Cut-Up and Redrawn: Reading Charles Burns’s Swipe Files

A term ubiquitous in the comic book industry, swiping has garnered little critical attention in comics theory: yet the concept is one that strongly shapes the comics world by giving a medium-specific term to its own issues of copying, imitation, and borrowing. After recounting two cases where swiping was at stake (Jules Feiffer’s description and the Muñoz/Giffen controversy), this article sets out to examine the practice more closely by focusing on the example of Charles Burns, who has repeatedly professed to swiping while accumulating swipe files. This article reads Burns’s swipe files to examine the formal and narrative stakes of redrawing other comics, while replacing this cultural practice within a longer history.