Eine unglaubliche Metamorphose: Narrative Unzuverlässigkeit in Paul Zwei von Franz Suess

Paul Zwei by Franz Suess is a comic about an extraordinary metamorphosis. Paul, the protagonist of the story, experiences an involuntary and surprising sexual change. At first, Paul feels an itch in his crotch; then his penis disappears. The question of whether this event takes place in the diegetic world or whether Paul imagines it is the subject of this article. It can be anticipated that this complex narrative fits into the strong recent period of German-language comics featuring innovative narrative strategies and thematically topical references related to gender, sexuality, and discrimination. This paper focuses on the narratological examination of the phenomenon of unreliable storytelling in the multimodal medium of comics. This includes the question of the extent to which Paul is or is not an unreliable narrator, the role of visual representation, and the functions that unreliability and ambiguity have on the discourse around gender.