Introduction

Summary

The introduction starts with a concise discussion of three capsule examples (Chris Ware’s McSweeney’s anthology, Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers, and Seth’s design for The Complete Peanuts, all published in 2004) as different markers of the archival impulse in the graphic novel. From there, and relying on these examples, the chapter sets out the methodological problems that come with historicizing the graphic novel by analyzing the backward look of contemporary cartoonists. It tackles three core issues: definitional and media-historical questions around the graphic novel, canonization and what gets forgotten in today’s cartoonists’ limited embrace of the past, and the archival turn in comics studies. It finishes by introducing the notion of gestures of transmission as a way of approaching comics memory as a visual material culture that is variously reframed, reshaped, and redrawn into the present.