Generating Openness in Comics

This chapter summarizes the findings of the analyses conducted in Part Two and explains how openness unfolds in aspects regarding both form and content. The means of generating openness in comics are grouped under four broad categories based on ambiguity, suggestiveness, and subversion which are elaborated by beginning with the technical aspects of the medium, in particular its disjointed essence, and moving on to the media references, which often function self-reflexively. The relevance of characters subverting comics conventions is also highlighted. The section then discusses the role of subversive and self-reflexive themes such as autofiction and metafiction. The final section in this part connects comics' increasing indulgence in more allusiveconnections between panels and references to other media to the current prevalence of multimedia and the digital age in general.

Comparisons between Forms of Visual Narration

After tracing the means of generating openness in comics in the genres discussed in the previous chapters, the last chapter of analyses concentrates on related visual narratives such as illustrated novels and artists’ books. This chapter begins with two comics, or graphic novel versions, of literary texts, City of Glass and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. These comics’ adaptations are compared with the transposition of Franz Kafka’s stories in Dave Mairowitz and Robert Crumb’s Introducing Kafka and Oliver Deprez’s version of The Castle. The chapter ends with a discussion of the variety of complex relationships (between words and images as well as images alone) and the role of materiality in artists’ books, comparing them with those discernible in more open comics in order to show how both incorporate indirect and multivalent word-image relationships to create greater interpretational scope, which is frequently complemented by aesthetic appeal.

Fantasy and Science Fiction

This chapter describes and analyzes books where fantasy is the dominant element and acquires vivid degrees of visuality. Adhering to a chronological order, analyses of Moebius’ Arzach, Enki Bilal’s Nikopol trilogy, and Yslaire’sXXeCielare carried out and concluded by comparisons between these works and other popular examples of fantastic comics. In order to underscore the degrees of openness between comics generated by images, JarmoMäkilä’sTaxi Ride through Van Gogh’s Earis then discussed. The importance of Moebius’ books comes through their visual detail and the subsequent encouragement of intensive visuality and experimentation with form usually ascribed to the fine arts. The comics by Bilal, Yslaire, and Mäkilä indicate both the extent and the ways in which conventional comics have been altered:adhering more strongly to comics conventions, Bilal’s and Mäkilä’s comics offer diverse options of interpretation through, for instance, intertextual and intermedial references.

Adventure and Superheroes

This chapter begins with one of the earliest consecutive comics adventure stories to be published, namely Hugo Pratt’s La Ballade de la mersalée.Analyses of Dave McKean and Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum and Neil Gaiman’sSandman: Preludes and Nocturnes then explore how conventions of the typical superhero adventure that have characterized American comics since the 1930s are overturned. The analysis of Edmond Baudoin’sLe Voyage, where the adventures develop in the interlinked internal and external worlds of the protagonist, highlights the scope of meaning harbored in abstract imagery. Since, like Voyage, the adventures in Sandman and Arkhamunfold on more psychological than physical terms, the analyses of the last three comics illustrate the inclination towards more complex subject matter in more comics since the 1980s.

Noir, Black Comedy, and Crime

The works described and analyzed here incorporate features from the noir both visually and in their stories. The first two comics, Tardi’sAdèle Blanc-Sec series and Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell, alter the conventions of crime and mystery in varying degrees. While the Adèleseries adheres to comics conventions, From Hell weaves several perspectives around the case of Jack the Ripper, bringing in a meta-fictional level that problematizes the very telling of the story. Focusing on mortal superheroes deprived of their powers, Marko Turunen and AnnemariHietanen’sDeath Walks on Its Hind Legs and Jyrki Heikkinen’sDr. Futuroincorporate thenoir elements of anti-heroes and hopeless circumstances. Black comedy, which is already rudimentarily present in Adèle, acquires a more self-reflexive facet in the last two comics by subverting the clichés attached to superheroes and underscoring the fine line between the human and the inhuman.

Fictionalized Memories and Biographies

This chapter analyses Will Eisner’s A Contract with God, Jacques Tardi’sIt Was the War of the Trenches, Martin tom Dieck and Jens Balzer'sSalut, Deleuze!, Reinhard Kleist and Roland Hueve’sLovecraft, Hugo Pratt’s Saint-Exupéry, and FrédéricBoilet and KanTakahama’sMariko Parade. A comparative analysis along the dimensions delineated in Part One help in bringing out some of the main features that offer greater room for interpretation in comics. These include a consistent story of a reasonable length that provides room for the story to develop, which is discernible in It Was the War, in contrast to the episodic Contract with God. Other elements brought out include the narration of complex themes such as the philosophical discussions in Salut, Deleuze!, which are also reflected in the comic’s use of motifs and chiaroscuro. Similarly, the collages inLovecraft or the pastels in Saint-Exupéry are also narratively pertinent.

Instrumentalizing Openness

This first part of the monograph introduces Umberto Eco's concept of the opera apertaand links it to the workings of comics as explained through the comics theories of Scott McCloud, Thierry Groensteen, and Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle. The potential for openness in comics is seen as being literalized by the disjointedness and gaps, which are essential to the very form of comics. Specific aspects harbouring the potential for openness are located in various formal and content-related features. The former include the manipulation of word-image relationships, page layouts, and visual styles whereas the latter focus on themes, characters, and references to other media and figuration. This part concludes with an overview of the comics analysed in Part Two.