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+ | ====== How comic books help us to relive our childhood ====== | ||
+ | ~~NewsArticle~~ ~~NOTOC~~ | ||
+ | Author: Benoit Peeters, Professor of Graphic Fiction and Comic Art, Lancaster University | ||
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+ | Traditionally, | ||
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+ | There are certain regressive aspects to our love of comics and “bandes dessinées” (or BD) – as they are known in French, my native language. For example, collectors often pay incredible prices for figurines and old editions. They also have a remarkable desire to keep alive mythical characters after the death of their creator: from [[http:// | ||
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+ | This seems to be something particular to the medium of the comic book. Of course, we remember the novels that we loved during our childhood, but we don’t read and return to them as often as our favourite comics. | ||
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+ | ===== A thirst for innocence ===== | ||
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+ | It’s also possible to admire great works of literature, philosophy and art without the need to return to them compulsively or to spend thousands on first editions. But there is a kind of archaic drive behind our relationship with comics, an inconsolable nostalgia mixed with an irresistible desire to not completely grow up. We dismiss this phenomenon by talking about childishness. But it’s more about a thirst for innocence or permanence that we keep carrying around inside us, and which comics allow us to satisfy easily. | ||
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+ | But of course, this direct link with childhood is only one aspect of graphic fiction. Comics have also been evolving. | ||
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+ | In many modern comics since the 1970s, for example, the heroes are no longer invincible – they are affected by age or their own fragility. Comic book characters increasingly are caught in linear time, which affects and transforms them, just like it does every one of us. Links with others are made and remade, injuries cause real suffering, people, including the heroes themselves, die. They have abandoned the mythic to enter the romantic. | ||
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+ | This new relationship with time is at the heart of many celebrated graphic novels, particularly the two volumes of the Pulitzer prize-winning [[http:// | ||
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+ | In another way, Japanese manga such as My Father’s Journal or A Distant Neighborhood by [[https:// | ||
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+ | A particularly striking example is proposed by [[http:// | ||
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+ | This book moves us, not just because we identify with a character, as we might when watching a film, but because we identify with the medium itself. The pages of Chris Ware’s book evoke a mixture of emotions, primitive and childlike and sophisticated and adult at the same time, that appeal to a whole spectrum of experiences. | ||
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+ | This highly sophisticated graphic novel can help us to understand how comic book art is connected with childhood, even in its most subtle and modern evolutions. | ||
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+ | ===== Drawing donkeys ===== | ||
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+ | The simplicity of comic books is another key feature. Around 1840, [[http:// | ||
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+ | This tells us something about the specific way we perceive caricatures, | ||
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+ | In the midst of the flux of images and art surrounded us, comic books have a special and unforgettable place. They have a remarkable capacity to prolong the life of images well beyond the time of reading. The most remarkable sequences of images continue to live with us, accompanying us for years. | ||
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+ | In this regard, the nearest thing to the comic book is perhaps the song. I don’t think there is any song that we fall in love with immediately: | ||
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+ | //It’s Asterix versus Tintin in a Clash of the Toon Titans for the [[http:// | ||
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+ | <WRAP tip> | ||
+ | Read the whole story at | ||
+ | [[https:// | ||
+ | </ |