Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Role Of Culture In Comics Of The Quotidian, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

Studies of the quotidian often start from a social sciences perspective that daily life is made up of routine practices and ingrained assumptions. This is also found in studies of literature, art and economics. The premise of the quotidian, however, must be examined through a lens of culture. This essay explores how the notion of the quotidian in comics rests on culture, which in turn comprises various nexus of practice. Drawing evidence from Exit Wounds (by Rutu Modan) and Questionable Content (by Jeph Jacques), the essay extends the notion of the quotidian from a specific reference to ‘slice of life …

Making And Breaking The Superhero Quotidian: How All-Star Superman Embodies And Revises The Everyday, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

This essay explores the idea of the everyday in All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. Scholars identify the everyday, or the quotidian, as including routine behaviors and ingrained assumptions (e.g., Borland and Sutton), and the construct of the quotidian as culture has been explored in comics (Bramlett). Depending on circumstances, characters may navigate the Metropolis cityscape or the Kent farm, take trips to the moon, explore the Daily Planet office building, and meet otherworldly heroes and villains. Even though much of the world of the superhero is extraordinary and wondrous to readers, the characters themselves nevertheless have a …

Are More Countries On Their Way To Having A Culture Of Comic Book Readers?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

his week (starting Monday 10 June 2013), CNN is broadcasting stories every day in a series called Comic Book Heroes. The series will ‘take a look at the writers, artists, films and characters in this global industry.’ The first video in the series is called ‘The Booming World of Comic Books,’ and it is a rather wide-ranging look at the relationship between superhero comic books and the movies that are based on them.

Several men** are interviewed for this piece. Stan Lee describes superhero stories as ‘fairy tales for grown-ups. [Fairy tales] were stories about monsters and witches and …

Which Is Frank’S Favorite Post By Roy?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

For my part in the retrospective, I have the pleasure of revisiting Roy’s questions to choose my favorite from. One of my top three is ‘Does the Joker Have Six-Inch Teeth?,’ and another is ‘What the $#@& is Happening to 1986?’ The post about the Joker’s dentition is a great example of Roy’s thinking about the characteristics and conventions, the very nature of comics. On the other hand, the post about 1986 dwells centrally on the relationship that comics have with audiences and, especially, the…uhm…business practices that for good and for ill run alongside.

But for …

Are Rage Comics Really Comics?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

A couple of years ago, some of my undergraduate students and I were talking about comics, and one of them mentioned rage comics. I hadn’t heard of that before, so I was grateful to learn about them. In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a Redditor, and I don’t ever spend time on Reddit. But in August 2012, when I finally upgraded to a smart phone from my previous dumb phone, I downloaded the Rage Comics app. Every now and again, when I’m on the bus headed to work, I scroll through some of these comics.

Most of …

When Is A (Comic Book) House A (Comic Book) Home?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

I recently made a rather significant move from Omaha, Nebraska to Stockholm, Sweden. I accepted a visiting lecturer position in the English Department at Stockholm University, where I am teaching a variety of linguistics courses and supervising student research projects.

One part of moving is that I had to say goodbye to my home comic book store, Legend Comics in Omaha. I had to shut down my pull file, and I already miss being able to sit in the coffee shop there, browsing comics and getting my caffeine buzz on. Back in May, Legend also hosted my book release party …

How Do We Read Comics Of The Quotidian? (Part Iii Of A Series), Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

For the final installment of this series about comics and representations of everyday life, I will be considering a short comic by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá called “Happy Birthday, My Friend!” The collection of comics is called De:TALES and its subtitle isStories from Urban Brazil, which describes the setting of each story perfectly: city streets, restaurants, night clubs, homes, art museums.

To me, the idea of a birthday seems pretty routine. After all, everybody has a birthday and birthdays happen every day. On the other hand, each person has only one birthday each year (the complications of …

How Do We Read Comics Of The Quotidian? (Part Ii Of A Series), Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

In my previous post on the textures of the everyday, I explored the blend of everyday occurrences during wartime. How do people who live during times of war construct their day-to-day lives?

In this post, I want to extend the notion of the quotidian to a popular web comic calledQuestionable Content. This daily comic, created by Jeph Jacques, is about the lives of urban twenty-somethings, some of whom work at a coffee shop or at a library, but all of whom are attempting to create and maintain friendships and romances as well as trying to figure out what …

How Do We Read Comics Of The Quotidian? (Part I Of A Series), Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

In two separate posts on Pencil Panel Page, Qiana Whitted and Aaron Meskin have explored the way comics readers engage with images. (Click here to read Qiana’s post and click here to read Aaron’s.) Specifically, they engage Scott McCloud’s claim that readers identify with drawn images of human beings. To quote McCloud, “when you look at a photo or realistic drawing of a face–you see it as the face of another. But when you enter the world of the cartoon–you see yourself” (36).

My question in this post has not to do with images but rather with narrative. When …

Does Alan Moore Have The (Untranslatable) Approach To Translation?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

We’ve all experienced it: that moment when we’re reading a sci-fi story or watching a sci-fi movie about alien contact and we realize that everyone is speaking the same language….usually English. Early Star Trek episodes are sometimes lampooned for this Anglo-centric stance. So the question for us is this: how does everyone know the same language?

Authors and artists approach the problem of cross-linguistic translation in multiple ways. (In this post, I’m conflating translation and interpretation under the term translation, but these are different linguistic processes.) Fans of Doctor Who, for example, know that the TARDIS facilitates the ‘automatic’ translation …

How Do The Absurd And The Realistic Blend In Comic Strips?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

One of my favorite webcomics is Wondermark, by David Malki !. What fascinates me about the strip is how mundane, ordinary elements get combined with unexpected elements to create a strong sense of the absurd, the fantastic(al), and the unreal. Generally, the physical setting of the strip is Dickensian, often involving not much more than two or three characters in a library, parlor, or dining room. Occasionally, the characters will interact in a scientific laboratory or public place, like on a street corner. Often it’s the language of the strip that creates the absurd. The characters broach topics that …

How Do Comics Artists Create Sound Effects In Spanish And English?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

In 2009, I happened upon a one-shot Spider-Man & Human Torch story. Side-by-side on the rack at my local comic book store were an English-language version and a Spanish-language version, both of which were called ¡Bahía de los Muertos! (literally Bay of the Dead). The Spanish version was also marked “Edición Boricua en Español,” meaning that it was the Puerto Rican edition. I’ve included two images, below. The one on the left is from the Spanish version and the one on the right is from the English. In panel 1, Johnny is getting hit by a monster. In panel …

The Confluence Of Heroism, Sissyhood, And Camp In The Rawhide Kid: Slap Leather, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

Based on a character from the 1950s, The Rawhide Kid: Slap Leather appeared in 2003 as a five– part serial in which Johnny Bart was reconceived as a gay gunslinger known as the Rawhide Kid.[1] Over the course of the five installments, the narrative arc of Slap Leather establishes the legitimacy of a gay man as both sissy and hero and also creates a safe space for other queers. Even the Sheriff — a straight man with a suspect masculinity — is viable in the Kid's Wild West. As the main character, the Rawhide Kid celebrates a combination of sissy …