Self-Relfexivity Before the British Invasion
Chapter 1 will recount the history of self-referential and metafictional techniques in American comics with special attention to the superhero genre. The general thesis of the chapter is that while there are self-reflexive comics in the pre-Revisionist period, what is referred to as the Silver Age, they generally ignore the breaches they create between fiction and reality, and often actively attempt to repair the breaches. The metacomics that appear in the mid-80s do the opposite; they create those breaches and/or emphatically point them out. The common factor between self-reflexive comics and metacomics is that they both become more and more concerned with addressing the gaps in narrative continuity that develop over the decades in which the same characters are written and over-written by successive generations of artists.[1] Before the 80s, comics largely acted to fill those gaps, but the material they used metaphorically corroded the surroundings and created even larger gaps to be filled with more and more corrosive material. After the 80s, metacomics become popular as an alternative strategy. Instead of filling in the gaps, metacomics celebrate them; admitting that the books are full of holes means that the holes can stay. There are examples of comics that perform, if not metacomical moves, at the very least, extremely Revisionist moves, such as Marvel’s aforementioned Squadron Supreme, but they are rare, whereas since the mid-80s, Revisionist and metacomical techniques litter mainstream American comicbooks. The study will focus on a pair of bridging texts, between the self-referential and the metacomical, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, and the aforementioned Crisis On Infinite Earths, as well as its sequels, Zero Hour and Infinite Crisis. Space does not permit a detailed analysis, but the general trend over the course of the late Silver Age is to move closer and closer to metacomics. Chapter 1 will trace that trend.
[6] The verbs here, ‘to write’ and ‘to overwrite’ do not include the pictorial. Though I have not settled on a pictorial equivalent yet, the concept of the palimpsest might suffice, depending on its theoretical context.
Posted by orion at January 8, 2007 5:49 PM