Book Review- The Comic Book Western: New Perspectives on a Global Genre

 Reviewed by Chris York

Christopher Conway and Antionette Sol. The Comic Book Western: New Perspectives on a Global Genre. University of Nebraska Press, 2022. https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496218995/ 

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 Christopher Conway and Antionette Sol have assembled a well-conceived and well-executed anthology exploring the development of the Western genre in international comic books. Their introduction lays the foundation for the book by briefly summarizing the origins of the genre within the American comic book industry and the conduits through which the genre initially established itself in other nations. The introduction, however, is the last time the United States is the focus of the anthology. All ten of the subsequent chapters of the book are devoted to the Western within different comics traditions, Though Conway and Sol discuss the role of U.S. companies in popularizing the Western comic abroad, nearly all of the chapters are devoted to stories developed within the comics industries of these different nations, as opposed to merely imported comics.

            It may seem counter-intuitive that a genre so steeped in the ideological morass of exceptionalism, individualism, and colonialism peculiar to the United States would enjoy enduring popularity with international audiences. Even a casual observer of comics around the world, however, knows that the Western’s appeal is widespread. The Comic Book Western addresses how the genre gained a foothold internationally, but also how the genre evolved and, in many cases, thrived within these disparate cultures. The overarching premise of the book is that the global popularity of the Western genre has endured because creators “reterritorialize” or “destabilize” the conventions of the genre, adapting its recognizable conventions to fit within different cultural milieus.

The structure of the individual chapters is remarkably uniform for an anthology. Though the book is divided into “Transnational Histories” and "Critical Reinscriptions,” the difference between the sections seems to be one of degree. All of the chapters trace the growth of the Western within a specific comics tradition, many of them reaching back into the 19th century to identify the culture’s first exposure to the western form.  Each chapter also provides a deeper analysis of a specific title or titles to illustrate the unique character of the Western in that nation. Furthermore, the anthology strikes a good balance between chapters that focus on well-established, critically-acclaimed titles, such as Blueberry and Sargento Kirk, and titles that are more obscure.

            Each chapter traces what the editors call the “vital dialogues with local and transnational currents” that comprise the Western tradition around the world (3).  For instance, Sol’s chapter on Blueberry and the Franco-Belgian tradition identifies 1960s counter cultures as part of the impetus behind Charlier and Giraud’s anti-hero. While the counter-cultural revolutions of the 1960s changed the Western in nations around the world, Sol also notes that Blueberry’s aesthetic owes a great deal to the “local” cinematic tradition of the French New Wave.

            Much of the “reterritotrialization” occurs through the merging of genres. Manuela Borzone’s chapter notes how Argentinian creators merged the Western with their own gauchesca tradition. Similarly, Christopher Conway shows that, despite their almost exclusive portrayal of American settings and the absence of Mexican characters, Mexican Westerns are infused with melodramatic conventions of sentimentality and family values that make them a uniquely local product.

            In addition to the nations mentioned above, The Comic Book Western includes chapters on Germany, Italy, Poland, Great Britain, Spain, Japan and Canada. Joel Deshaye’s chapter on Canada is noteworthy because it includes the only exploration of an indigenous creator using comic book conventions and Western themes. Several chapters touch upon the portrayal of Indigenous Americans, but Deshaye’s discussion of David Garneau’s comics-inspired paintings—which make use of panels, gutters, and thought bubbles—is the only chapter to address an artist whose heritage is from one of the indigenous nations that the genre so exploits.

            The anthology contains sixteen black and white illustrations. Many of the images are covers. Nearly all of the images do important work, and the authors all explicate them well. However, I found myself wanting more. With such a wide range of source material, at least some of the comics are bound to be unfamiliar to portions of the readership. This is not a problem unique to this anthology of course. I would guess this was a limitation imposed by the publisher and not the editors. A more liberal use of images could have better illustrated points the authors are making.

            In the end, though, my criticisms are few. Conway and Sol have assembled a rich anthology, a balanced, insightful volume that effectively addresses the global nature of its subject. In their introduction, they articulate the modest hope that the book helps “to make the study of comic book Westerns less implausible than it has been”(6). I have no doubt of that. In fact, I suspect comics scholars interested in the Western genre, or in comparative studies in general, will find this a useful resource for years to come.

