Journal articles on the topic 'Cameroon comic books, strips'

After nearly one hundred years of interpretation, comic strips can be chronologically sorted into emergent, prosperity, change and bottleneck. Through research, this paper discusses the comprehensive impact of social and economic factors on each of these periods and deduces and summarizes the characteristics of differentiated narratives. In the new period, Chinese comic strips gradually receded due to market factors, while original Chinese picture books grew. Although there is a difference in the visual presentation form between the two, they have partly inherited the characteristics of the comic strips in the 80's and 90's. The thesis conducts a comparative study on the differences and similarities between the two and discusses their creative value and contemporary significance.

Comics Through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas is an ambitious, four-volume title that "seeks to capture some of the richness" of comics history and "provide information on this history for a wide range of users, from casual fans of comics to professional scholars of the form" (xxiii). Each of the four volumes covers a specific time period, beginning in the 1900s with comic strips and continuing to the present. Just as the volumes cover a broad expanse of time, they also deal with a diverse array of subjects, including comic strips, comic books, comics creators both well-known and obscure (often accompanied by large photographs), comics publishers, and genres such as science fiction and horror.

This article investigates serialization in newspaper comic strips (exemplified by Danish Nikoline Werdelin’s strip Homo Metropolis) with a dual focus on publication structure and composition of individual strips. Reading the forms of Rhythm and Network as symptoms of serialization, the analysis seeks to outline the difference between meeting the comic strip in daily newspapers or in collected books. Furthermore, it investigates how the actual punchlines takes form through constant fluctuation between repetition and interruption. In this way, the article reads Homo Metropolis as an example of how serialized storytelling constantly negotiates the tension between the individual story/punchline and larger network of narratives.

Abstract It is not uncommon to read the Moomin tales through existentialist lenses. Although there might be natural reasons for focusing on and privileging the nine classical Moomin books, it would, however, be a mistake to overlook Jansson’s comic strips. This is so, not only because of the quality of Jansson’s drawings and because of the way she innovatively worked with and developed that graphic medium, but certainly also because of the stories they contain. When read alongside the books, the comic strips add important aspects and nuances to Jansson’s portrayal of human existence. By allowing herself the freedom to radically change the setting and scenery of the stories, Jansson was able to explore quite different topics than was possible in the novels, and in particular to offer a somewhat different account of the role of customs, normality and tradition.

Onomatopoeia are the representation or imitation in language of sounds from the natural world. They occur in the phonic modality of speech, the written modality, and a third modality combining word and image. The latter is a common device in the sequential art of comic strips and comic books, and is particular to the American tradition of comics. Onomatopoeia diversify the experience of sequential art and have unique signifying properties. Though there have been significant attempts to provide a structural analysis of the comics medium, these have often ignored onomatopoeia’s uses in the comics medium. This study utilizes the concept of an American Visual Language (Cohn, 2013) within a Peircean framework to offer theories of the individual (onomatopeme) and structural uses of word/image onomatopoeic expressions in mainstream American comic books.

Chinese comic books appear to be filled with bright colors and interesting characters, but they also offer insight into the daily life relations and societal principles of modern China. In this study, we examined the construction and underlying meanings of money metaphors in Zhu Deyong’s comic book series We Are All Patients, and We Are All Patients 2: Love with an Idiot, using the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT). By mapping abstract concepts into more concrete and familiar domains, CMT conveys complex ideas, emotions, and social commentary in a way that readers can easily understand. We analyzed thirty-nine randomly chosen comic strips from Zhu’s comic books using Charteris-Black’s (2004) inductive method, conceptual metaphor analysis (CMA), to identify, explain, and interpret different metaphors. Through our analysis, we highlighted the most prominent money metaphors and how they relate to the current love and friendship relations made by modern Chinese people in their everyday lives. We found that money metaphors are classified into seven source domains: barrier, drug, tool, almighty, exchange, principle, and ambition.

Golden Age cartoonist Jackie Ormes created dramatic narratives in her comic strip Torchy in Heartbeats (Pittsburgh Courier, 1950–54) that were unique, in that they were created by a Black woman cartoonist for Black women readers. Ormes skillfully manipulated the typical strip's narrative structure to creatively depict a single Black woman freely traveling the world in the era of Jim Crow. This essay examines two specific Torchy in Heartbeats strips from 1951–52 to reveal how Ormes worked within the then-dominant framework of respectability politics—not to challenge it, but to present a Black woman navigating racialized gender discrimination and pursuing her desires despite her “respectable status,” with sometimes terrifying results. In the process, it works to redress the paucity of scholarship on Black women's contributions to comic books and strips.

AbstractThe Buck Rogers in the 25th century A.D. comic strip first appeared in the newspapers on 7 January 1929, an important moment in the history of comics. It was the first science fiction comic strip, and, along with Tarzan – which curiously debuted in comics the same day – the first adventure comic. However, many people are unawere that the origins of Buck Rogers are not rooted in comic strips, but in popular literature. In fact, Anthony Rogers (not yet “Buck”) was the main character of two novellas published in the late 1920 s in Amazing stories, the first pulp magazine: Armageddon 2419 A.D. (August 1928) and its sequel, The airlords of Han (March 1929). At first, the stories in the daily comic strips closely followed those of the novels, but soon the Buck Rogers universe expanded to include the entire solar system and beyond. This expansion of the narrative world is particularly evident in the weekly charts published since 1930. Soon, Nowlan’s creature became a real transmedia character: in the following years Buck appeared in a radio drama series (aired from 1932 until 1947), in a 12-episode 1939 movie serial, as well as in a 1950/51 TV series. Toys, Big Little Books, pop-up books, and commercial gifts related to the character were produced, before the newspaper comic strip ended its run in 1967. In recent years, the character has been reeboted a couple of times, linked to the TV series of the late 1980 s and to a new comic book series starting in 2009. Buck Rogers thus found himself at the centre of a truly character-oriented franchise, showing how transmedia characters can be traced back almost to the origins of the modern cultural industry. The following article focuses on the features that distinguish Buck Rogers as a character and on the changes of his identity across media, presenting a revised version of an analytical model to investigate transmedia characters that has been developed in previous publications.

The present study tries to find out how students’ reading behavior in this digital era, especially during Covid 19 pandemic by assessing SMA students’ preference for online materials, their preferred language when reading online materials, the online reading habits of the students, and the amount of time they spend in reading online every day. The study was a survey that involved 44 tenth graders at SMA Negeri 1 Tabukan Utara in Likungan, Sangihe. The data were collected using a questionnaire adapted from Abidin, Pour-Mohammadi, & Jesmin (2011). The data collected were analyzed in percentages. Results of the analysis indicated that (1) the most common activities they are interested in are chatting, surfing the internet, and games, (2) concerning online reading materials, they prefer reading e-books, e-mail, stories, or novels, and comic strips/jokes. The majority of the respondents 89% prefer reading online reading materials in Indonesia, and (3) male respondents read more news, e-mails, and comic strips/jokes. Female respondents, on the other hand, preferred reading e-magazines, e-books, and movie reviews, and (4) the highest percentage of respondents (43%) spent 1-3 hours online daily reading. It is concluded that female respondents spent more time on online reading compared to their male counterparts.

Practicing speaking in EFL to the young learners especially to the fifth graders is challenging. They do not have enough vocabulary in their repertoire so that it is often difficult for them express their ideas in the foreign language.They also could not construct appropriate sentences to reflect how well they have learnt so far. For this reason, the implementation of the grammar-translation method may be needed to help them focus on grammatical aspect of the foreign language to enhance their perspective in learning grammar and reading comprehension. Moreover, the use of books, podcast, comic strips and electronic dictionary could support the process of treatment. By implementing this kind of method, the students could enhance their speaking skills. They also have the opportunity to experience with language use and support their progress in speaking. This kind of development could be seen from the result of the pre-test and post-test. The progress of development was significant which reflect the positive impact of comic strips and GTM on children speaking skills

The paper features linguistic and creative foundations in the German comic book "Dig, Dag, Digedag". Modern linguacultural, cognitive studies, and discursive practices are aimed at studying comics, which are a series of drawings with brief accompanying texts. However, comic books consist of two components – verbal and nonverbal, which means that graphic novels and strips have linguacreative foundations. The author performed philological and semiotic analyzes to identify the linguistic and creative foundations of the German comic book. The algorithm of the philological analysis included literary description of the time and place, the most original and interesting scenes in several editions, lexical expressive means and stylistic devices. The semiotic analysis featured the graphics related to the non-verbal component. The linguistic and creative foundations of the comic are manifested in original plots that allow its readers to escape from everyday and political problems through fun, exciting, and informative trips to Ancient Rome, Sicily, ancient Arab countries, the Moon and Mars, as well as to an uninhabited island. The carefully selected scientific and mundane knowledge is transmitted through verbal means and comic book graphics, making young readers expand their horizon. The use of such tools as hyperbole, metaphor, pun, as well as diverse vocabulary within the text of the comic, also suggests linguistic creativity of the German comic book "Dig, Dag, Digedag".

This article focuses on panel arrangements and page layouts of early comics published in Belgium in the five decades before the start of Tintin in 1929. It investigates the degree of standardisation in this pivotal period, in which the old system of graphic narratives with captions evolved to comics with balloons. The years between 1880 and 1929 boasted a variety of publication formats (broadsheets, illustrated magazines for adults and for children, comic strips, artists' books), within which one can see both similar and different conventions at work.

The article analyses the humour in Hermann Huppen and Morphée’s series of comic books about a boy called Nick, with primary focus on the third issue, Ça, c’est Filarmo, Nic [That’s Filarmo, Nick]. Drawing on Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque, the article identifies a variety of humorous devices, including wordplay, puns, quotations, unusual transformations, and mésalliances. Special attention is paid to the visual level of the comic book. Humour is located in visual metamorphoses, invisible “phantom” panels, and the incongruity between words and images. The article also addresses the comic book’s intertextual ties with Little Nemo in Slumberland, a series of comic strips from the early 20th century, and compares the way authority is represented and challenged in the two texts. The impossible spaces that Nick traverses within the chronotope of the road are examined as places that invert the usual hierarchies and relations, allowing Nick to experience a level of agency usually reserved for adults. The end of Nick’s travels across the dreamscape is examined as both a departure and continuation of the pattern from Little Nemo, and as a logical conclusion of a temporary carnivalesque subversion of traditional structures that dominate the adult world.

Relationships between religion and comics are generally unexplored in the academic literature. This article provides a brief history of Black religions in comic books, cartoons, animation, and newspaper strips, looking at African American Christianity, Islam, Africana (African diaspora) religions, and folk traditions such as Hoodoo and Conjure in the 20th century. Even though the treatment of Black religions in the comics was informed by stereotypical depictions of race and religion in United States (US) popular culture, African American comics creators contested these by offering alternatives in their treatment of Black religion themes.

For a very young but steadily developing subfield of Translation Studies such as the translation of comics it seems only natural to look to other research areas within the discipline for inspiration and research methods. This is also one of the aims of the present article, which will attempt to point to certain similarities between comics translation and the subdiscipline of Translation Studies known as AVT (Audiovisual Translation) and the field of subtitling in particular. Both films and comic books are multimodal texts based on the interplay between the verbal and the visual. What is more, both films and comic books are primarily based on dialogue, which is nevertheless transcribed and communicated in writing in both subtitled films and translated comics. Text will, in both cases, usually appear in clearly specified areas, that is at the bottom of the screen (with some exceptions) in subtitled films, and in speech balloons (with some exceptions) in the case of comics. Furthermore, text may be condensed due to the existence of spatial and technical constraints, such as the limited number of characters that may appear at the bottom of the screen or the size of speech balloons and the type of the lettering employed in the case of comics. It is particularly the latter aspect, that is textual condensation related to both spatial constraints and the multimodal character of comics, that the article will focus on, investigating the first Polish translations of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips created by the American cartoonist Bill Watterson.

