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Comment on Are more countries on their way to having a culture of comic book readers? by pozdRaf

pozdRaf — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 07:45:54 +0000

It is complicated in Poland. Since many years the bestseller has been the series “Thorgal” created by Grzegorz Rosiński and Van Hamme, and of course some comics about superheroes. There is also, however, tha change in the presence of comics in mass-media. There are more and more reviews in newspapers, journals and TV (especially in culture channel TVP Kultura), mostly about serious graphic novels. There is also a precedent this year, because “Przygody na Bezludnej Wyspie” [The Adventures on the Desert Island] by Maciej Sieńczyk has been nominated to the most important and most prestigious Polish literary award “Nike”. It can be compared to Pulitzer for “Maus”. But sale of comics is not growing up (and publishers complain), what can be connected to still quite low salaries (some comics, especially graphic novels, are extremely expensive in Poland), and growing number of titles that are published each year.

Comment on How Do We Quote Comics? by Barbara

Barbara — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 22:33:41 +0000

Thanks, Frank!
About those quotation marks: in the piece Gene linked to in his comment, one of the preliminary questions is whether a panel included in a scholarly article is a quotation or an illustration. This depends on how those panels are used and discussed in the article. If someone is really doing a close reading and discussing details of the panel in depth, then the included panel is a quotation. If they are only there as embellishment, like the images accompanying my own post, then they’re illustration. You say academia fetishizes quotation marks: they become a mark of our diligence as scholars. This is because unmarked quotes are subsumed by our own text and it’s hard to tell where our text ends and the quoted scholar’s starts. This is not a problem with quoting comics panels, which are automatically marked as someone else’s in our text. The exception being of course a study like Scott McCloud’s, which is itself in comics form. Then we need to think of another method to mark quotes. I think that in _Understanding Comics_ any “quoted” panels are marked by accompanying copyright information but nothing else–perhaps another reason for why academics often complain that McCloud’s work isn’t scholarly enough…

Comment on What Should We Think of the Rawhide Kid? by Qiana Whitted

Qiana Whitted — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 14:26:07 +0000

Ugh, that’s really too bad. I enjoyed Frank’s reading of Rawhide Kid and it’s unfortunate that this second series didn’t approach the character in the same way. I wonder what kind of influence Chaykin had on the series?

Comment on What Should We Think of the Rawhide Kid? by Frank Bramlett

Frank Bramlett — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:05:43 +0000

Hi, Roy. Thanks for the nice words about my article on Rawhide Kid!

And your question is a really good one. From a scholarly standpoint, there is much to be debated about the relationship between the 2003 Slap Leather and the 2010 Sensational Seven. I particularly appreciate your question about continuity in the Marvel universe.

On the other hand, from a personal standpoint, I was deeply disappointed in Sensational Seven. There are arguably good reasons for the ‘camp’ perspective in Slap Leather, and I tried to capture at least some of them in my analysis. But Sensational Seven doesn’t seem to be motivated from an artistic (or even humanistic) stance to make productive use of Rawhide Kid’s sexual orientation, his gender, or even his sexuality.

Your post also follows up nicely on Michael’s earlier post about authorship (http://pencilpanelpage.wordpress.com/2013/03/09/how-much-does-authorship-matter-in-comedy/). Zimmerman achieved very different kinds of comics in those two series, and I wonder what he was thinking.

Comment on Can a (comics) image take your breath away? by Frank Bramlett

Frank Bramlett — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 09:26:42 +0000

I heartily agree with Damon. Sometimes I get caught up in the process of linguistic analysis and lose sight of the joy of reading comics. Thanks for a good reminder, Adrielle.

Comment on How Do We Quote Comics? by Frank Bramlett

Frank Bramlett — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 09:14:11 +0000

I had an experience similar to yours when I was working on my book. I had some great correspondence with artists about using their work, and upon reflection, I am struck by your idea that you were “eroding the right of fair use itself.” Better to apologize afterward than ask for permission?

But I have a question about a point you made in the post. You said that when we use comics panels in our scholarship, we don’t put quotation marks around them. I wonder if you could write more about that. You’re right of course, and in some ways academia fetishizes the quotation mark as one of the mightiest of punctuation marks. If we use it properly, we are good people, morally and ethically upstanding. If we use them incorrectly or if we forget to put them in, then we are risking our reputations as trustworthy scholars and perhaps even our very existence in academia.

Thanks for a great post, Barbara!

Comment on How Do We Quote Comics? by Adrielle Mitchell

Adrielle Mitchell — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 01:36:35 +0000

Yep, but just by one very large (general) press. The other two presses were comics publishers, and were quite gracious. I think we made the academic context clear, but I suspect the larger press saw the panels as a reproduction of a work of art (like a self-contained drawing or painting). Which, smile, they are in a way…and yet, not. Which is what makes this question so difficult…

Comment on How Do We Quote Comics? by Barbara

Barbara — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 02:20:40 +0000

Thanks, Adrielle. Were you in fact asked to pay fees, upon seeking permissions?
Often the wording of the request makes a difference, like making clear up front that the use is not commercial but academic, and that you/the publisher don’t have funds to pay for permissions. But again, it is unfortunate that there doesn’t appear to be a generally accepted standard for this.

Comment on How Do We Quote Comics? by Adrielle Mitchell

Adrielle Mitchell — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 02:13:21 +0000

These are important and sticky questions, Barbara, and I agree with you that the fair use issue has not been fully hammered out in this field. I second Gene’s lament that it is taking so long to work this out, too. Most of the journals I have published with are comfortable seeing the use of a few panels from a given work as fair use, recognizing that they represent a very small percentage of the whole work, but one journal (one, needless to say, that hadn’t yet published very much on comics) insisted on having me acquire permissions from the publishers at my expense. This was not a heartening experience.

Comment on How Do We Quote Comics? by Barbara

Barbara — Fri, 31 May 2013 19:27:54 +0000

Thanks for the link, Gene. It is sad that the same battles keep popping up, but this is also the result of new publishers (and authors, I guess) taking on publishing comics theory. If nothing else, it does show the field is expanding.