chile  was  in  its  high  cycle,  both  due  to  the  high consumption  of  the  domestic  market  (50  liters  per  capita) and  the  extension  of  its  vineyards  (50  hectares),  figures much  higher  than  the  current  ones  (14  liters  and  15 thousand  hectares  respectively).  It  is  detected  that  that apogee  was  related  to  the  high  popular  valuation  of  wine as  a  drink  of  social  integration,  and  not  of  distinction  or status,  within  the  framework  of  the  boom  in  marketing methods  that  were  not  controlled  by  large  companies  or their brands. On the contrary, the wine was distributed and sold  loose,  in  traditional  returnable  containers  (chuicos). Topaze magazine made visible and valued the symbols of traditional wine drinks, such as wine and chicha, and their symbolic  containers  such  as  chuicos  and  cachos.  The legal  prohibition  of  the  sale  of  loose  wine,  from  the amendment    to    the    wine    law    (1968),    and    the disappearance  of  communication  media  such  as  Topaze, sensitized to the cultural dimension of wine, contributed to the  decline  in  the  popular  dimension  of  wine  in  Chile,  the fall  of  the  domestic  market  and  the  decline  in  heritage vineyards