The article studies representation of the soviet era images in the national comics culture. Paying attention to the popularity and relevance of soviet culture in contemporary mass culture, the authors emphasize the controversial nature of showing the «Soviet past». Analyzing the peculiarities of representation, which is a polysemantic concept and can pursue different goals, the authors focus on the «spectacular» function of representation typical of modern mass culture. The article givess a thorough analysis of national comics in which the representation of the soviet era is most obvious; moreover, the comic strips creators claim it is a deliberate technique. The authors of the article note that the representation of the soviet era can be featured in the plot of a comic book, with references to historical events or historical chronotope of the soviet era. The soviet era can be represented in the system of recognizable characters with possible prototypes in soviet culture. National comic books, addressed to the russian reader, can actualize the visual images of the soviet era. Analyzing various techniques and ways of showing the Soviet era in comics, the authors offer a functional analysis of representation, noting that resorting to the soviet era can serve different purposes and have both positive and negative connotations. The article examines different functions of the soviet era representation connected both with nostalgic trends in society and with ironic perception of the soviet past.

The article deals with the research on comics' educational and cultural potential, particularly inclusive comic books, and their influence on inclusive culture formation. Inclusive graphic stories have long been part of the readership abroad. Gradually, this tradition is becoming popular in the Ukrainian cultural space. The chronology of the implementation of inclusive education in Ukraine is established, a brief overview of the regulatory framework is given. There is more and more inclusive literature on the Ukrainian book market: it is both translations and works of domestic writers, it is literature for the youngest, teenagers, adults, and it is fiction and nonfiction. In 2019 the first inclusive comic book "Friends 2.0" appeared. It was published with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation within the framework of the Inclusive Art program. The comic book "Friends 2.0" is an illustrative material for the analysis. The given research identifies the features of inclusive literature and clarifies its role in forming a tolerant society. The main evolutionary steps of comics are conveyed (Egyptian drawings in the burial chambers, "Ocelot's Claw", The Bayeux Tapestry, William Hogarth’s caricatures, stories in drawings by Rodolphe Töpffer, "Max und Moritz" by Wilhelm Busch, "The Yellow kid" by Richard Outcault and others). The basic terms and concepts of comic book culture are explained, taking into account the specifics of their translation. The history of Ukrainian comics is written daily, undergoes great changes, forms the main slogans and ideas in which it operates and develops. Currently, Ukrainian comics are established as a separate literary and art genre. Inclusive "Friends 2.0". comics are five stories based on real events. Every story is a story of struggle and victory. These are the first inclusive stories in the Ukrainian cultural space. They proclaim that everyone in the world is important, that disability is not a sentence, the importance of adaptation and inclusion, faith and dreams that come true. The article highlights the structural and semantic components of the stories in the comic book "Friends 2.0", analyzes the role of the motto in the content of the stories of this book, the background of panels, characters, and more. The analysis of inclusive comic strips as achievements of comic book culture and as examples of graphic texts in which the inclusive component dominates is offered. It helps to identify a special type of superhero in "Friends 2.0". The educational potential of such comics and their influence on the context of inclusive culture are identified. Keywords: inclusive literature, inclusive comics, comic book, diegesis, narrative, encapsulation, motto, superhero.

RESUMO Um dos impactos da indústria cultural nas histórias em quadrinhos foi a criação de formatos regulares para a construção de tiras. Necessidade dos jornais, o molde fixo foi o modo encontrado de padronizar a produção para levar o mesmo produto a mais de um diário. Este artigo tem como objetivo demonstrar como esses diferentes formatos narrativos têm sido apropriados por materiais didáticos brasileiros. A exposição procurará demonstrar que a variedade de moldes narrativos tem explicações em seu processo de produção e circulação. É algo que, se contextualizado ao aluno, ajudaria no processo de identificação do gênero e de construção do sentido, permitindo uma leitura mais crítica daquele conteúdo. Palavras-chave: Formato. Tira. Ensino. ABSTRACT One of the impacts of culture industry towards comic books was the creation of regular formats for comic strips. The regular format was the way to standardize them for newspapers. The following paper has the objective of showing how Brazilian textbooks have used such different narrative formats. It will try to show that the each narrative format has its own characteristics in its production and circulation process. Such explanation could help students identifying the comic strip genre as well as its content construction, which would allow them to have a critical point of view when reading it. Keywords: Format. Comic strip. Teaching. RESUMEN Uno de los impactos de la industria cultural en las historietas fue la creación de formatos estándar para la construcción de tiras. Una necesidad de los periódicos, el molde fijo fue el camino encontrado para estandarizar la producción para llevar el mismo producto hasta más de una revista. En este artículo se pretende demostrar cómo estos diferentes formatos narrativos han sido apropiados para los materiales de enseñanza brasileños. La exposición tratará de demostrar que la variedad de moldes narrativos tiene explicaciones en su proceso de producción y circulación. Es algo que, si contextualizado al estudiante, ayuda en la identificación del género y en la construcción del sentido, lo que permite una lectura más crítica de ese contenido. Palabras-clave: Formato. Tira. Enseñanza.

Subject area International business or International marketing. Study level/applicability The case is recommended for undergraduate and graduate courses in the fields of international business and international marketing. The aim is to show students the problems that a family business in the animation industry faces while growing and internationalizing. Specifically, the case discusses the entry mode selection and market selection challenges faced by an emerging market company in the comic book and animation industry to operate overseas and compete with entertainment giants such as Disney and DC Comics. The case enables the instructor to discuss international market selection theories and evaluate entry modes. For graduate students, the international market selection can be further developed by using more robust concepts such as psychic and cultural distance. Case overview This case examines the trajectory of a pioneering company in the comic book and animation industries, and in the licensing of trademarks in Brazil. Mauricio de Sousa Productions was founded in 1959 and is considered to be one of the most successful cultural producers in the country. According to a leading Brazilian public opinion research agency, 97 per cent of Brazilian children and 96 per cent of their parents are familiar with the Monica and Friends characters. As one of the main players in the publishing market, with 86 per cent of market share, Mauricio de Sousa Productions has a product portfolio that goes beyond Monica and Friends comic strips: the company’s show on the Cartoon Network ranks third in audience viewing in the country and the company has produced animated movies, books, shows and games. However, despite its experience in publishing comic books in several countries, Mauricio de Sousa Productions (MSP)’s worldwide operations have not been as profitable and sustainable as expected. Aiming at expanding its global presence, MSP’s top management decided in 2014 to review the company’s internationalization strategy and operations to enhance the firm’s performance. Expected learning outcomes The case highlights the key factors facing firms when expanding from an emerging markets. Students are expected to discuss and evaluate options, thus developing their knowledge and decision processes related to family-owned business challenges and opportunities, international market selection theories and international market entry mode. Developing strategies to face challenges as those presented by competitors such as Disney should bring opportunities to students to think outside models and weigh risks. Finally, the case gives students opportunity to base their decision processes and evaluations on logistics problems as well as psychic and cultural distances. It also compels the students to appreciate the various challenges involved in exploiting international market with animation content and intellectual properties as a service. Supplementary materials Company presentation to use in the discussion introduction can be found in: www.monicaandfriends.com/content/video.php Subject code CSS 5: International business.

Writers for popular media frequently draw on insights known about social networks in developing their plotlines and character biographies (whether in books, television, movies, etc.). Perhaps most known to network analysts in this respect, Freeman (2000) presents a collection of network concepts represented in comic strips. These depictions often are consistent with the patterns network analysts observe in real-world empirical examples. For example, the long-running sitcom Friends exhibited strong homophily (McPherson et al., 2001) or assortative mixing on race and socioeconomic status among the main characters. Other times the violation of these typical patterns can serve to generate dramatic tension or a source of comedy. For example transitivity—or the tendency of one's friends to also become friends (Holland & Leinhardt, 1972)—is absent in the movie Hush where Jessica Lange's character plots to kill the daughter-in-law she does not like. P-O-X social balance (Heider, 1948) describes the tendency for friends to share common interests, which was violated to comedic effect in the Seinfeld episode where Jerry's character simply cannot accept his date's refusal to try a taste of the pie he finds delicious, bothering him for days and ultimately leading to his ending the relationship.

With the release of the Moominvalley (2019–) animated TV series, the Moomin characters have once again appeared on screens across the world. Whether this newest adaptation of Tove Jansson’s books and comic strips will initiate a new ‘Moomin boom’ remains to be seen. Nevertheless, the re-appearance of the Moomins in domestic (Finnish) and international media has sparked a resurgence of nostalgia among audiences already familiar with the characters. The present study examines what meanings are attributed to the Moomin stories and sites associated with them in the context of media-induced tourism. The study draws on seven English-language press articles featuring authors’ observations and reflections on their visits to places with connections to the Moomins and/or Tove Jansson in Finland. The personal importance of Jansson’s works and associated locations for these members of the audience is revealed through analysis of the notions of belonging and nostalgia in their accounts. On a wider sociocultural level, the findings demonstrate that values associated with Jansson’s texts are (re)negotiated in new contexts and found relevant in times of contemporary socioeconomic, political and environmental crises, and that it reflects in how places with connections to her and her works are viewed and experienced. The data further show that themes in the Moomin books are viewed in parallel to what is perceived as Finnish values, such as care for others, equality and respect for nature. Finland is also imagined as a fairytalesque land, both the home of the writer and even of the Moomins themselves.

<p>Abstract<br />One of the famous comic strips in Indonesia since 2014 is Tahilalats (Instagram @tahilalats). With its<br />simple visual characteristics, Tahilalats comics are able to become interesting, recognizable, sustainable,<br />and comfortable comics to watch. This study will discuss the design elements in Tahilalats comics<br />that form a syntactic visual system as an effort to achieve consistency in each episode. This study<br />uses qualitative methodologies and descriptive analysis methods with Charles Morris’ semiotic theory<br />and literacy methods by collecting data from books, journals, articles, and pages on the internet that<br />are related to the object. Through this research, it can be concluded that the syntactic visual system<br />makes comics look interrelated and when there are too many episodes, it will be seen as a unified design<br />that distinguishes it from other similar comics. The results of this study are expected to be useful for<br />designers and comic artists to understand a good syntactic system in sustainable design works..<br /><strong>Keywords: comic, design elements, syntactic</strong></p><p><strong></strong><br />Abstrak<br />Salah satu komik strip yang terkenal di Indonesia sejak tahun 2014 adalah Tahilalats (Instagram @tahilalats). Dengan ciri khas visual yang sederhana, komik Tahilalats mampu menjadi komik yang menarik, mudah dikenali, berkesinambungan, dan nyaman untuk dilihat.<br />Penelitian ini akan membahas elemen desain dalam komik Tahilalats yang membentuk sistem visual sintaktik sebagai upaya mencapai konsistensi dalam tiap episodenya. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif dengan pendekatan teori semiotika Charles Morris. Data dikumpulkan menggunakan metode literasi yang memiliki keterkaitan dengan objek. Melalui penelitian ini dapat disimpulkan bahwa sistem sintaktik visual membuat komik terlihat<br />saling berkaitan. Selain itu ketika episode yang dibuat sangat banyak akan terlihat sebagai satu kesatuan desain yang mempunyai pembeda dari komik sejenis lainnya. Hasil penelitian ini diharapkan dapat berguna bagi desainer komunikasi visual terutama komikus agar dapat memahami sistem sintaktik visual dalam karya desain yang berkesinambungan.<br /><strong>Kata kunci: komik, elemen desain, sintaktik</strong></p>

