Miles To Go Before We Sleep
The conclusion will consist of three discussions. First, there will be a brief overview of post-Revisionist metacomical techniques, which do not all go as far as collapsing fiction and reality, but do use those metacomical techniques to actively comment on the state of American comics today. Very few contemporary comics can get away with not referencing at least the possibility of that collapse, in some way, as we can see in the gradual shift towards metacomical implications in Crisis On Infinite Earths and its sequels. Second, the Conclusion will, of course, summarise the high points of the dissertation, which consists of a general thesis, already stated above, and several sub-theses, (1) pre-Revisionist comics do contain self-reflexivity, but they do not commit to active commentaries on comics, and they either ignore or actively attempt to dispel any potential breaches they might create between reality and fiction; (2) Moore, Gaiman, and Ellis all write structural metafictions that directly address the act of storytelling itself, in mythological, psychological, and journalistic terms; (3) Moore, Gaiman, and Ellis's Revisionist metacomics actively suspend the audience's belief, rather than its disbelief, counter to traditional modes of high-fantasy storytelling; (4) analogue characters and retcon are the two major devices of Revisionist metacomics, and they are used within the Revisionist movement to create new narratives/characters that fit a new set of audience expectations.
Finally, the Conclusion will name and describe the limitations of the dissertation, the problems and issues that the dissertation lacks space or scope to address. Many of those issues are located in a kind of analysis that would regard comics as a culture, one that contains both audience and creators, and the industry that produces them in America. A cultural studies analysis of this relationship would be the most appropriate, though such a study must not lose sight of the primary material, and indeed would do well to locate itself within analysis of the primary material, since it is the only common factor to all aspects of comics as a culture; indeed, it is how we define comics as a culture, so divorcing it from the culture would be simply illogical. Future studies will need to take on the intersection of metacomics, culture, and industry because the metacomics themselves refer to the culture and the industry as much as they refer to the act of storytelling.
Posted by orion at January 8, 2007 6:20 PM