 

Table of Contents
Introduction: The Globalization of the Comic Book Western by Christopher Conway and Antoinette Sol

Part 1. Transnational Histories

1.      Italian Western Comics and the Myth of the Open Frontier by Simone Castaldi

2. Comic Book Westerns and the Melodramatic Imagination in Mexico by Christopher Conway

3. German Western Readers and the Transnational Imagination by Johannes Fehrle

4. Beyond Parody: Polish Comic Book Westerns from the 1960s through the 2010s by Marek Paryz

5. Blueberry: Remaking the Western in Franco-Belgian Bandes dessinées by Antoinette Sol

Part 2. Critical Reinscriptions

6. Argentina’s Outlaws and the Revisionist Western: The Case of Héctor Germán Oesterheld and Hugo Pratt’s Sargento Kirk by Manuela Borzone

7. British Comics and the Western: The Future West, the Supernatural, and Strong Women in The HellTrekkers, The Dead Man, and Missionary Man by Lee Broughton

8. Canada’s Triumph Comics and David Garneau’s Métis Response to the “Indian” of the Comic Book Western by Joel Deshaye

9. A Spanish View of the American West: El Coyote and His Comic Magazine by David Rio

10. Faraway So Close: The Representation of the American West in Igarashi Yumiko’s Mayme Angel by Rebecca Suter

Index

Book Review: Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History by Eike Exner

Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History by Eike Exner. Rutgers, 2021. <https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/comics-and-the-origins-of-manga/9781978827226 >

Reviewed by Sam Cowing, Denison University.

1. Introduction

Chronicling the history of comics is perilously difficult. While comics (or at least some comics) now enjoy unprecedented cultural cache, their present standing does nothing to remedy previously low cultural status and intentionally ephemeral production practices. Thankfully, a number of brave souls have labored long and carefully to provide us with a useful grip on the emergence and development of comics in Western Europe and North America. Obviously, such efforts were never going to supply us with a comprehensive history of comics, but with the ascendent popularity of manga, substantial ignorance regarding manga’s history has never been more conspicuous nor have questions about the relationship between manga and other comics traditions ever been more urgent.

Eike Exner’s efforts in this book are both timely and remarkable. Exner carefully explores the development of manga and its changing status through the 1890s and up through the 1930s. At each turn, Exner looks both forward to the forms of relatively contemporary manga and backward to preceding Japanese print traditions. Taking aim at historical accounts which position contemporary manga as nothing more than the present incarnation of an isolated, centuries-long, and essentially Japanese artistic tradition, Exner forcefully argues instead that

 [C]ontemporary manga and other audiovisual comics are in fact one and the same medium and did not emerge from mutually alien traditions, as far too many histories of manga and comics would have one believe. (178)

Exner’s case against viewing manga as a hermetically sealed tradition draws on close readings of the narrative and formal elements of early Japanese cartoonists such as Imaizumi Ippyo, Kitazawa Rakuten, and Okamoto Ippei as well as a detailed examination of the adaptation and reception of George McManus’ Bringing Up Father and other foreign strips throughout the 1920s. Exner then explores the influence of the latter on the subsequent production and popularity of comics strips by Japanese cartoonists.

As Exner notes, possible motivations for positing a culturally isolated lineage between Japanese print traditions and contemporary manga are complex. Cultural prestige, public interest, and nationalist sentiment are only three of many factors that have sustained questionable manga historiography. When broaching these issues, Exner is a subtle and convincing commentator. Better still, he is capable of sifting through a complex visual record with an eye towards salient detail. The result is a watershed contribution to comics studies that is mandatory reading for scholars interested in manga and its history. In what follows, I offer a rough sketch of Exner’s efforts and then examine a striking conjecture about the nature of comics that emerges in this book: the historical dependence of contemporary comics upon the invention of the phonograph.