RESUMOTrata-se de um artigo, com características de ensaio transdisciplinar, que desvela aspectos constituintes de uma fenomenologia da resiliência do menino Charlie Brown, das tiras Peanuts. Apresenta o Charlie Brown em suas interrelações, constituição autoimagética e comportamental na interação com outros personagens: Linus, seu melhor amigo (estrutura de suporte); Lucy, a garota com a necessidade sádica de ser sua algoz (desestrutura) e Sally, sua irmã caçula, sobre a qual exerce relação de zelo (empoderamento). Em termos metodológicos, realiza os seguintes procedimentos: define os limites “do que” e “quem” seriam observados, identificando quais personagens teriam maior diálogo com o protagonista. Seleciona um espaço-tempo de análise, no caso, uma série de tiras dos personagens publicadas no período de 1961 a 1962. Conclui que a relação entre os interlocutores revela um conjunto de suportes que potencializam comportamentos de resiliência psicológica e que, frustrando expectativas, o personagem central demonstra relação de superioridade diante das adversidades e do autoconceito negativo, desenvolvendo resiliência em contraposição ao que poderia ser psicologicamente autodestrutivo. Palavras-chave: Resiliência; História em quadrinhos; Fenomenologia. ABSTRACTIt is an article, with transdisciplinary essay characteristics, that reveals constituent aspects of a phenomenology of resilience of the boy Charlie Brown, from the comic strips Peanuts. It presents Charlie Brown in his interrelations, self-imaginary and behavioral constitution in the interaction with other characters: Linus, his best friend (support structure), Lucy, the girl with the sadistic need to be his tormentor (destructuring) and Sally, her younger sister, on which he exerts a relationship of zeal (empowerment). In methodological terms, we performed the following procedures: we traced the limits of "what" and "who" would be observed, identifying which characters had greater dialogue with the protagonist. We selected a space analysis time, in this case, a series of comic strips of the characters published in the period from 1961 to 1962. It is concluded that the relationship between his interlocutors reveals a set of supports that enhance behaviors of psychological resilience and that, frustrating expectations, the main character demonstrates a relationship of superiority in the face of adversity and the negative self-concept, revealing resilience as opposed to what could be psychologically self-destructive.Keywords: Resilience; Comic books; Phenomenology. RESUMENSe trata de un artículo, con características de ensayo transdisciplinario, que desvela aspectos constituyentes de la fenomenología de la resiliencia en el niño Charlie Brown, de las tiras cómicas Peanuts. Presenta a Charlie Brown en sus interrelaciones, en la construcción de la autoimagen y comportamiento en la interacción con otros personajes: Linus, su mejor amigo (estructura de soporte); Lucy, la chica con la necesidad sádica de ser su verdugo (des-estructura) y Sally, su hermana menor, sobre la que ejerce relación de celo (empoderamiento). En términos metodológicos, el estudio realiza los siguientes procedimientos: traza los límites "de lo que" y "quiénes" serán observados, identificando qué personajes establecen más diálogo con el protagonista. Selecciona un espacio-tiempo de análisis, en el caso, una serie de tiras de los personajes publicadas en el período de 1961 a 1962. Concluye que la relación entre los interlocutores revela un conjunto de soportes que potencian comportamientos de resiliencia psicológica y que, frustrando expectativas, el personaje central demuestra relación de superioridad ante las adversidades y el autoconcepto negativo, demostrando resiliencia en contraposición con lo que podría ser psicológicamente autodestructivo.Palabras-clave: Resiliencia; Novelas Gráficas; Fenomenología.

The purpose of this article is to proceed with a semiotic examination of several wordless picturebooks focussed on the use of a thread, Considering that it is the visual image which first and foremost prompts the meaning in iconotexts, we shall deal with it more particularly through the examination of two French picturebooks: the first one by Robert Scouvart, Histoire d’un fil (The Story of a Thread, Magnard 1990) shows how a single thread can magically delineate different characters introduced in an alluring play on words. The book will offer a distanced staging of the reading process through a humorous use of stereotypes close to those resorted to in comic strips. In the second part of my presentation we shall deal with Boutique Tic Tic, (Shop Pop Pop) by Frédéric Clément, (Albin Michel Jeunesse, 2018) a poetical description introduced under the aesthetic spell of Lewis Carrol’s The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, as suggested by the image of the white rabbit winking from a globe on the cover page. The book in the end will tell how a magical thread can unexpectedly and poetically have a « golden voice » during « a long minute of silence of Big Ben »… An original achievement fully illustrating Sandra Becket’s declaration that « the ‘interactive’ and ‘cinematic’ qualities of similar productions [...] make them books for the ‘digital age.’ (2012, p. 99) Keywords: the magic thread, album without words, Histoire d'un fil, Boutique Tic Tic, humour, poetry.

This study aims to investigate the extent at which undergraduate students use the internet for reading. The study specifically, (i) Examine the extent at which undergraduate students use the internet for reading, (ii) Investigate the difference on the extent of the use of internet for reading of male and female undergraduate students, (iii) Examine the difference of extent of the internet usage on reading of undergraduate students based on areas of specialization. The study was a descriptive research of survey type. A structured questionnaire designed by the researcher was used in data collection. A simple random sampling technique was used to select 150 respondents that were involved in this study from the University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria. Frequency count, mean and percentages were used to answer the research questions. Hypothesis one was tested with independent t-test while hypothesis two was tested using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). All hypothesis were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The findings established that Undergraduates always use the internet for reading online news, E books, Email, Health information, Jokes, Comic strips, Fashion, Food/Nutrition and Sales information. Also, there was no significant difference between the extent of the internet usage on reading of undergraduate students based on gender and areas of specialization. It was however recommended that there is a need for extensive training program organized at regular interval so that all categories of users can improve their efficiency in the use of the internet.

The paper deals with the first decades in the work of Dr. Seuss (the pseudonym of Theodor Geisel, 1904–1991), one of the most prominent children’s authors of the 20th century. Seuss was not only the author of children’s tales, but also a talented artist who illustrated his own books and whose manner was deeply influenced by his 15-year experience as a cartoonist. In 1920–1940s he worked for different print media, from humor magazines to a political newspaper, drew cartoons and commercial advertisements. Our aim is to study the mutual influence of Seuss-thecartoonist and Seuss-the-writer and illustrator. Our main focus is the “bestiary” of Dr. Seuss, the animal characters of his cartoons and tales. Seuss created his first eccentric animals in the series of cartoons and anecdotes for a weekly satirical magazine Judge in 1927; he blended the Victorian tradition of nonsense and the features of newspaper cartoons and comic strips of the first decades of the 20th century. The motif of eccentricity is developed in the first children’s tales that Seuss published at the turn of the 1930–40s. The same motif is significantly transformed in his political cartoons for a daily newspaper PM in 1941–1942. Seuss puts the familiar animal images into the context of World War II and gives them different political meaning, from the totalitarian insanity of the Axis leaders to the carelessness and blindness of the “America First” supporters. Interestingly enough, Dr. Seuss used in his political cartoons some plot elements of his tales for children, as well as his old sketches and drawings. In its turn, his post-war tales are peculiar parables that absorb the political issues of the previous historical period. Creating his images of tyrants, Seuss makes use of the techniques of political cartoons. He puts his human and animal characters into the situations of tyranny or isolationism, that can be overcome with the help of common sense.

The purpose of the paper is to prove the effectiveness of using pedagogical cues in the form of comic strips, NLP graphics and color when learning the grammar of the English language. The experiment presented in the research (in which 57 students from 17 to 25 years of age participated) proved that grammar rules are comprehended easier, faster, and more effectively if visualized cues are used when memorizing the material. A methodology for teaching grammar with the use of comic books was developed as well as the methodological materials for teaching grammar to students of technical higher education institutions. The experiment confirmed that in case of applying the proposed methodology the formation of grammatical skills is 17% faster and more effective.

Scholars know little of the inner lives of past children. Discovering a large collection of adolescent art, now older than 80 years old, seems like an archival treasure. James “Jimmy” Kugler (1932–1969) of Lexington, Nebraska, drew more than 120 sheets of comic strips, including retelling the Pacific theater of World War II as a violent confrontation of humanoid “Frogs” and “Toads.” The rest of the collection are gangster horror stories and violently humorous, single-panel drawings. What historical context helps make sense of such art? My father died over 50 years ago, and few if any of his classmates and loved ones are still alive. I describe searching through local newspapers, telephone directories, contemporary American propaganda and comic books, movies, just about anything that my father might have read, watched or seen. I treat the project as a microhistory of adolescent rebellion inspired by wartime propaganda and popular culture. What we may want from the past, I argue, contrasts what the past cannot give us. I hope to depict the necessity, and limits, of historical explanation and speculation.

