Random records through the 2017 ComFor conference

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Random records through the 2017 ComFor conference

Regular readers for this blog might have wondered why, after 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015, there was clearly no blogpost from the 2016 ComFor (German Society for Comics Studies) seminar. There clearly was a straightforward reason behind that: we hadn’t attended year’s conference that is last. Fourteen days ago, nonetheless, we took the journey to Bonn where this year’s conference (subject: “Comics and their Popularity”) happened. Take note that listed here records aren’t designed to acceptably summarise the particular seminar paper; alternatively they’re rather subjective and random – thus the name with this blogpost.

The seminar began on Friday, December 1 aided by the Workshops” that is“Open.e. Documents not in the meeting theme of “Comics and their Popularity”.

  • The presentation that is first by Zita Husing (Bonn) on “Being and Nature: the importance of this Southern Space associated with the Swamp in Alan Moore’s The Saga associated with the Swamp Thing” for which she submit connections between tropes regarding the United states South and Swamp Thing, e.g. That both are difficult to kill – no matter just how defectively they’re maimed or burned down, they constantly keep coming back through the dead. Like was remarked into the conversation afterward, nevertheless, it is interesting how article writers after Moore, such as for example Jeff Lemire, have actually expanded Swamp Thing’s backstory into a cosmology that shifts the focus through the regional towards the international.
  • Into the paper that is second “Batwing, Batflugel oder Flugel-Bat. Die onimischen Einheiten im Comic” (“onimic devices in comics” – all translations mine), Rafal Jakiel (Wroclaw) viewed the names (poetonyms) of characters in superhero comics and identified traits such as for instance their simple iconicity: as an example, Killer Croc is merely a murderous guy who seems like a crocodile.
  • Daniela Kaufmann (Graz) then offered “A Study in monochrome. Zur Signifikanz der Farben Schwarz und Wei? im Comic” (“on the importance associated with the tints black colored and white in comics”). Beginning with Kazimir Malevich’s Ebony Square – showcased e.g. In Nicolas Mahler’s comic Lulu und das Schwarze Quadrat – she proceeded to Krazy Kat together with ambiguity that is racial of its creator George Herriman and its own eponymous protagonist.
  • This is accompanied by Elisabeth Krieber‘s (Salzburg) paper on “Subversive feminine shows in artistic Media – Phoebe Gloeckner’s and Alison Bechdel’s Graphic Narratives” which additionally considered the adaptation that is musical of Residence in addition to movie adaptation of Diary of a Teenage woman.

Unfortuitously we missed the following two speaks by Karoline M. Pohl and Sakshi Wason, correspondingly, whom shut the “Open Workshops” section after which it the documents regarding the “Popularity” theme began.

  • The presentation that is next attended ended up being by Veronique Sina (Cologne / Tubingen) on “Comickeit is Judischkeit. Uber das diskursive Zusammenspiel von Comic, Popularkultur und judischer Identitat” (“on the discursive interplay of comics, popular tradition, and Jewish identity”). Her examples that are main the comics of Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Harvey Pekar, and she additionally talked about Jonas Engelmann’s theory of popular tradition while the dissolution of identity.
  • Pnina Rosenberg (Haifa) mentioned “Mickey au camp de Gurs: governmental criticism and automobile censorship in comics done through the Holocaust”, for which she provided three photo publications created by Hans Rosenthal during their internment at a concentration camp in 1942.
  • The keynote that is first of meeting was presented with by Julia Round (Bournemouth), en en titled “Canon or typical? Sandman, Aesthetics, Intertextuality and Literariness”. She talked about the ongoing challenge about the status of comics generally speaking and Sandman in specific as literary works (also: high vs. Low art, “graphic novels” vs. Comic publications), exactly just just how this will be impacted by the intimate writer notion around Neil Gaiman (“Mr Gaiman could be the Sandman” – Clive Barker), and exactly how this discourse comes towards the fore in fan talks at neilgaimanboard.com.

Saturday, December 2:

  • In their talk on “Batmans queere Popularitat. Ein comicwissenschaftlicher und kulturhistorischer Annaherungsversuch” (“Batman’s queer popularity. A method through the viewpoint of comics studies and social history”), Daniel Stein (Siegen) talked about how Batman is appropriated as homosexual by some visitors, while some are gripped by ‘queer anxiety’, i.e. The fear that their beloved character might formally be homosexual.
  • Laura Antola‘s (Turku) paper “Marvel’s Comics in Finland: Translation, ‘Mail-Man’ together with appeal of superheroes” portrayed the eccentric figure of ‘Mail-Man’, a real-life translator and editor whom additionally replied fan mail within the page pages of Finnish Marvel comics from 1980 forward.
  • “Das Popula(e)re und das Signifikante. Der Comic als Antwort auf die Krise liberaler Erzahlungen? ” (“The popular together with significant. Comics as a response to your crisis of liberal ” that is narratives by Mario Zehe (Leipzig) talked about Economix by Goodwin/Burr, Le Singe de Hartlepool by Lupano/Moreau, and fortunate Luke: Los Angeles Terre vow by Jul/Achde as types of comics that reveal the restrictions of cosmopolitanism.
  • Stephan Packard (Cologne) mentioned “President Lex Luthor, Wakanda und der osteuropaische Schwarzwald. Zur popularen Ideologie der Fiktionalitat in Comics” (“President Lex Luthor, Wakanda in addition to Eastern European Black Forest. From the popular ideology of fictionality in comics”) additionally the connection that is sometimes problematic fictional things and their real-world counterparts. A striking instance is the current “Alien Nation” tale from Captain Marvel vol. 1 (2017) which can be partly set into the “Black Forest”, albeit A black colored woodland that does not look such a thing just like the genuine one in Southern Western Germany and it is positioned, based on a caption, in “Eastern Europe” big dick male models. Packard unfolded a tight theoretical framework which included the kinds of fiction concept talked about by Marie-Laure Ryan for instance the ‘principle of minimal departure’, but also Theodor Adorno’s ‘categorical imperative regarding the tradition industry’, and others.

Lecture hallway IX at Bonn University during David Turgay’s talk. Photograph by Ronny Bittner

The next paper had been David Turgay‘s (Landau) extremely interesting “Das alternate im Popularen: Eine korpusgestutzte Analyse von Mainstream-Comics” (“the alternative within the popular: a corpus-based analysis of mainstream comics”) in which he examined the panels of 150 US comic books from 1996 and from 2016 pertaining to six criteria: politics / social critique, narrative peculiarities, artistic peculiarities, metafictional elements, absence of fighting, and lack of text. The outcome for the analysis revealed an increase that is significant of requirements with time, but general these faculties (which David Turgay interpreted while the impact of separate comics) nevertheless took place less often in 2016 than anticipated.

  • Inside the presentation on “Der Fluch der Graphic Novel aus (hochschul)didaktischer Sicht” (“the curse for the visual novel through the perspective of (tertiary) training”), Markus Oppolzer (Salzburg) talked about the dreaded g-word once more, but he additionally talked about Conan the Librarian through the movie UHF – being a librarian myself, We can’t think I had never ever been aware of him before!
  • Dietrich Grunewald (Reiskirchen) talked about “Grenzganger. Comics Bildende that is und Kunst (“border crossers. Comics and art” that is fine and exactly how art work such as for example paintings are utilized in comics, e.g. As background details in Volker Reiche’s Strizz.
  • Christian A. Bachmann‘s (Bochum) share ended up being most likely the one with all the longest name: “Slippers and music are extremely various things, oder: von high key to low key. Zur Darstellung popularer Musik in Bildergeschichten diverses 19. Und Comics des fruhen 20. Jahrhunderts” (“from high key to key that is low. From the depiction of popular music in image tales associated with the nineteenth and comics associated with the early twentieth century”). Among their examples had been Billy DeBeck’s Barney Bing and Richard F. Outcault’s Buster Brown.
  • Kirsten von Hagen (Gie?en) introduced a paper on “Tintin und die Recherche: Von der ‘ligne claire’ Herges zu den synasthetischen Traumsequenzen bei Heuet” (“Tintin and also the recherche: from Herge’s ‘ligne claire’ to Heuet’s synesthetic fantasy sequences”). Stephane Heuet adapted Marcel Proust’s searching for Lost Time as a few comic volumes utilizing a ligne claire design.
  • Martin Lund (Vaxjo / brand brand brand New York) offered the keynote that is second “Jack T. Chick, a well known Propagandist”. With more than 260 ‘Chick tracts’ since 1961 of which a calculated 900 million copies have now been distributed, Chick may have been “the most commonly distributed comics creator in the field” (Darby Orcutt 2010 – but see also https: //en. Wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_comic_series). Chick’s comics really are a wellspring of real information on subjects such as for instance development, abortion and environment change; as an example, did you know warming that is“global pray to Ixchel“, the Mayan “goddess for the moon and creativity”? But really: in accordance with Martin Lund, the Chick tracts had been never ever meant to transform unbelievers to Chick’s beliefs that are twisted but instead to reassure the individuals whom currently had been on their part.

    • Sunday, December 3:

    • Michael Wetzel‘s (Bonn) paper had been en en titled Auteurism‘ that is“‘Graphic Kreativitat und Copyright im Comic” (“On imagination and copyright in comics”). A fascinating theory ended up being that the most popular idea of a ‘Romanticist idea of authorship’ is flawed because Romanticist writers such as for instance E. T. A. Hoffmann actually deconstructed authorship.