Thinking About Comics

Simon Grennan is Leading Research Fellow at the University of Chester, UK. He is an awarded scholar of visual narrative, graphic novelist and cartoonist. He is the author of Drawing in Drag by Marie Duval (2019), A Theory of Narrative Drawing (2017) and Dispossession (2015), one of The Guardian Books of the Year 2015, which is a graphic adaptation of a novel by Anthony Trollope. He is co-author, with Roger Sabin and Julian Waite, of Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist (2020), Marie Duval (2018) and The Marie Duval Archive (2015), co-author of Key Terms in Comics Studies (2021) and co-editor, with Laurence Grove, of Transforming Anthony Trollope: 'Dispossession', Victorianism and 19th-century Word and Image (2015), among others. Since 1990, he has been half of international artists team Grennan & Sperandio, producer of over forty comics and books (www.kartoonkings.com).

• List of Illustrations1. Thinking about Comics1a. Writing, drawing, comics1b. Recognising comics2. The Circumstances of Comics2a. Three sample traditions of producing and using comicsComics, comix and graphic novelsBande dessinéesManga, manhua and manhwa2b. Comics traditions as autography, story and readingAnalysing historic contingencies in comicsGlobalisation is mediatisationProducing culture: comics contingencies by categoryComics’ opportunitiesReading writingDepictionStory and storyworldSpace, time and spatio-topiaPage layout or ‘mise-en-page’Scene-setting or ‘mise-en-scene’Locating the comics userThe narrator’s point of viewMemories of the story and the anticipation of actionKnowing without seeingRepetition and rhythmSequence and seriesSound and silence2c. Bodies as comicsHealthy, unhealthy, diagnostic, medical and palliative comicsBodily behaviourBodily capacities2d. EthicsUnjust comicsSocial motivationsComedy, satire and parodyTruth-telling comics2e. Transforming comicsTransmedia and remediationForiegnisation and domesticationComics without drawingComics and labour3. Comics within DrawingThe different purposes of drawingDrawing defining comicsMarkLineIndex and traceAutographyStyle and voiceVisual languageEnunciation remediatedPhysicality in drawingPolygraphy 4. Emerging Thoughts about ComicsGenerative artificial intelligence and typificationNew and old contingenciesGlossary of Selected Terms in the TextBibliography and Further Reading, by Section