Transmedia storytelling, as defined by Henry Jenkins in 2006 in his book Convergence Culture, highlights a production strategy that aims to augment the narration of a cultural work by scattering it across several media platforms—digital or non-digital. The term is certainly quite recent, but the practices are not new and allow us to understand the evolution of the cultural industries and the creation of a new media ecosystem. As Matthew Freeman states, transmedia storytelling always relies on industrial changes, the narration adapting itself to new media synergies and novelties to create engaging and coherent storyworlds.Producers of American TV shows, showrunners, and networks are more and more eager to develop narrative universes on other media platforms in order to target new audiences and to give food for thought to fans, as well as reward them for their intellectual and emotional investment. Ancillary content and tie-ins sometimes take the form of novelisations or comic books, highlighting the fact that strategies of transmedia storytelling can be deployed on non-digital platforms and still enhance the narrative aspects of the show. For example, Twin Peaks (1990) developed The Diary of Laura Palmer (1990), a journal written by the character Laura Palmer who gave insights on her life and details about her relationships with other characters before she was murdered at the beginning of the series. How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014) published The BroCode (2008), first seen on episode “The Goat” (season 3 episode 17), and The Playbook (2012), first seen in an episode entitled “The Playbook” (season 5 episode 8). They are bibles written by character Barney Stinson that contain rules or advice for picking up women. For instance, The BroCode contains 150 articles, a glossary of terms, a definition of “a bro,” history of the code, amendments, violations, and approved punishments, all invented by Barney; some of these components were talked about on the show, while others were original additions for the book.Another way to create transmedia storytelling around TV shows is by developing comic books. This article will explore this specific media form in relation to transmedia strategies and will try to underline how comic books can make a narrative richer by focusing on parts of the plot, characters, times, or locations. First, I will focus on the importance of seriality from a historical perspective, because seriality appears to be one of the main principles of transmedia storytelling. Yet, is this narrative continuity always coherent and always canon when it comes to the publication of comic books? I will then propose a typology of the narratives comic books exploit to augment the storytelling of a show. I will give examples to illustrate how comic books can enrich the narrative universe of a given show and how characters can smoothly move from one platform to the other.A Transmedia World: Television and Comic Books Hand in HandSeriality is one of the main pillars of transmedia storytelling, and, according to Jenkins, “it is about breaking things down into chapters which are satisfying on their own terms, but which motivate us to come back for more” (“Transmedia”). These characteristics are already present in the way TV series are written, produced, and broadcast, and in the way comic books are created. They rely on episodes for TV shows and on issues for comic books that usually end with suspense and a suspension in the narrative continuity, commonly known as a cliff-hanger. For comic books, this narrative continuity took root in the early comic strips of the 18th and 19th century (Maigret and Stefanelli), which played a huge part in what we now know as comic books. As Pagello explains:The extensive practice of narrative serialisation played a major role in this context: the creative process, the industrial production and distribution, the editorial practices and, finally, the experience of comics readers all underwent dramatic changes when comics started to develop an identity distinguished from satirical cartoons, illustrated books and the various forms of children’s picture stories.According to Derek Johnson, these evolutions, in terms of production and reception, are closely linked to the widespread use of the franchise model in media industries. Johnson explains thatcomic books, video games, and other markets once considered ancillary now play increasingly significant and recentered roles in the production and consumption of everyday film and television properties such as Heroes, Transformers, and the re-envisioned Star Trek in ways that only very few innovators (such as George Lucas and his carefully elaborated and expanded Star Wars empire) had previously conceived in the twentieth century.The creation of transmedia strategies that capitalize on narrative continuity and seriality call for some synergies between media and for a “gatekeeper” of the stories who will ensure that all is coherent in the storyworld. Thus, “in 2006, the management of Heroes, for example, became a job for a professional ‘Transmedia Team’ charged with implementing creative coordination across television, comics, and the Internet” (Johnson).Another principle of transmedia storytelling, closely linked to seriality and the essence of the definition, is the creation of a narrative universe, that is “world-building,” in which plots and characters develop, and which will lay the foundations for the story. These foundations will be written in what is called a Bible, a document containing all the narrative elements in order to ensure coherence. In the notion of world-building, a matrix of possibilities is deployed, since stories can potentially become threads to weave, and re-weave. This rhizomatic world can be extended to infinity in a canonical way (by the official production) and in a non-canonical one (by the creations of fans). For Mark Wolf, these narrative worlds work like dynamic entities, and are transformative, transmedial, and transauthorial, which are similar to the notions and possibilities of transmedia storytelling, and media and cultural convergence. Stories that cannot be contained within the “real” of a single medium will be expended and developed on another or several other ones, creating a rich storyworlds. Comic books can be one of these tie-in media.New Term, Old Creations: An Historical OverviewMatthew Freeman wrote in his latest book Historicising Transmedia Storytelling that these transmedia practices do have a past and existed long before the introduction of the term due to new technologies, production strategies, and reception tactics. Comic books were often an option to enrich storylines and further develop the characters. For example, L. Frank Baum created a storyworld around The Wizard of Oz made of mock newspapers, conferences, billboards, novels, musicals, and comic strips in order to “appeal to a migratory audience” (Jenkins, “I Have”) and to deepen the characters, introduce new ones, and discover the land of Oz as if it were a real location. The author used techniques of advertising to promote and above all to expand his storyworld. As newspaper comic strips were quite popular at the time, Baum created several tie-in extensions in the newspapers and in a novel format. As Jason Scott underlines, “serial narratology enhances the possibilities of advertising and exploitation through the established market for the second and subsequent instalment” (14). The series of comic strips entitled Queer Visitor from the Marvellous Land of Oz (1904-1905) picked up, in terms of narration, just after the end of the book, offering a new temporality and life for the characters. As Freeman notes, this choice follows an economic logic:The era’s newspaper comic strips and their institutional tendency to prioritize recurring characters as successful advertising mechanisms (as witnessed in the cross-media dispersion of Buster Brown) had in fact influenced Baum to return to the series’ more familiar faces of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman (2371).Here, the beloved characters are moving from one medium to the next, giving new insights on their life after the end of the book, and enhancing their stories beyond its pages.A Typology of Comic Books and Tie-in Extensions of TV SeriesBefore diving into a tentative typology, I want to look at the definition of canon in a transmedia storyworld. There is a strong debate in academic discussions around the issues of canonicity, and here I understand canonicity as the production of official texts around a given cultural content. That is because of precisely what is qualified as an official text or an official extension, and what is not. In the book I co-edited with Benjamin W.L. Derhy Kurtz (Derhy Kurtz and Bourdaa), we respond by coining the term “transtexts,” which includes officially produced texts and fantexts in the same narrative universe. The dichotomy between both kinds of texts is thus diminished. Nonetheless, in production and transmedia strategies, canonicity is hard to evaluate because “few television series have attempted to create transmedia extensions that offer such a (high level of) canonic integration, with interwoven story events that must be consumed across media for full comprehension” (Mittell 298). He follows by proposing a typology of two possible transmedia extensions based on a canon perspective versus a non-canon one: “what is extensions” extend the storyworld canonically and in a coherent way, whereas “what if extensions” “pose(s) hypothetical possibilities rather than canonical certainties, inviting viewers to imagine alternate stories and approaches to storytelling that are distinctly not to be treated as potential canon” (Mittell 298). Mark Wolf refers to the term growth to qualify canonical materials which are going to expand a given storyworld and which nourish the stories. As argued by Gabriel et al., “Wolf’s definition of ‘growth’ makes it clear that, for him, a transmedial product can only be considered to contribute to a world’s growth if it adds new ‘canonical’ material, i.e. material that presents new pieces of information that are “true” for the fictional world” (Gabriel et al. 169). This notion of “truth” to the diegesis can be opposed in this context to the notion of alternate stories and alternate versions of the characters.My attempted typology lays its foundation upon this opposition between what is seen as an official extension and what is seen as an unofficial extension, but offers alternate perspectives to expand the storyworld using new characters, locations, or universes. The first category will look at canonical extensions and how they can deepen characters’ development and temporalities. The second category will deal with “canon divergent” (to use fans’ language) extensions and how they can offer new entries into the stories by creating new characters or presenting new locations.Canonical Extensions: CharactersTie-in extensions in the form of comic books help to deepen the characters, especially supporting characters, by delving into their motivations and psychology, or by giving them backstories and origin stories. According to Paolo Bertetti, “the transmedia character is a fictional hero whose adventures are told on several media platforms, each providing details about the character's life” (2344). Actually, motivated characters are the quintessential element of the narration of the classic Hollywood era, which was then reused in the narration of TV series, which were then penned into comic books. In her definition of transmedia superstructures, Marsha Kinder based her analysis on how characters moved from one medium to the next, making them the centre of the narrative universe and the element audiences would follow.For example, Fringe (2008), in a deal with DC comics, extended its stories and its characters in comic books, which were an integral part of the storyworld, and which included canon materials by offering Easter Eggs to fans and rewarding them for their investment in the narrative universe. Each issue of the second series dealt with a major or recurring character from the show, deepening them by giving them backgrounds. That way, audiences can discover the backstories of Agent Broyles, Nina Sharp, the CEO of Massive Dynamic, or even Gene, Walter’s cow, all of which are featured in the series but not well developed.Written by actor Tim Rozon (who plays Doc Holliday on the show) and author Beau Smith, Wynonna Earp Season Zero (2017) focuses on the past of main character Wynonna Earp when she was an outlaw and before she comes back to her hometown, Purgatory. The past comes to life on the pages, while it was only hinted at in the show. It is a good introduction to the main character before the show, since Wynonna comes back to Purgatory by bus at the beginning of the very first episode and there are no flashback episode relating her story earlier. Because the two authors of this comic book are part of the creative crew of the show, an actor and a writer, they ensure a sense of coherence in the extensions they write.In collaboration with Dynamite Entertainment, an American comic book company, NBC Universal launched a series of comic book issues entitled Origins (2008) as an ancillary text to Battlestar Galactica (2004). “Origin stories” are a specific genre related to superhero franchises. M.J. Clarke underlines that,the use of Origins Stories is influenced by the economic structure of the comic book industry, which continues to produce stories over years and decades. ... By remaining faithful to the Origins (which are frequently modified in their consistency), readers can discover a story without having to navigate in more than 400 numbers of commix. (54)The goal of these comic books is to create a "past" for the human characters that appeared in the series. The collection of comic books thus focuses on five main characters in 11 issues, spread out over a year: William Adama, Zarek, Gaius Baltar, Kara "Starbuck” Thrace, and Karl "Helo" Agathon. These issues are collected in an eponymous Omnibus. Likewise, Orphan Black (2011) also offered backstories for its “clone club” without disrupting the pace of the show. The stories, tied to the events of the series, focus on the opportunity to better understand the emotions, thoughts, and feelings that exemplify the characters of the show.It is interesting to note that the authors of these comic book extensions were in close contact with Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, showrunners of the Battlestar Galactica series, which guaranteed coherence and canonicity to the newly created material. In a personal interview, Robert Napton, writer of Origins, explained the creative process:so every week we would watch episodes and make sure our stories matched as closely as possible to what the television series was doing …we tried to make it feel like it was very much part of the series, so they were untold adventures and we tried to fit it into the continuity of the series as much as possible.Brandon Jerwa, writer for Battlestar Galactica comic book series Season Zero and Ghosts (2009), confirmed that, “It is my understanding that the comics were passed through Mr. Moore’s office, and they were certainly vetted by Syfy and Universal.” Jerwa also added an interesting input on perception of canonicity versus non-canonicity by fans who can be picky about the ancillary contents and added materials that extend a storyworld:Most comic tie-ins have a hard time being considered a legitimate part of the canon, and that is simply beyond the control of the creative team. I worked very hard to make sure that I was writing material that adhered to the continuity of the show as closely as humanly possible. I don’t believe in writing a licensed property in such a way as to put forward ‘my vision’ of the universe; I believe very firmly that it is my responsibility to serve the source material above all else.Canonical Extensions: TemporalitiesComic books as a licensed product can expand the temporalities of the show and tell stories before the beginning of the series and after it ended, as well as fill time voids and ellipses. For example, now in its 11th season in comic books, Joss Whedon managed to keep Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) alive and to attract new fans without alienating its original fanbase. Blogger and web entrepreneur Keith McDuffee felt that reading Buffy as a comic book after seeing it on television for seven years was strange, but the new format was a good sign because: “the medium lets creativity go completely wild without budget worries.” The comic books focus on the famous characters and created a life for them after the end of the show, making them jump from the screen onto the pages. Sometimes, the comic books told original stories that might seem out-of-character, like the issue in which Buffy sleeps with a woman. That kind of storyline wasn’t explored in the TV show, and comics offer one way to go deeper into the characters’ backgrounds and psychology. Sometimes, the tie-ins do not strictly follow the continuity and become non-canon regarding the stories of the TV shows. For example, DC/Wildstorm presented comic book issues around The X-Files (1993-) that were set in continuity of the show but failed to refer to main plot events (for example, Scully’s pregnancy). “Rather than offering ‘additive comprehension’ to a pre-existing television and film narrative, Spotnitz chose to write licensed comics on their own terms” (Pillai 112).DC is familiar with offering new adventures for its superhero characters in the form of comic books (which are first published online), going back to the basics. Of course, in this case, the relationship between the comic book medium and the television medium is more intricate, as the TV series are based on comic book characters whose stories are then extended again in comic books, which are created specifically to extend the TV shows’ storyworlds. The creation of the comic book series The Flash Season Zero (2015) set the stories between the episodes of the first season of The Flash and focus on the struggles of Barry Allen as he juggles between his job as a CSI, his love for Iris West, his childhood sweetheart, and his new identity as a vigilante with superpowers. This allows viewers to better understand a part of Barry Allen’s life that was not well developed in the show, adding temporal layers to the stories. The Adventures of Supergirl vol. 1 (2016) also depict the battles of the girl of steel between episodes, as well as her life with her sister, Alex (who is also a new addition in the comic book), and her co-workers at the DEO. For Arrow,the digital tie-ins offer producers [opportunities] to explore side stories they are unable to cover on screen. In the case of Season 2.5, the 22-chapter comic enabled the producers to fill in the blanks in between the seasons, thus offering more opportunities to explore the dynamics of fan-favorite characters such as Felicity and Diggle. (Bourdaa and Chin 183)These DC comic books are examples of giving life to a TV show beyond the TV screen, enhancing the timeframe of the stories and providing new content. The characters pass through the screen to live new adventures in comic books. In some cases, the involvement of the series' actor and writer in comic book scripting confirms the desire for consistency in the extensions of the series, whatever the medium used and whatever the objectives.Canon Divergent Extensions or the Real PossibilitiesFinally, comic books can deploy stories that will display a new point of view on the canon: a “multiplicity” (Jenkins, “La Licorne”) or a “what-if story” (Mittell), which will explore new possibilities and new characters.The second series of Orphan Black comic book tie-ins entitled Helsinki (2016) dealt with clones in the capital of Finland. The readers discover the lives of other clones, how they deal with the discovery of their “condition,” and that they have a caretaker. The comics are written by John Fawcett, who is also a showrunner for the series. The narrative universe is stretched into new possibilities, seen with new eyes, and shown from the perspective of new clones. The introduction of new characters gives opportunities to tell new stories and diverge from the canonical content, especially in terms of the characters’ development and depth.Battlestar Galactica, after the show ended, partnered once again with Dynamite Entertainment, to publish a new set of comic books entitled BSG: Ghosts (2009), which tells the story of new characters surviving the Cylon genocide. Writer Brandon Jerwa asks in BSG: Ghosts: "And if a squadron of secret agents had also survived Cylon Attack?" For him, comic books are a good opportunity to relaunch the narrative universe by introducing new characters in a well-known storyworld.The comic books will definitely have to evolve in order to survive because at some point we will end up exhausting the interest of the readers on the narrative continuity. Projects like Ghosts are definitely a good way to test public reaction to new ideas in a familiar environment. (Jerwa)Conclusion: From One Medium to the Next, From Narrative Extensions to MarketingThis article offers an overview of how comic books are used as tie-in products to extend TV series’ narrative universe. The ambition was not to give an exhaustive panorama but to propose a typology with some examples. I showed that characters’ development, temporalities, and new points of view are narrative angles exploited in comic books to give depth to a storyworld. Of course, this raises issues of labour, authorship, and canon content, which are already discussed elsewhere (see, for example: Clarke, Pillai, Scott). Yet, comic books are an integral part of transmedia storytelling and capitalise on notions of seriality, offering readers new stories, continuity, depth, and character motivations in order to enrich storylines and make them live beyond the screen. However, Robert Napton, in our interview, underlines an interesting opposition between licensing and marketing: “Frankly, comic books are considered licensing and marketing, not official canon. The only TV comic that is canon is Buffy Season 8 and 9 because Joss Whedon says they are, but that is not the normal situation.” He clearly draws a line between what he considers to be a licensed product, in this article what I describe as canonical content, and a marketing product, which could be understood in this article as a canon divergent tie-in. The debate here is clearly on, since understandings of transmedia vary between the perspectives of production companies, which are trying to gain profit by providing new content, the perspectives of fans, who know the storyworlds and the characters extensively and could be very possessive of them, and the perspectives of extension authors, who “have very strict story guidelines” (Jerwa) and have to make their stories fit within the narrative universe as it is told onscreen.ReferencesBertetti, Paolo. “Towards a Typology of Transmedia Characters.” International Journal of Communication 8 (2014): 2344-2361.Boni, Marta. World Building: Transmedia, Fans, Industries. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2017.Bourdaa, Mélanie. “Transmedia Storytelling: Entre Narration Augmentée et Logiques Immersives.” InaGlobal (2012). 16 December 2017 <http://www.inaglobal.fr/numerique/article/le-transmedia-entre-narration-augmentee-et-logiques-immersives>.Bourdaa, Mélanie, and Bertha Chin. “World and Fandom Building: Extending the Universe of Arrow in Arrow 2.5.” Arrow and Superhero Television: Essays on Themes and Characters of the Series. Eds. James F. Iaccino, Cory Barker, and Myc Wiatrowski. Jefferson: MacFarland, 2017.Clarke, M.J. Transmedia Television: New Trends in Network Serial Production. New York: Continuum Publishing, 2013.Derhy Kurtz, WL Benjamin, and Mélanie Bourdaa. The Rise of Transtexts: Challenges and Opportunities. London: Routledge, 2016.Freeman, Matthew. Historicising Transmedia Storytelling: Early Twentieth-Century Transmedia Story Worlds. London: Routledge, 2017.Gabriel, Nicole, Bogna Kazur, and Kai Matuszkiewicz. “Reconsidering Transmedia(l) Worlds.” Convergence Culture Reconsidered: Media—Participation—Environments. Eds. Claudia Georgi and Brigitte Johanna Glaser. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2015.Gillan, Jennifer. Television and New Media: Must-Click TV. New York: Routledge, 2010.Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press, 2006.Jenkins, Henry. “I Have Seen the Future of Entertainment… And It Works.” Confessions of an Aca-Fan, 2008. <http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2008/10/i_have_seen_the_futures_of_ent.html>.Jenkins, Henry. “Transmedia Education: The 7 Principles Revisited.” Confessions of an Aca-Fan, 2010. <http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2010/06/transmedia_education_the_7_pri.html>.Jenkins, Henry. “La Licorne Origami Contre-attaque: Réflexions Plus Poussées sur le transmedia storytelling.” Terminal 10-11 (2013): 11-28. <http://journals.openedition.org/terminal/455>.Jerwa, Brandon. Personal Correspondence. 2013.Johnson, Derek. “A History of Transmedia Entertainment.” Spreadable Media: Web Exclusive Essays. <http://spreadablemedia.org/essays/johnson/#.Wo6g24IiGgQ>.Maigret, Eric, and Matteo Stefanelli. La Bande Dessinée: Une Médiaculture. Paris: Armand Colin, 2012.McDuffee, Keith. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home, Part 1. Season premiere. 2007. <http://www.aoltv.com/2007/03/16/buffy-the-vampire-slayer-the-long-way-home-season-premiere/.>.Mittell, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: NYU Press, 2015.Napton, Robert. Personal Correspondence. 2013.Pagello, Federico. “Before the Comics: On Seriality of Graphic Narratives during the Nineteenth Century.” Belphégor 14 (2016). <http://journals.openedition.org/belphegor/810>.Pillai, Nicolas. “What Am I Looking at Mulder?: Licensed Comics and Freedoms of Transmedia Storytelling.” Science Fiction and Television 6.1 (2013): 101-117.Scott, Jason. “The Character-Orientated Franchise: Promotion and Exploitation of Pre-Sold Characters in American Film, 1913–1950.” Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies (2009): 10–28.