2. Overview

Given the limited historical scholarship on manga available in English, a separate overview of the economic context, material production, or narrative trends of manga’s emergence would be terribly useful. It is an evident strength of Exner’s book that he is attentive to each of these and many other dimensions of manga, regularly observing important narrative developments (e.g., recurrent characters, use of anthropomorphism), formal innovations (e.g., layout and ordering conventions, generic styles), and professional developments among creators. In addition to supplying a vivid sense of the manga “industry” in the periods under study, Exner’s observations should spark productive historical interest into lesser-known works and creators involved in the importation and transformation of comics in Japan. The attentive reader is sure to leave this book terribly curious about a previously unknown figure, puzzled by the specific reception of this or that American strip, or desperate for a translation of one of the many Japanese texts Exner draws upon.

Exner sets out the ambitions for the book and a summative interrogation of competing histories of manga in the introduction and epilogue, respectively. A prologue charts some of the terminological history regarding manga and serves as a crucial tool for evaluating the impact of imported American strips upon the Japanese comics tradition. Like any good historian, Exner is eager to welcome others along to dig deeper into the questions with which he is concerned. A useful appendix lists foreign comics printed in Japan between 1908-1945, and, at several points throughout the book, Exner makes clear that much more remains to be discovered regarding this fecund era in comics history.

The first of the four main chapters discusses the production and reception of Bringing up Father, beginning in 1923 and running for seventeen consecutive years in the Asahi Graph. Exner scrutinizes the varying adaptation strategies in early installments that sought to bridge the reading practices of American creators with those of Japanese audiences—most notably, with regard to panel order and speech balloon orientation. As Exner notes elsewhere, the reprinting of foreign strips while ignoring the formality of copyright was a widespread phenomenon. Questions about why Asahi Graph editor in chief Suzuki Bunshiro seized upon McManus’ work and what role printing rights played in this choice are potentially productive and usefully specific questions that one might now explore further given Exner’s pioneering work.

Chapter Two is, in some ways, a detour from the main aims of the book. It offers a theory of the narrative and formal function of speech balloons, drawing from several episodes in non-Japanese comics. I examine Exner’s theory below, but the historiographic rationale for this chapter is that the emergence of what Exner calls “audiovisual comics”—roughly, comics that feature speech balloons and other emanata—is historically specific to the Western comics idiom. The absence of audiovisual comics from the Japanese print tradition, despite the presence of sequential graphic storytelling is subsequently marshalled as evidence of the impact of American comics’ importation. In particular, the adoption of speech balloons in contemporary manga is argued to be dependent upon their deployment in strips like Bringing Up Father in the 1920s.

In Chapter Three, Exner surveys the broader landscape of imported comics strips and examines trends that follow upon the distinctive reception of audiovisual strips. The continuing challenge of translation and competing practical and formal responses are examined. Exner also takes up the material question of how exactly the adaptation and reprinting was undertaken by Japanese periodicals. Additionally, the significance of editorial choices by figures like Inui Shin’ichiro and the role of comics-oriented periodicals like Shinseinen and Manga Man are discussed, especially as sites for innovation by Japanese cartoonists.

Chapter Four supplies a partial account of “fully audiovisual” manga created by Japanese mangaka. Exner charts the path of several creators from the period preceding the importation of foreign strips to an increasingly mature manga industry, one driven by audience enthusiasm for speech balloon-laden narrative rather than pre-1920s picture stories. Touching upon the formative influence of imported strips on Osamu Tezuka, Exner sketches a rough proposal for credibly explaining the subsequent divergences regarding style and transdiegetic elements between the manga tradition and foreign comics. Notably, this sketch leaves aside any controversial claims about the availability and impact of foreign comics throughout World War II. Much like those who invariably point to Japanese Punch and the British satirical tradition in framing the history of manga, those who place undue weight on anecdotes about the discarded comics of American G.I.s will find Exner’s observations an important corrective.

