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83 Chapter Four The Hybrid Question Interaction or Fusion? By way of introduction to the widely accepted epithet that “comics are a language,” this chapter tackles the issue of “hybridity” and explores the various ways critics characterize the conjunction of words and images in comics. The French critic Aarnoud Rommens, reviewing the essays collected in The Language of Comics, complains that the hybridity debate is crowded with ill-defined terms such as “partnership” and “integral language ,” which “fuzzy terminology [. . .] suggests its own conceptual inadequacy ” (Rommens 2001: np). Much of the discourse around the issue of verbal-visual interaction does seem to justify this charge. It is indisputable that words and images interact in producing comics’ narratives; however, problems frequently arise when critics attempt to pin down the precise nature of this interaction. Critics often seize upon particular ways of combining image and text as being definitive of the form, though these definitions tend to account for a limited range of possible conjunctions, as we shall see. Furthermore, many critics routinely extrapolate from the notion of an interaction between word and image and posit a total fusion of word and image, suggesting that the two are subsumed into the comics form in a way that “transcends” (Whitlock 2006: 968) or “collapse[s]” (Hatfield 2005: 36) the very distinctions between them. However, a survey into the extensive range of ways comics actually combine words and images presents a challenge to these limiting definitions, exposing the failure of the common critical circumscriptions to account fully for the diverse practices that exist. Furthermore, the idea that words and images fuse into a kind of comics language can be seen to be pervaded by the same defensiveness that motivated the problematic logophobia examined in Part One. Many critics attempt to neutralize the perceived word-image hierarchy by positing comics’ two semiotic modes as being subsumed into a new fusion-form, cast as a unified language in order to further the denial of any boundary lines between them. But though it is Comics as Language 84 true that many word-image combinations rely on a generative trade-off between visual and verbal, this incontestable interaction must necessarily be predicated on there being two distinct components—the prerequisite for any inter-action to be possible. The hybridity issue, at first glance, seems to split the field. Many critics expressly endorse the term, for example, claiming that comics are “a hybrid form of two separate media” (Cohn 2005: 237).1 However, a robust counter strain of critics insist it is “a mistake to see comics as a mere hybrid of the graphic arts and prose fiction” (McCloud 1993: 92).2 Yet any exploration of this apparent opposition soon meets with overlapping terminology. McCloud maintains that comics are not mere hybrids (we will come back to this word “mere” shortly), characterizing them as comprising an “interdependent combination” of words and pictures (1993: 17). This sounds remarkably similar to the “mutual dependence” Harvey describes in sanctioning the term (1996: 4). Harvey, along with Rocco Versaci, further characterizes this “mutual dependence” of words and images as a “blend” (Harvey 1996: 4, Versaci 2008: 13), while Hillary Chute and Marianne DeKoven, who also approve of the term “hybrid,” support it by stating that “verbal and visual narratives do not simply blend together” (2006: 769). Further explication of these opposing stances is offered through distinctly similar descriptive terms like “weave” (Sabin 1996: 8) and “interplay” (Harvey 1996: 9), suggesting that, in part, the disagreement over “hybridity” is a semantic one. Though critics may disagree on the nature of comics’ visual-verbal admixture, the debate is confused by a parallel disagreement over what sort of admixture the term “hybridity” actually connotes—which terminological muddle supports Rommens’s complaints. In part, the contention over terminology can be traced to a widespread desire to distinguish comics from illustrated texts. Most critics are keen to isolate interactions of words and images from other verbal-visual forms, particularly those considered juvenile such as illustrated picture books. This distinction can be demonstrated via two cartoons by Addams Family creator Charles Addams. There is some disagreement over whether singlepanel cartoons should be considered as comics along with cartoons strips, serialized comic books, and graphic novels: generally, they are accepted as belonging to the same tradition, but are excluded by the likes of McCloud in order to privilege the sequential aspect of strips (Cohn 2005: 237). However , these single-panel cartoons enable a clearer...

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