The study presented here focuses on the relationship between Don Quixote, the famous work of Cervantes, and the publication Hazañas bélicas, one of the best examples of the war genre in Spanish comics. Its success made it enjoy a privileged position in the world of comics during the central years of Franco’s dictatorship, when control over artistic production was more intense. Throughout the hundreds of issues that were published, brief episodes from armed conflicts such as the Second World War or the Korean War are described, all of them under the perspective of the imposed censorship. Precisely, it is in these two wars where the presence of Cervantes’ stele has been noted, since two of the published comic strips make direct references to Don Quixote, to the point of consolidating it as the element that solves the situation. These curious appeals to the book inevitably led to the need to ask a series of questions at the beginning of the research: what was the intention behind including such literary references within the course of the comic? is there any real reference to the facts that are narrated or is it purely fictional? what role did Cervantes’ work play in the transmission of information to readers? is it an isolated event from this publication or are there other examples? In order to answer these questions, we have made use of the important collections of the Centre of Studies of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM), an institution of reference in the documentation of Cervantes’ work, where, in addition to the series of publications studied, dozens of comic books with the presence of the famous Don Quixote are preserved.

Abstract Der Beitrag „Karikaturen als Ausdruck der kollektiven Solidarität während der Pandemie. Referenzielle Perspektivierung” analysiert die Erfahrung der kollektiven Resilienz anhand der Untersuchung von humoristischen Bildern, Karikaturen, Wortwitzen und Fotomontagen, die das Leben in der Pandemie thematisieren und in den Jahren 2020 und 2021 im Netz erschienen sind. Die Frage nach einer Alternative zwischen der visuellen kommunikativen Erinnerung und der kulturellen Ära aus denen diese Karikaturen stammen, stand am Anfang der Untersuchung. Durch den Prozess der Fotomontage und der Entfremdung machen sich diese Texte und Bilder eine populäre visuelle Erinnerungskultur zu eigen, die illustrierte Bücher, Comics und Gemälde neu interpretiert und zugleich Zeuge einer Zeit wird, die durch restriktive Maßnahmen geprägt wurde. Der Beitrag stellt zwei Formen der Referentialität fest, die eng miteinander verbunden sind: der Bezug auf die Konjunktur durch den Hinweis auf die Covid-Krise sowie der Rückgriff auf die dauerhafte visuelle Erinnerung. Die Analyse der Art und Weise, wie sich das Korpus in einer gemeinsamen kulturellen Erinnerung einfügt, verdeutlicht die Verflechtung der sozialen Zusammenhänge in einer Zeit sozialer, ökonomischer und politischer Umbrüche. L’article „les caricatures comme manifestations de solidarité csollective face au virus. Enjeux et perspectives de leur valeur référentielle” thématise l’expérience de résilience collective à travers l’étude des images humoristiques et caricatures, blagues, jeux de mots et photomontages ayant pour thème le vécu en contexte pandémique apparues sur le net en 2020 et 2021. La question initiale posée était celle d’une alternative entre la mémoire visuelle communicationnelle et l’aire culturelle respective dont dépendent ces caricatures. Par le biais du détournement et du montage, ces textes et images se réapproprient une culture populaire visuelle qui revisite livres illustrés, bandes dessinées et œuvres picturales classiques tout en se faisant témoins d’une période marquée par les mesures restrictives en période de crise sanitaire. L’article fait le constat de deux formes de référentialité étroitement liées : les références à la conjoncture à travers la référence à la crise du Covid et sa temporalité et le recours à la mémoire visuelle durable. L’analyse de la manière dont le corpus se réinscrit dans une mémoire culturelle commune démontre comment se retisse le lien social dans une période de bouleversements des rapports sociaux, économiques et politiques. The article „Caricatures as an expression of collective solidarity. Issues and referential” deals with the experience of collective resilience through the analysis of humoristic pictures and caricatures, jokes, play on words and photomontage about the life in the pandemic context which appeared on the internet in 2020 and 2021. Initially the question was about an alternative between the visual communication memory and the cultural aera from which these caricatures depend. Through montage and diversion these texts and pictures suit a visual popular culture which reinterpret illustrated books, comic strips, classical works of art while witnessing the period of restrictive measures through the pandemic. The article comes to the conclusion of the existence of two kinds of referentiality: the references about the Covid-Crisis and its temporality and the use of long-lasting visual memory. The analysis of how the corpus reintegrates a common cultural memory shows how social cohesion rise again in a period of political economic and social changes.