3. Exner on Speech Balloons

If one hopes to provide a historical account of the emergence of contemporary or what Exner calls “audiovisual” manga, a theory of what makes manga contemporary and, in particular, what separates contemporary manga from its precursors is needed. For Exner, the principal divide between contemporary manga and preceding comic strips is the presence of transdiegetic elements—most notably, the speech balloon. And, as Exner argues, this innovation stems from the importation of foreign strips. As he puts it, “most significant change in narrative manga brought about by the translation of American comics was this shift from picture story to audiovisual comic strip.” (165) This historical argument can be mounted with fairly modest assumptions about the nature of speech balloons and their history outside of manga. But, in Chapter Two Exner departs from the history of manga, narrowly conceived, to develop a theory of the function of speech balloons as well as their historical origin. Exner builds upon previous work by Thierry Smolderen here, but the result is a distinctive proposal sure to be of interest to anyone concerned with how comics work.

Exner’s theory of speech balloons comprises a taxonomic proposal, a functional thesis, and a historical hypothesis. The taxonomic proposal distinguishes speech balloons as transdiegetic elements of the comics form. Unlike the intradiegetic text that appears on objects like signs and clothing within the narrative world of a comic, speech balloons themselves are unseeable by characters. But, unlike other unseeable extradiegetic elements (e.g., box narration, panel borders), speech balloons also impact the narrative world by conveying dialogue that characters might hear. Given their peculiar role, Exner takes them to be most aptly described as hybrid, transdiegetic elements.

There are alternative taxonomies we might adopt regarding the visual technology of comics, but it is a virtue of Exner’s account that it makes apparent the peculiarity of speech balloons. And, within this taxonomy, there is room for competing views about how exactly speech balloons serve their transdiegetic function. According to Exner, speech balloons are basically depictive entities, functioning as sound images. There is, however, reason to be cautious about assuming the sound image view or something like it.

Suppose, for example, a comic includes a speech balloon with internal text reading “I am.” Suppose that a subsequent reprint of the comic revises this text to read “Eye yam.” Such a change is a substantive (and presumably illicit) alteration to the comic precisely because speech balloons convey more than sonic information. They present us with interpreted sonic information, which discriminates between sonically equivalent events on the basis of the semantic content of speech. For this reason, speech balloons prove even weirder than Exner acknowledges: they must convey information, not only about what sounds are made, but what is meant through the production of sounds. We should, for this reason, view speech balloons as more like pictures of speech acts than as pictures of uninterpreted sonic events.

Exner’s historical hypothesis binds the history of speech balloons to the history of sound-recording technology, asserting that “audiovisual comics developed in response to new conceptions and technologies of vision and hearing… with the invention and spread of the phonograph being particular essential to the creation of audiovisual comics.” (175) Exner holds this connection to be far from accidental, claiming that speech balloons are more or less unimaginable in advance of the phonograph. This conjecture about our conceptual powers and, in turn, the emergence of modern comics warrants closer scrutiny than a review permits. Here, however, it is worth noting that the case for the historical hypothesis looks rather different if we demure from the sound image view.

In arguing for the dependence of the speech balloon upon phonographic technology, Exner suggests that, if speech balloons had developed prior to the phonograph, we ought to have observed the appearance of non-linguistic sounds as a kind of intermediary form.(58) Presumably this is because such sounds are, in some intuitive sense, less complicated and therefore likely easier to depict. Notice, however, that if speech balloons present, not “raw” sound images, but instead interpreted sonic information (e.g., sounds qua speech acts), we would actually expect the reverse.

In the case of ordinary speech balloons, we exploit standing correspondences between text and spoken language. When it comes to presenting non-linguistic sounds, we are no less required to exploit linguistic conventions—in this case, distinctive ones that introduce lexical items to pick out non-linguistic sounds. Contrary to the intuition that comics present unmediated sound images of what happens when a car speeds by or a dog vocalizes, when we deploy ‘woosh’ or ‘woof’ in comics, we rely upon baroque, culture-specific linguistic conventions for interpreting and relaying sonic events. While an account of these conventions is a job of cognitive linguistics, there is no reason to believe it would antedate the more familiar linguistic conventions that are exploited in the ordinary speech balloon. Indeed, the capricious nature of how we represent animals sounds suggests it is an especially complex affair. Rather than generating the prediction that we should see “zip” and “plop” as precursors to the speech balloon, once we recognize transdiegetic text in comics typically presents interpreted sonic information, we should suspect that “ordinary” speech balloons would be first on the scene.

