What Happens When Nothing Happens

Greice Schneider is associate professor of communication at the Universidade Federal de Sergipe (Brazil).

• ForewordAcknowledgementsIntroduction What Is Interesting about Boredom? Defining a Slippery Corpus Two Approaches and Three Authors Part One: The Relationship between Comics and Everyday Life and BoredomChapter One. A Brief History of Boredom Boredom and Modernity: New Words for a New Feeling Avoiding or Enduring Boredom? Heidegger and the Phenomenology of Boredom Benjamin and the Atrophy of Experience Chapter Two. Boredom and the Everyday in Comics Keeping Boredom Away Gag a Day: Repetition and Variation in Comic Strips Escaping Tediousness: Super-hero Comic Books and BDs From Underground Comix to Alternative Comics In Praise of the Loser Gender and Boredom in Alternative Comics The Joy and the Burden of the Comics Artist Chapter Three. Four Approaches Towards the Everyday Grasping the Everyday Observational Humour Derisive Humour Ennui Contemplation Part Two: The Ambiguity of Boredom in Terms of an Aesthetic PhenomenonChapter Four.The Poetics of Boredom A Dynamics of Boredom and Interest The Paradox of Boredom A Plea for Attention Slowness and Speed Repetition and Variation Minimalism and Excess On Gestures and Facial Expressions Part Three: The Narratological Perspective of the Dialectics of BoredomChapter Five. Boredom as a Narratological Concept Uneventful Eventfulness And So What? Tellability and the 'Point' of the Story On Boredom and Narrative Tension Chapter Six. What Happens When Nothing Happens Linearity and Tabularity in Narrative Tension Defying the Cliffhanger Open-Ended Everyday and Diary Comics When Suspense Is Suspended Expectation Becomes the Event Eventfulness: Too Much or Too Little? Part Four: Focus on the Works of Lewis Trondheim, Chris Ware and Adrian TomineChapter Seven. The Little Nothings of Lewis Trondheim Minimalism, Constraints and Repetition Rabbits and Dungeons in a Neo-Baroque Farce The Drama of Having Nothing to Tell Chapter Eight. Adrian Tomine: Lost Gazes, Detached Minds From Mini-Comics to Graphic Novels and Back to Floppies In Praise of Apathy in the Name of Honesty Graphic Transparency and Linear Reading Reticent Endings and Suspended Gaze Chapter Nine. Chris Ware: Resisting Narrative Immersion Against Immersion Temporal Immersion: In Defence of Slow Reading Emotional Immersion: Clear Line and Graphic Empathy Spatial Immersion: Playing with Page Layout (Un)eventfulness in Building Stories Against Distraction Conclusion Notes Works Cited Bibliography

Dat de strip volwassen was geworden wisten we al lang, maar met dit soort studies wordt pas duidelijk dat strips en graphic novels serieus als zevende kunst kunnen worden aangemerkt. Een aanrader voor iedere stripliefhebber.Moors Magazine