Given that the new advances in technology in the 1980s had a major impact on the carefully constructed myth of authenticity in horror and pornography, ranging from flawless special effects at one extreme to the idea of the handheld voyeur movie at the other, it is rather ironic that the key progenitor to the erotic-grotesque form is a long-established and in some ways basic form: the pen and paper art of manga. This medium can be traced back to pillow books and the illustrated tradition in Japanese culture – a culture where even written language has evolved from drawings rather than alphabetical ciphers. Technological innovation notwithstanding, the 1980s is an extraordinary period for manga and it is perhaps here that we find the most startling hybridisation of porn and horror where, to borrow a phrase from Liz Kotz, “pathology meets pleasure, where what we most fear is what we most desire” (Kotz 188). Many of the most extreme examples of 1980s manga repeatedly confront the reader with tales that intersperse and interlink imagery and narrative sequences of sex, violence and the abject. Suehiro Maruo is in many ways a commercially marginalised but highly renowned manga artist of the erotic-grotesque. His full-length manga novel Mr Arashi’s Amazing Freak Show (1984) is a sweeping tale of carnival freaks redolent with sex and sadism, but in this article I will address his short comic strips from around the same period. The stories collected in Suehiro Maruo’s Ultra-Gash Inferno (2001) present a mortifying vision of sex and horror with stories that draw on the erotically tinged world of classical Japanese theatre and the short fiction of Edogawa Rampo but push them into the domain of extreme pornography. In “Putrid Night” (1981), an abusive man, Todoroki, subjects his teenage wife, Sayoko, to vicious cunnilingus and anal sex. In one sequence, Sayoko gives oral sex while Todoroki runs a samurai sword across her cheek. In her misery, Sayoko finds true love in the teenage boy Michio. Their illicit sexual love is tender and fulfilling and yet the imagery that intersperses it is ominous: when they have sex in a field, their conjoined bodies are juxtaposed with rotting fruit infested with ants and Michio’s erect penis is juxtaposed with a serpent in the grass. Sayoko and Michio plot to murder Todoroki. The result is disastrous, with Todoroki cutting off the arms of his wife and her lover through the elbows, and lancing their eyeballs. In the carnage, Todoroki has sex with Sayoko. The young lovers do not die, and Todoroki keeps them alive in a cell as “pets” (19). In a grotesque triumph of true love, Todoroki, to his horror, spies on his two victims and sees them, their eye sockets and arm stumps pouring blood, tenderly making love. In “Shit Soup” (1982), Maruo produces a comic strip with no story as such and is therefore a highly simplistic pornographic narrative. We witness a menage a trois with a young woman and her two male lovers and the comic presents their various exploits. In their opening bout, the woman squeezes a cow’s eyeball into her vagina and one man sucks it out of her while the other licks her beneath the eyelid. Later, the three excrete onto dinner plates and dine upon their mixed shit. The story ends with the three laughing deliriously as they fall from a cliff, an emblem of their joyful abandon and the intersection of love and death. As epilogue, Maruo describes the taste of excrement and invites us to taste our own. This ending is an ingenious narrative decision, as it turns on the reader and strives to deny us – the viewer/voyeur – any comfortable distance: we are invited, as it were, to eat shit literally and if we refuse, we can eat shit metaphorically. Suehiro Maruo’s work can also be subtle: in what looks like a realistic image at the opening of “A Season in Hell” (1981), a dead teenage girl lies, covered in “gore and faeces” (45), on a grassy path which resembles the hairy opening to female sexual organs. The surrounding field is like a pudenda and the double arch of the nearby bridge resembles breasts. Maruo can thus outwit the censorship tradition in which pubic hair is generally forbidden (it does appear in some of Maruo’s comic strips), although erections, ejaculations and hairless openings and organs would seem to be always graphically permissible. Probably the most excessive vision in Ultra-Gash Inferno is “The Great Masturbator” (1982). In this, Suehiro Maruo presents a family in which the father repeatedly dresses his daughter up as a schoolgirl in order to rape her, even cutting a vagina-sized hole into her abdomen. Eventually, he slices her with numerous openings so that he can penetrate her with his fists as well as his penis. Meanwhile, her brother embarks on an incestuous relationship with his ancient aunt. After her death, he acquires her false teeth and uses them to masturbate. He ejaculates onto her grave, splitting his head open on the tombstone. The excess and debauchery make it a shocking tale, a kind of violent manga reworking of Robert Crumb’s cartoon “The family that lays together, stays together” (91) from Snatch 2 (January 1969). Like Crumb, we could argue that Maruo employs explicit sexual imagery and an ethos of sexual taboo with the same purpose of transgressing and provoking the jargon of particular social norms. The political dimension to Maruo’s work finds its most blatant treatment in “Planet of the Jap” (1985), anthologised in Comics Underground Japan (1996). This manga strip is a devastating historical-political work presented as a history lesson in which Japan won the Second World War, having dropped atomic bombs on Los Angeles and San Francisco. The comic is full of startling iconic imagery such as the Japanese flag being hoisted over the shell-pocked Statue of Liberty and the public execution of General MacArthur. Of course, this being Maruo, there is a pornographic sequence. In a lengthy and graphic episode, an American mother is raped by Japanese soldiers while her son is murdered. As these horrors are committed, the lyrics of a patriotic song about present-day Japan, written by the Ministry of Education, form the textual narrative. Although the story could be seen as a comment on the subjection of Japan at the end of the Second World War – a sustained ironic inversion of history – it seems more likely to be a condemnation of the phase of Japanese history when, tragically, a minority of “atavistic, chauvinistic, racist warmongers” secured for themselves a position of “ideological legitimacy and power” (Lehmann 213). However, Maruo is being deliberately provocative to his contemporary reader: he writes this story in the mid-1980s, the peak of Japan’s post-war prosperity. As Joy Hendry says, Japan’s “tremendous economic success” in this period is not just important for Japan but marks an “important element of world history” (Hendry 18). Maruo ends “Planet of the Jap” with a haunting international message: “Don’t be fooled. Japan is by no means a defeated nation. Japan is still the strongest country in the world” (124). The porn-horror creator Suehiro Maruo follows in the tradition of figures like Octave Mirbeau, Georges Bataille and Robert Crumb who have used explicit pornography and sexual taboo as a forum for political provocation. The sexual horror of Maruo’s erotic-grotesque manga may terrify some readers and titillate others. It may even terrify and titillate at the same time in a disturbing fusion which has social and political implications: all the Maruo works in this essay were produced in the early to mid-1980s, the peak of Japanese economic success. They also coincide with the boom years of the Japanese sex industry, which Akira Suei argues was terminated by the repressive legislation of the New Amusement Business Control and Improvement Act of 1985 (Suei, 10). Suei’s account of the period paints one of frivolity and inventiveness embodied in the phenomenon of “no-panties coffee shops” (10) and the numerous sex clubs which offered extraordinary “role-playing opportunities” (13). The mood is one of triumph for the sexual expression of the customers but also for the extremely well-paid sex workers. Maruo’s stories contemporaneous with this have their own freedom of sexual expression, creating a vision where sexually explicit images comment upon a wide variety of subjects, from the family, scatological taboos, through to national history and Japan’s economic success. At the same time as presenting explicit sex as a feature in his films, Maruo always closely weaves it in with the taboo of death. Martin Heidegger interprets human existence as Sein-zum-Tode (being-towards-death) (Kearney 35): in Maruo’s vision, existence is evidently one of sexual-being-towards-death. Like Suehiro Maruo’s hideously maimed and blind lovers, humanity always returns to the impulse of its sexuality and the desire/will to orgasm: what Maruo calls “the cosmic gash” of physical love, a gash which also reveals, in a Heideggerian sense, the non-being that is the only certainty of existence. And we should remember that even when love is blind, someone will always be watching. References Crumb, Robert. The Complete Crumb, Volume 5: Happy Hippy Comix. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 1990. Hendry, Joy. Understanding Japanese Society. London: Routledge, 1987. Kearney, Richard. Modern Movements in European Philosophy. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986. Kotz, Liz. “Complicity: Women Artists Investigating Masculinity” in Paula Church Gibson (ed.) More Dirty Looks: Gender, Pornography and Power (Second Edition). London, BFI, 2004, 188-203. Lehmann, Jean-Pierre. The Roots of Modern Japan. London: Macmillan, 1982. Maruo, Suehiro. “Planet of the Jap” in Quigley, Kevin (ed.). Comics Underground Japan. New York: Blast Books, 1992. —-. Mr Arashi’s Amazing Freak Show. New York: Blast, 1992. —-. Ultra-Gash Inferno. London: Creation, 2001 Mizuki, Shigeru. Youkai Gadan. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1992. Rampo, Edogawa. Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination. New York: Tuttle, 1956. Suei, Akira “The Lucky Hole as the Black Hole” in Nobuyoshi Araki. Araki: Tokyo Lucky Hole. Köln: Taschen, 1997, 10-15. MLA Style Hand, Richard J. "Dissecting the Gash: Sexual Horror in the 1980s and the Manga of Suehiro Maruo." M/C Journal 7.4 (2004). 10 October 2004 <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0410/05_horror.php>. APA Style Hand, R. (2004 Oct 11). Dissecting the Gash: Sexual Horror in the 1980s and the Manga of Suehiro Maruo, M/C Journal, 7(4). Retrieved Oct 10 2004 from <http://www.media-culture.org.au/05_horror.php>

