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51 Chapter Four An Extension of Some Theoretical Propositions In System 1, I devoted myself at some length to the description and examination of the basic units of comics language: the balloon, the panel, the strip, and the page, analyzing how they are deployed and interact with each other; the actualization of these units in the spaces, frames and sites of the album makes up what I have proposed to call a spatio-topical system. When I drew out those observations , I claimed only that they applied to comics, more specifically to Western comics, and to comics appearing in the sole format that we were familiar with at that time, namely print. The evolution of the medium, along with the fact that some of the concepts elaborated in System 1 have been appropriated for the description of objects of study outside my original corpus, have led me to reflect on the limits of the field of application of the concepts I put forward back then. In this chapter, I will widen my investigation to include three specific areas I did not take account of in the previous book: children’s comics, manga, (particularly shōjo manga), and interactive digital comics. Through a close investigation of these three new corpora , I will seek to identify what makes them distinctive, and to arrive at any new concepts that are necessary for their understanding; but it is highly likely that through their very differences, these new branches of graphic literature will shed new light on the “classic” comics that already have a complete descriptive framework . Implicit in this new endeavor is a reexamination of those classic comics, conducted from the margins and the borders. 4.1 illustrated Children’s Books From a publishing perspective, the illustrated children’s book sector is, in many countries (from France to South Korea), easily as dynamic as the comics sector , even if it is of lesser concern to theoreticians of the medium. As well as 52 an extension of some theoretical Propositions sharing the “album” label,1 these books are similar to comics in that they tell a story by harnessing the power of both text and drawings; where they differ is in their slimmer pagination and lesser narrative breadth, which are adapted to their younger readership, and in the fact that they do not normally feature either the partitioning of space typical of comics (the division of the page into strips and strips into panels) or the integration of dialogue into the image by means of speech balloons. These differences can sometimes be attenuated, as there is a certain permeability between the two areas. Some illustrated children’s books could quite reasonably be called comics;2 if they are not regarded as such, this is solely on account of their positioning by the publishing industry (inclusion in a children’s series, on the list of a specialized children’s publisher, and, consequently, in the children ’s section of bookstores). A book like Rupert Bear, in England, seems to fall into an intermediate category, characterized both by the sequential apparatus that typifies comics and by a dissociation between text and image that realigns it with the illustrated book. Moreover, it is possible to trace a lineage of first-rate artists—from Peter Newel and Tove Jansson right down to Dave McKean, Posy Simmonds and Richard McGuire—who have put their talents to use in both areas.3 It should be acknowledged that the children’s literature sector is artistically very rich, with a diversity of styles and graphic techniques that matches that of comics, as well as a great variety of formats. The report entitled Lire l’Album [Reading Illustrated Children’s Books]4 by Sophie Van der Linden, who for many years played a key role at the Institut Charles Perrault in Eaubonne in the Greater Parisian region, gives an excellent overview of the particularities of this sector of the publishing market. Van der Linden is kind enough to mention The System of Comics as an “influential guide” and to take on board some of its analyses concerning, for example, the functions of the frame. I note, however, a general convergence between her approach and mine, especially when she writes that critics should “take as their starting point the particularity of the work, and understand how it forms a coherent whole in which all the elements, combined together, are meaningful.”5 With the aid of judicious borrowings from comics theory (Fresnault-Deruelle, McCloud, Morgan, and Peeters...

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