Comics and Narration

Chapter One. Comics and the Test of Abstraction

9 Chapter one Comics and the Test of Abstraction It is in the nature of experimental works that they shift the boundaries or contest the usual definition of the medium to which they belong. This general rule is particularly applicable to comics, and I have already discussed the difficulties it poses for researchers (see Système 1, 17–21; System 1, 14–17). In that first volume, I did in fact refuse to give a complete and analytical definition of comics, confining myself to the observation that a comic consists necessarily of a finite collection of separate and interdependent iconic elements. In more recent texts, I have taken to quoting the definition proposed by Ann Miller: “As a visual and narrative art, [comics] produce meaning out of images which are in a sequential relationship, and which co-exist with each other spatially, with or without text.”1 An eminently balanced and sensible definition, which, I have written, applies perfectly to the great majority of work produced up until now.2 To the great majority, but not to all. The list of experimental comics that give this definition something of a mauling includes works with no characters, no narration, and no drawing (Jean-Christophe Menu, with characteristic wit, suggests a few more possibilities: archaic, infranarrative, pictogrammatic, and extraterrestrial comics).3 1.1 a new Category One part of this marginal comics production has been labeled and in some sense officially recognized as a category, if not a genre, by the appearance in 2009 of the anthology Abstract Comics published by Fantagraphics and edited by Andrei Molotiu. What exactly are abstract comics? Molotiu distinguishes two types: either sequences of abstract drawings, or sequences of drawings that contain figurative elements, the juxtaposition of which does not produce a coherent narrative. His anthology offers many more examples of the first case than of the second. I would 10 comics and the test of abstraction personally reserve the term abstract comics for the first type, and would call the second type infranarrative comics. This anthology was not completely unprecedented: in its thirteenth volume, the journal Bile noire [Black Bile] (Spring 2003), published in Switzerland by Atrabile, launched a regular feature edited by Ibn al Rabin that was devoted to abstract comics, which had to conform to a rule prohibiting “the representation of any concrete ‘object’ (i.e., one with an unambiguous meaning) other than those belonging to the semantics of the medium itself, in other words speech balloons and panels.” Along with Rabin himself, contributors included Alex Baladi, Guy Delisle, Andreas Kündig, David Vandermeulen, and Lewis Trondheim (only Rabin and Trondheim also appear in Molotiu’s anthology). Trondheim, as is well known, has since produced two small books for the Association in this same vein: the first, Bleu [Blue], is in color, ludic in tone, and visually similar to the work of Miró, and the second, La Nouvelle Pornographie [The New Pornography], is in black and white and is parodic in tone. This minuscule work (from the ‘Patte de Mouche’ [Squiggle (literally “Fly’s Leg”)] collection, 2006, had the particular virtue of proving that the play of abstract forms should not be taken automatically to imply an absence of meaning. In this instance, the artful combinations of black and white graphic forms straightforwardly evoked, even if in a disembodied or metaphorical way, the sexual scenarios promised by the title. But that is an exceptional case. As a general rule, abstract comics demolish Ann Miller’s definition quoted above: they jettison narrative art, sequential relationships , and the production of meaning (subject to some slight reservations that I will mention later). The text introducing the new regular feature in Bile noire, which continued to appear until 2007, also specified that any recourse to a text was “strictly prohibited .” This edict was somewhat surprising in that its author was apparently unaware that, if anyone so decides, words, just as much as images, can be put to incoherent use, become incomprehensible, and contribute to the destruction of meaning. Abstract comics can be approached in a number of ways. We will encounter them later, firstly in relation to the question of rhythm (see below, p. 134–35), and secondly as part of the ongoing dialogue between comics and contemporary art (p. 162). For the moment, my discussion is concerned with them insofar as they re-problematize the very definition of comics. comics and the test of abstraction...