Introduction The Disney brand has become synonymous with magic through its numerous depictions of spells, curses, prophecies, and pixie dust. Thus, it is ironic that in 2023, the 100th anniversary of the Walt Disney Studio’s founding (“Disney History”), the final film released during Walt Disney’s life, The Sword in the Stone (celebrating its 60th anniversary) remains stuck in obscurity (Aronstein 129) despite being steeped in magic and wizardry. The Sword in the Stone is regarded as “one of the most obscure [films] in the Disney animated canon” (Booker 38). Although it performed moderately well during its debut in 1963, its 1983 re-release and home video sales failed to renew public interest. To date, The Sword in the Stone has no games, comic series, or even Disneyland merchandise (Aronstein 129). The film is hardly a technical marvel; its sketchy animation style and blue-slate backgrounds create a dingy, unfinished look (Beck 272), while its simplistic storyline and anachronistic humour have been criticised for being ill-matched with its Arthurian subject matter (Gossedge 115). Despite these flaws, The Sword in the Stone offers the studio’s most fully rendered representation of Disney magic as benevolent forces sourced in learning and discipline that enable good-hearted protagonists to prepare for future leadership roles. By approaching the film as a didactic text separate from its Arthurian origins, I will demonstrate how The Sword in the Stone defines magic, not by nebulous spells or hexes, but by its facilitation of societal advancement and transformative powers via the educated mind. Young Arthur’s Humble Beginnings Based loosely on T.H. White’s 1938 novel of the same name (Valle 224), The Sword in the Stone takes place in medieval Europe, with most of its action occurring in a rotting castle and surrounding wolf-infested forests. In this threatening world, magic takes many forms, from powerful acts of “sorcery” to comical displays of “Latin business”. The first allusion to magic occurs during the film’s opening song, which establishes its setting (“when England was young”) and primary conflict (“the good king had died, and no one could decide who was rightful heir”). Without a ruler, England will be destroyed by civil war unless miraculous forces intervene on its behalf. This ‘miracle’ is the eponymous sword in the stone that the rightful ruler of England will free. The sword is destined for King Arthur, but as he is only an orphaned child living in obscurity at the film’s beginning, no one manages to retrieve the sword in his stead, and so the ‘miracle’ seemingly fails. The film’s off-screen narrator describes this leaderless period as “a dark age … where the strong preyed upon the weak”. As a force that trumps brute strength, magic is prized by those who can wield it, particularly the wizard Merlin. Magic is regarded with suspicion by the majority who cannot practice it (Valle 234), though they still recognise its legitimacy. Even Arthur’s practical stepfather, Sir Ector, begs Merlin not to practice any “black magic” on his family after Merlin creates an indoor “wizard blizzard” to prove his seriousness in tutoring Arthur. Merlin is a far cry from the mysterious soothsayer of Arthurian legend. He has been Disneyfied into a caricature of the famed wizard, appearing more like an eccentric academic than an all-seeing mystic (Beck 272). Susan Aronstein describes him as “the reification of Disney’s post-World War II rebranding of itself as a leader in education in the wake of a postwar shift in American child rearing” (130)—a playful pedagogue who makes learning fun for Arthur and audiences. After meeting Arthur in the woods near his home, Merlin becomes determined to rectify the boy’s educational deficiencies. It is not yet clear whether Merlin knows who Arthur is or will become; Merlin merely repeats to his owl companion, Archimedes, that the boy needs an education—specifically, a modern education. In addition to presenting Arthur with evidence of his travels to the future, such as helicopter models, Merlin rattles off a litany of subjects common to twentieth-century American curricula (English, science, mathematics) but hardly the sort of fare pages of Arthur’s status would study in fifth-century England. Because Arthur’s royal lineage is unknown to him, he aspires to be a squire for his soon-to-be-knighted stepbrother and so must learn the rules of jousting and horsemanship when not otherwise preoccupied with page duties. These include scrubbing pots and pans, cleaning floors, and fetching anything his stepfather requests. While Arthur is not resistant to Merlin’s attempts to teach him, he struggles to balance Merlin’s demands on his time with Sir Ector’s (Pinsky 85). Young Arthur’s gangly stature conveys how stretched the boy is between his indentured servitude to Ector and Merlin’s insistence upon his liberation through education. Arthur is constantly in motion, scurrying from one task to the next to please all parties involved and often failing to do so. Each time Merlin’s instruction causes the boy to miss Sir Ector’s call, Arthur is punished with additional duties (Holcomb et al.). Merlin’s Instructive Magic Merlin uses magic to bridge the gap between Arthur’s responsibilities to his present and his future. The word “magic” is spoken fifteen times in the film, six by Merlin himself. The wizard first utters the word after packing his entire house (furniture and all) into a carpet bag. Arthur is impressed, but Merlin warns him that magic is no panacea: “don’t you get any foolish ideas that magic will solve all your problems”. Even Merlin struggles to convince Sir Ector to let him tutor Arthur and to prevent predatory animals from killing the boy during their adventures together. Magic has limits. It cannot penetrate the minds of humans nor quell the instincts of wild animals. Its impact seems restricted to the physical world. Merlin primarily uses magic for physical transformation; his lessons centre on changing Arthur into different animals to enable the future king to experience life from others’ perspectives. Merlin turns Arthur into a fish, a squirrel, and a bird, with each animal’s situation representing increasingly complex problems that Arthur must overcome. Each lesson also corresponds with one or more levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: (1) safety and survival, (2) love and belonging, and (3) self-esteem and self-actualisation (Lester 15). As a perch swimming around the castle moat, Arthur learns to use his intellect to evade a toothy pike that nearly eats him alive. As a squirrel, Arthur observes the heartbreak of unrequited love, foreshadowing his complicated love triangle with Guinevere and Lancelot (Grellner 125). In avian form, Arthur experiences a much-needed boost in his self-worth after Sir Ector strips him of his squire-in-training status. In flight, Arthur seems most in his element. After struggling with the logistics of swimming as a fish and navigating trees as a squirrel, Arthur soars over the countryside, even showing off his acrobatics to Archimedes flying alongside him. Although Arthur relishes these experiences, he does not seem to grasp their broader implications. He describes his first magical lesson as “so much fun” (despite having nearly died) and pauses only momentarily at the end of his second lesson to reflect on the emotional damage he causes a heartbroken female squirrel who falls madly in love with him. Still, Arthur faces mortal danger with each lesson, so one could argue that by transforming the young boy into different animals, Merlin is honing Arthur’s problem-solving skills (Holcomb et al.). Madam Mim’s Destructive Magic When Arthur is turned into a bird, his third lesson takes an unexpected turn. After narrowly escaping a hawk, Arthur flies into the forest and falls down the chimney of a rival magician named Mad Madam Mim. After introducing herself, Mim insists to Arthur that she has far more magic “in one little finger” than Merlin possesses in his entire repertoire. She displays her powers by killing plants, changing sizes, and making herself monstrous or lovely according to her whims. Mim’s demonstrations suggest a breezy familiarity with magic that Merlin lacks. Whereas Merlin sometimes forgets the “Latin business” needed to invoke spells, Mim effortlessly transitions from one transformation to another without any spell use. The source of her power soon becomes apparent. “Black sorcery is my dish of tea”, she croons to Arthur. Compared to Merlin’s Latin-based magic, Mim’s “black sorcery” is easier to master and well-suited to her undisciplined lifestyle. Mim’s cottage is filthy and in disrepair, yet she is playing solitaire (and cheating) when Arthur stumbles into her fireplace. This anachronism (since playing cards would not be introduced to Europeans until the fourteenth century; DeBold) characterises, through visual shorthand, Mim’s idle hands as the Devil’s workshop; she also possesses a modern dartboard that she throws Arthur against. Unlike Merlin’s domicile, Mim’s cottage contains no books, scientific instruments, or other props of study, indicating that there is no deeper understanding behind her magic. As Latin is the root language of science and law, it seems fitting that Latin is not part of Mim’s repertoire. She simply points a finger at an unfortunate subject, and it bends to her will—or dies. Efficient though Mim’s magic may be, its power is fleeting. Mim briefly changes herself into a beautiful young woman. But she concedes that her magic is “only skin deep” and turns herself back into “an ugly old creep”. Evidently, her magic’s potency does not last long, nor is it capable of improving her situation, as she continues living in her broken-down cottage as a bored, friendless hermit. Her black magic may be easy to master but cannot impart meaningful change. And so, while Merlin can use his magic to improve Arthur’s life, Mim’s magic can only serve the status quo described at the film’s beginning: the strong preying upon the weak. Although Mim lives outside the feudal social hierarchy, she uses her magic to terrorise any unfortunate creatures who wander into her clutches, including Arthur. When Arthur (still in bird form) states that he prefers the benevolence and usefulness of Merlin’s magic, an infuriated Mim transforms herself into a hungry cat and chases Arthur around the cottage until Merlin arrives to save the boy. Merlin then challenges Mim to a wizard’s duel, during which he and Mim attack each other in animal forms ranging from foxes and caterpillars to tigers, goats, and elephants. Each time Mim transforms, she does so seamlessly, requiring no momentary pause to recall a spell, unlike Merlin, who stumbles across the Latin phrases necessary to change himself into something faster or bigger. But after Merlin transforms into a walrus and squashes a clucking chicken Mim, the momentum shifts in his favour. Her magic becomes tinged with rage that causes her to make mistakes, including biting herself as a snake and ramming herself into a tree in rhinoceros form. Merlin’s disciplined playing style is nearly errorless. Although he becomes frightened when Mim transforms into a fire-breathing dragon, Merlin continues to play sensibly and courageously. His final winning move is to transform himself into a measle-like germ that incapacitates Mim with violent sneezing and cold flashes (Perciaccante and Coralli 1171). Arthur is astonished by the brilliant manoeuvring of his mentor, who manages to win the duel fairly “by dint of his knowledge and study” (Pinsky 86). After stating the lesson’s summative point for Merlin—“knowledge and wisdom is the real power”—Arthur vows to redouble his efforts to complete his education. Education: The Film’s Real Magic The lesson for viewers is simple enough: an education has a magical impact on one’s life. Put more succinctly, education is magic. Merlin defeats Mim because of his greater knowledge and cleverer use of spells. Arthur will overcome his low social status and ascend to the throne by becoming literate and sharpening his intellect. But as with Merlin’s acquisition of magical knowledge through intense study, Arthur’s royal ascension must be earned. He must learn the literal ABCs of language acquisition to gain others’ shared knowledge, as illustrated by a scene in which Archimedes painstakingly teaches Arthur how to write the alphabet in preparation for reading an enormous stack of books. Merlin cannot magically impart such knowledge to the future king; Arthur must learn it through sustained effort. He also must learn to make informed decisions rather than respond to panic or anger as Mim does during her duel with Merlin. Herein lies the distinction between Mim’s and Merlin’s magic: transformative impact. Mim’s black magic has locked her into her chosen fate. By using her powers to amuse herself or cause others harm, Mim perpetuates her outcast status as the stereotypical witch to be feared (Valle 234). While her cottage contains anachronistic elements such as playing cards (suggesting that she, like Merlin, has time-travelled), it contains no evidence of the modern advances that Merlin shares with Arthur, like aeroplane models, nor anything that might improve their feudal society. Merlin’s magic, by contrast, facilitates immediate changes to Arthur’s world and offers the promise of technological advancements in the centuries to come. To reduce the boy’s workload, for instance, Merlin magically conjures up a factory-style assembly line of brushes, tubs, and mops to wash dishes and scrub kitchen floors. Merlin also shares his knowledge of humankind’s future achievements with Arthur to advance his education, providing him with models, maps, globes, and hundreds of books. To become a proper king, Arthur must learn how to use such information to others’ advantage, not just his own. As Caroline Buts and Jose Luis Buendia Sierra observe of magic’s paradox, “using the wand without knowing properly the rules may sometimes lead to catastrophic situations” (509). This point is reaffirmed in the film’s final sequence, which takes place in London on New Year’s Day at a jousting tournament, the winner of which will be crowned king of England. Arthur, now a squire to his recently knighted stepbrother, forgets to bring his stepbrother’s sword to the tournament grounds. He attempts to replace the missing weapon with the sword in the stone when he spots the aging relic in a nearby churchyard. As Arthur pulls out the sword, angelic choral music swells, signalling that the rightful ruler of England has fulfilled the prophecy. After some scepticism from the assembled masses, Sir Ector and the other knights and spectators bow to the befuddled twelve-year-old. The film’s final scene shows a panic-stricken Arthur conceding that he does not know how to rule England and crying out for Merlin. When the wizard blows in from his most recent trip to the twentieth century, he confirms that he has known all along who Arthur is and assures the boy that he will become a great king. Arthur seems ready to put in the work, recognising that his knowledge and wisdom will improve the lives of England’s inhabitants. Conclusion Magic is thus portrayed as an intervening force that either facilitates or stymies societal progress. Good magic ensures that intelligent, educated individuals such as Arthur become great leaders, while those who would attain positions of power through brute force are thwarted from doing so. At the film’s conclusion, Arthur has not been fully transformed into a great leader because his education is far from finished; he has only learned enough to realise that he knows too little to rule effectively. Yet, from the Socratic perspective, such self-awareness is the germination for attaining true wisdom (Tarrant 263). Arthur also already knows that he will not be able to learn how to rule well through trickery or shortcuts, even with a powerful magician by his side. But the film’s closing scene reiterates this point with Merlin promising Arthur that he will succeed. “Why, they might even make a motion picture about you!” he exclaims in a clever fourth-wall joke (Gellner 120). The Sword in the Stone’s mere existence proves that Arthur will acquire the knowledge and wisdom necessary to become a truly great monarch. The fledgling pupil will live long and rule well, not because of pixie dust or magic spells, but because of his willingness to learn and to be transformed by his education into a wise and fair ruler. References Aronstein, Susan. “‘Higitus Figitus!’ Of Merlin and Disney Magic.” It’s the Disney Version! Popular Cinema and Literary Classics. Eds. Douglas Brode and Shea T. Brode. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 129-139. Beck, Jerry. The Animated Movie Guide. Chicago: A Capella, 2005. Booker, M. Keith. Disney, Pixar, and the Hidden Messages of Children's Films. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010. Buts, Caroline, and Jose Luis Buendia Sierra. “The Sword in the Stone.” European State Aid Law Quarterly 16.4 (2017): 509-511. 10 June 2023 <https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26694185>. DeBold, Elizabeth. “Fortune’s Fools: Early Tarot Cards.” The Collation: Folger Shakespeare Library 2 Feb. 2021. 5 June 2023 <https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/fortunes-fools-early-tarot-cards/>. “Disney History.” D23, 2023. <https://d23.com/disney-history/>. Gossedge, Rob. “The Sword in the Stone: American Translatio and Disney’s Antimedievalism.” The Disney Middle Ages: A Fairy-Tale and Fantasy Past. Eds. Tison Pugh and Susan Aronstein. Palgrave Macmillan: 2012. 115–131. Grellner, Alice. “Two Films That Sparkle: The Sword in the Stone and Camelot.” Cinema Arthuriana: Twenty Essays. Rev. ed. Ed. Kevin J. Harty. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. 118-126. Holcomb, Jeanne, Kenzie Latham, and Daniel Fernandez-Baca. “Who Cares for the Kids? Caregiving and Parenting in Disney Films.” Journal of Family Issues 36.14 (2015): 1957–81. DOI: 10.1177/0192513X13511250. Lester, David. “Measuring Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.” Psychological Reports: Mental & Physical Health 113.1 (2013): 15-17. 20 May 2023 <https://doi.org/10.2466/02.20.PR0.113x16z1>. Perciaccante, Antonio, and Alessia Coralli. “The Virus Defeating Madam Mim.” American Journal of Infection Control 45.10 (2017): 1171. 1 June 2023 <http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajic.2017.07.017>. Pinsky, Mark I. The Gospel According to Disney: Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004. The Sword in the Stone. Dir. Wolfgang Reitherman. Perf. Karl Swenson and Rickie Sorensen. Buena Vista, 1963. Tarrant, Harold. “Socratic Method and Socratic Truth.” A Companion to Socrates. Eds. Sara Ahbel-Rappe and Rachana Kamtekar. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006. 254-272. Valle, Maria Luiza Cyrino. "The New Matter of Britain: T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone." Estudos Germânicos 5.1 (1984): 224-265.

