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From Black & White to Color and Back: What Does It Mean (not) to Use Color?
- College Literature
- West Chester University
- Volume 38, Number 3, Summer 2011
- pp. 111-128
- 10.1353/lit.2011.0027
- Article
- Additional Information
This essay deals with the form and function of color in comics, a strongly undertheorized aspect of graphic storytelling. It makes a plea for a holistic approach of color, whose use cannot be separated from the system of narrative in general. From a methodological point of view, it focuses less on the opposition between black and white and color, which is difficult to maintain for in-depth analyses, than on the shift from one system to another. It discusses two main examples that in the 1930s have similarly undergone such a paradigm shift from the monochromatic to the multichromatic, one European (Hergé) and the other American (Herriman).