Importantly, Exner’s critical intervention in the history of manga remains intact even if we reject the more tendentious theses regarding the nature of speech balloons. It is, however, a testament to the richness of this book that, alongside re-shaping how we ought to view the history of manga, it challenges some basic assumptions about the nature of the comics medium.

Exhibition in photos: Shigeru Mizuki at the 49th Angoulême International Comics Festival

Shigeru Mizuki, contes d'une vie fantastique. Léopold Dahan and Xavier Guilbert. Angoulème. Musée d'Angoulême. 17 March - 3 April 2022.

In recent years, the Angoulême International Comics Festival has made a tradition to dedicate space in the Musée d'Angoulême for an exhibition spotlighting the work of a patrimonial mangaka. Since launching this practice in 2017, visitors have been generously treated to career overviews of masters such as Kazuo Kamimura, Osamu Tezuka, Taiyo Matsumoto, and Yoshiharu Tsuge. For 2022, the festival leaped on the opportunity to include Shigeru Mizuki inside the Angoulême pantheon with a grand retrospective exhibition on the occasion of his centenary.

Enriched with over 200 pieces of original artwork and documentation, curators Léopold Dahan and Xavier Guilbert set out to (re)introduce the work and life of the winner of the Festival’s Best Album in 2007 (for NonNonBâ, a manga about the life of an old superstitious woman obsessed with the supernatural creatures of Japanese folklore known as “yōkai”). Their exhibition, whose full title translates as “Shigeru Mizuki, Tales of a Fantastic Life”, is structured along three distinct axes that are organized sequentially in a narrative that physically snakes through the modest installation room. 

 The first section covers Mizuki's early biography and its relationship to the development of his artistic style - a juxtaposition of a cartoony expressivity in his characters and the quasi-documentary precision in his rendering of natural decor. The second section continues with Mizuki's biography leading to his military service in the Second World War and the singular effect that first-hand experience had on his work as seen through the lens of genre (war and horror, in particular). The exhibition closes with an explosion of exquisite color illustrations of Mizuki's world of yokai, which suggests a very personal visual universe that memorializes a fading folkloric Japanese tradition.

There is a lot to take in with this exhibition at a visual, cultural and historical level, and the tightness of the space assigned to the exhibition accentuates the density of its presentation. A beautifully edited catalog collects the entirety of the exhibition, elaborating on the presented text alongside beautiful reproductions of the original artwork.

-Nick Nguyen

All photos taken by Nick Nguyen

Photos are organized in an attempt to present a visual chronology of the exhibition installation as experienced in a sequential walkthrough.

 

"During my childhood, most people took me for an idiot. I ended up thinking that I was one too. But with some distance, I see things differently. In reality, no one had yet to discover the big personality that was dormant inside me."

"I wanted to try to make children's books based on the fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen. For several days I locked myself in my bedroom."

"In 1957, I took the train to Tokyo with my five brushes and my dyes. My sister-in-law prepared six balls of rice for me [...] Moving to Tokyo, nothing guaranteed my success : I needed to struggle to survive. Even after the war in the Pacific, the battle continued."

"I stayed in the army for four years, which seemed to me to last forty."

"The genre that we call "war manga" does not exist in Japan. Or else we have to call them 'fantastic war manga'."

"The dead can never recount their war experiences. But I can. When I draw a comic on this subject, I sense my rage submerging. Impossible to fight it. Without a doubt this terrible feeling is inspired by the souls of all these men who died long ago."

"I've met yokais several times but I've only really seen them on one or two occasions. The other times, I saw them with my other senses. But I think I've got a handle on them. I'll end up reaching that gol soon enough."

 

"When I listened to the stories of Nonnonbâ, it was as if the spirits of my ancestors penetrated into my heart."

"I drew yokai for my own pleasure and according to the inspiration of the moment. I started to see in my work certain specific elements in all the yokai. Like a carpenter who progressively sees a house take shape based on his plans, I slowly saw the outline of a definition of yokai. In order to better determine their essence, I infinitely multiplied their appearances, without worrying about any directorial line. I think I will come to the point of understanding what yokai were really about."