Men in crisis Confused by society's mixed messages about what's expected of them as boys, and later as men, many feel a sadness and disconnection they cannot even name. (Pollack 1) The recent 'crisis in masculinity' has been punctuated by a plethora of material devoted to reclaiming men's 'lost' power within a society. Triggered by the recognition that their roles within our society are changing, this emerging cannon often fails to recognise men as part of a social continuum that subjectifies individuals within discursive frameworks. Rather it mourns this process as the emasculation of male identity within our culture. However, this self-help rhetoric masks a wider project of renegotiating men's power within our society. David Buchbinder for example, calls for an interrogation of "how men and various masculinities are represented" (7). As a consequence, male subjectivities are being called into question. There is now examination of the manner in which "power is differentiated so that particular styles of masculinity become ascendant…in certain situations" (Haywood and Mac an Ghaill 52). In this way, male power is being problematised on many fronts. The desire to shore-up male power in the face of various 'threats' has called for a corporeal manifestation of masculine dominance. Men's bodies have been redefined through contemporary attention to physical sculpting and molding. This reanimation of the Superman ethic of embodiment is part of the hegemonic maintenance of masculine power in our culture. At the times of the greatest threat to male competence and control within society - social, political and economic restructuring, war and recovery - the body has been at the frontier of reasserting male power. This paper traces performances of superhero masculinity across men's bodies. As central 'creators' of their world, superheroes embody a mythology in masculine identity that shapes men as social and natural determinists within a society. In attempting to replicate this role, men are subjected to a rupture in the social fabric whereby their bodies move through a series of discursive frameworks in a contradictory tapestry that activates a 'crisis' within masculine identity. This paper seeks to open the seam between masculinity and power to examine how masculine legitimacy is negotiated on embodied surfaces. This trajectory is constantly stretched to its limits where men's bodies are in a persistent state of rebuilding. Henry Rollins forms part of the frayed edges of superhero identity. Simultaneously validating and undermining this mentality, Rollins creates a nexus of contradictory ideologies. Embracing a "rock-hard male body" (Robinson 11) in a powerfully built embodied reality, and at the same time deconstructing it, Rollins takes issue with men in their mythological role as centres of social reality and their power to create and control it. Rollins forms an identity that is shaped within discursive practices rather than the director of them. In tracing this performance through the "Liar" music video that features Rollins in the Superman role, this paper demonstrates the convoluted masculinity embraced by Rollins and the movement of Superman across his body. Between superheroes, war and bodybuilding, the aim is to trace how men are positioned as unproblematic agents of power, change and creation within the embodied myths of our culture. Bodies of knowledge Men's bodies have changed. While they have been the 'normal' against which women's bodies have been defined, this sense of normality has altered (Cranny-Francis 8). Foucault has consistently demonstrated how bodies are created and inscribed through cultural processes whereby discourses determine the shape and nature of embodied realities. Even though men are often centralised in these knowledge systems, it does not mean that they are immune to their influence. Men are insistently defined through metaphors of the mind. The proper man is a controlled man. In bodybuilding this relationship is activated in the repetitive and disciplined action of tensing and relaxing muscle. Defined as, "the toning and accentuating of muscles by the repeated action of flexing and releasing…particularly through the use of weights" (Carden-Coyne n.pag), it reifies a controlled mind restraining and shaping the physical form. During the Enlightenment thrust toward scientific rationalism, Descartes positioned an uncomplicated division between the mind and the body. Men spent their time purifying their souls and using bodies "as a spiritual vessel, a Christian container of morality and purity" (Carden-Coyne n.pag). They were shells that required discipline so the mind was not led astray. The mind was the controlling agent that subdued a disobedient embodiment. The extent to which this was achieved was the measure of the legitimacy and competence of a man. The currency of this corporeal state resonates most potently today through the phallus. As an extension of the phallus, the surface of the male body is a crucial site for the demonstration of embodied control. For the phallus is not very closely related to the possession of a penis as David Buchbinder argues when he suggests, "the phallus as a symbol, however, is not to be identified with an actual penis, because no actual penis could ever really measure up to the imagined sexual potency and social or magical power of the phallus" (49). Indeed, men's penises are "flaccid most of the time" (Buchbinder 48). They are fragile and soft. They rarely meet the 'supernatural' prowess of the phallus. Phallic power is related to the capacity to occupy the space of symbolic power effectively - to be embodied in a competent masculinity. Bodybuilding demonstrates a mastery over the self that articulates this discipline. The capacity to mobilise this control is linked to wider social power in which men are supposed to be privileged agents of creation and control in the political and economic spheres of life. Henry Rollins mobilises a mythos of masculine embodied control and corporeal hardness in his embrace of Superman. He is the epitome of phallic power and Rollins uses this character as a metonym to articulate the contradictions between the ideologies circulating through culture and the reality of lived experience. While Rollins mobilises a superhero musculature, the surfacing of his self masks a vulnerable masculine subjectivity that is embedded within distinct social frameworks. He uses the ideologies surrounding superheroes to create a dialogue between the reality of everyday life and the discourses that frame those experiences. Superheroes are resourceful, disciplined and righteous. They are sites of strength, moral virtue, creation and control. They often have super-powers, super-human strength, agility or speed that enables them to exist apart from regular humans. They occupy spaces removed from everyday life. However, their separateness from these realities is contrary to real men's experiences. Like the phallus, there is a gulf between the superhero ideology that men are supposed to embody and the reality of lived experience. Nevertheless there remains a constant struggle to build and rebuild the male body to the pinnacle of (super)masculine prowess. Superman is framed within the mind/body binary quite clearly. The control he exercises over his body reifies his calm and disciplined mind. His powerful physique, "represents in vividly graphic detail the masculinity, the confidence, the power that personifies the ideal of phallic masculinity" (Brown n.pag). His control extends across his self and out into the world. Rollins embraces this control through his own self-empowering rhetoric that litters his lyrics, spoken word and concert performances. He also most clearly embodies the Superman ideology through a life-long attention to bodybuilding. Introduced to weightlifting as a teenager, Rollins incorporates the Superman ideology into his subjectivity. He has been referred to as the "tattooed, muscled Ubermensch of serious rawk" (geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/4396/hrf.htm). He works his muscles to rebuild his identity after a disaffiliated, Ritalin-addicted childhood spent bouncing between divorced parents. The processes of disciplining his body and empowering the self are made clear through his relationship to his body and to the weights. Rollins believes in extending himself to his limits and beyond. Bodybuilding is the mattering map Rollins uses to construct a sense of self. He uses it to define who he is and to build his self-esteem. For example,"time away from the Iron makes my mind and body degenerate. I turn on myself and wallow in thick depression that makes me unable to function. The body shuts my mind down. The Iron is the best anti-depressant I have ever found. No better way to fight weakness than with strength. Fight degeneration with generation" (Rollins 257). In his embrace of the embodied power of Superman and the building mechanisms of weightlifting he is able to repair and regenerate his sense of self. He is able to transform himself into something new and different, thereby exercising power as an agent of change. This ethic of rebuilding hails an earlier time when control over the body needed to reestablish the coherent corporeality of damaged men within a culture. World War One redefined popular consciousness of men's bodies as the mechanisation of warfare ripped limbs from torsos and severed the relationship between a disciplined mind and the controlled body. Rebuilding battered bodies The first widespread conflict to use guns, shells and tanks produced the first evidence of neurasthenia, or shell shock (Carden-Coyne n.pag). Faith in evolution and human improvement was shaken to its core with the appearance of physically and emotionally broken masculinity. Men's bodies were dismembered and disabled - their minds were tortured. As a result Carden-Coyne argues, [t]he first world war significantly undermined confidence in the male instinct, by demonstrating that the primitive energies of the male body (virility, physical strength and aggression) were no match for modern technological warfare. A process of healing was needed to rebuild a masculinity of control and strength in these men. Faith in progress needed to be renegotiated and the damaged minds and bodies of men mended. Bodybuilding was seen as the most complete demonstration of embodied control. It required discipline and strength and so required the mind to order the body. Bodybuilding was embraced after World War One to repair the fissures in war-ravaged masculinity. It served, "to shape corporeal borders…against the sense of decay and uncertainty that permeated the 'air' of modernity" (Carden-Coyne n.pag). The strong body created a strong mind and bodybuilding in the post-war period also helped to more popularly render images of heroes. War heroes could be more easily framed in musculature. In popular culture, heroes shifted from aristocratic figures such as the Scarlet Pimpernel, to more everyday men. By 1938 the emergence of Superman comics positioned the ordinary-like man as superhero (Bridwell 6). The hard body had the capacity to make the ordinary man exceptional. Indeed, the superheroes of the twentieth century like "Tarzan, Conan, James Bond" (Connell 6) all depict a resilience and similar competence over all aspects of their lives. However as men's authority has been increasingly challenged within our society, embodied strength has increased in Superman to mirror the changes in the lives of these men. Postmodern paychecks World War Two also tore men's bodies apart. However with this war, the machine was reinscribed as saving rather than taking lives on the battlefield (Fussell 3). The development of the atomic bomb was attributed to, and celebrated as, man's ability to create and conquer anything (Easlea 90). By 1950 Superman comics depicted the man of steel withstanding a nuclear blast thereby validating the superiority and resilience of white, western masculinity and embodied hardness over the weak Others (Bridwell 10). Nevertheless World War Two chewed through men's bodies at an imperceptible rate. Despite the rhetoric of heroism and technological superiority, the reality of everyday battle was broken bodies. The ideology of the superhero served to mask the realities of this war. Despite the damage to the corporeal form, the heroic mythology of masculine identity served to reify a coherent embodiment and a clear mind. The mobilisation of this masculine myth masked the erosion of legitimate male power within culture. This resonates into the postwar period where a whole series of structural changes to the social landscape have radically redefined our social reality. The mechanisms men have used to define themselves have decayed. The rising empowerment of women, gay men and black men have problematised the centrality of white, heterosexual men in our culture (Faludi 40). They are no longer able to easily occupy a stable, silent centre in our society. As a result, there has been an attempt to reclaim the body and reclaim the competency that serves to define men as masculine. The rising interest in men's health and physical fitness on the whole, has lead to a reanimation of the superman figure. Men's bodies are getting harder and larger. Part animal, part machine Henry Rollins embraces the contradictions in heroic masculinity. He demonstrates an embodied control that is regimented through an incorporation of Nietzschean will. In this way he embodies the relationship between the superhero and contemporary masculinity. However, Rollins' Superman is not an Ubermensch (Nietzsche 230). He performs a problematic masculinity. As a result, Rollins deconstructs the masculine hierarchy by subverting, not only his own performance of masculinity, but all such performances. The "Liar" music video by The Rollins Band features Rollins in the Superman role. In this clip he interrogates different levels of truth and reality. For him, neither Clark Kent nor Superman is a valid model on which to base effective performances of masculinity. Neither of these men are heroes, rather they are simulations. The version of Superman that Rollins constructs is authoritative and totalitarian. He depicts a corrupt figure and flawed leader who is not in control and is struggling to meet the demands of his role. This performance of Superman deconstructs the myth of the male hero. For Rollins, this hero does not exist - or if he does - he is a "Liar". Henry Rollins both embodies and deconstructs the superhero identity. He forms a nexus around which contradictory ideologies in masculinity collide and are reworked into a radically subversive critique of the relationship between men and superheroes. For Rollins the superhero mentality masks the complicated ideologies men must negotiate everyday in which they are subjectified within contradictory discursive frameworks that demand multifarious performances. Rollins strips back the layers of masculine power to reveal the ways in which men are embedded within social structures that reflect and affect their reality. In this self-reflexive critique he performs Superman in playful, resistive ways. This Superman does not exist apart from everyday life, but is entrenched within its frameworks that can only produce flawed performances of a social ideal. For Rollins a superhero embodiment cannot wipe away the discourses that encircle men within our culture but is rather a reflection of the extent to which men are embedded within them. In negotiating the difficulties in masculinity, Henry Rollins deprioritises men's roles as super-human agents of control, creation and change within a society. He calls into question the validity of masculine power and reifies the contradictions in manhood. He hails an ultimately resilient and empowered dominant masculinity within a deconstructive rhetoric. He is mobilising a moment within our culture where men must redefine who they are. This redefinition must be less concerned with how men can reclaim the power they are currently mourning in the 'crisis of masculinity'. If we are to make lasting change within a Cultural Studies framework then it cannot end, but only begin, with the articulation of a diversity of voices. Deep, structural change can only be made if we examine how a powerful position is able to occupy an unproblematised node of commonsense. Men need to redefine who they are, their bodies, their minds and their performances to position a masculinity that is not separate from society, but that can exist coherently within it. References Bridwell, Nathan. "Introduction." Superman from the Thirties to the Seventies. New York: Bonanza Books, 1971. Brown, James. "Comic book masculinity and the new black superhero." African American Review. 33.1 (1999): expanded academic database [n.pag]. Accessed 9.4.2001. Buchbinder, David. 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