Digital and In/Visible Lives in Autobiographical Webcomics
Description
This book examines webcomics as a complex and dynamic form of self-representation that captures the trends and tendencies of contemporary digital life narrative. Webcomics represent a rich and composite site for autobiography online that allows for experiment with analogue and digital technologies in ways that are fundamentally visual but also mediated, public, and networked. Exploring a broad spectrum of case studies emerging on various digital platforms – including personal blogs, websites, and social media, author Shannon Sandford focuses on wounded bodies, mental illness, graphic medicine, and feminist webcomics to introduce complex questions around self-representation and embodiment. Works covered include: Stuart Campbell's These Memories Won't Last; Allie Brosh's blog Hyperbole and a Half; Alec MacDonald's Instagram account; Kate Beaton's “Regular Life” webcomics on Twitter and Tumblr; MUTHA Magazine (2013–present); and Australian artist Mary Leunig's short series of Facebook webcomics.
Investigating the ways modern webcomics, by inscribing subjects on the edges of representation, signal the urgencies of life narrative as a practice/ discipline that moves into increasingly networked and digital subject positions, this book considers how webcomics uniquely combine visual artistry with modern methods of production, consumption, and circulation. In a contemporary moment fascinated with life narrative in fluctuating digital spaces, Digital and In/Visible Lives in Autobiographical Webcomics considers how webcomics might transition into a representative apparatus to challenge the status quo and engage with subjects marginalised by mainstream media and the digital sphere.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1. From Alternative Press to Ephemeral Technologies: A Contemporary History of Webcomics
Explicit, Ugly, and Taboo: The Autobiographical Aesthetic of Underground Comix
Alternative Experimentations in Form and Materiality
Dynamic Reading and Divergent Spaces: The Wide World of Web(comics)
Chapter 2. “Loading Memories…”: Deteriorating Pasts and Distant Futures in Stuart Campbell's These Memories Won't Last
Interrogating “Living Connections”: Trauma, Memory, and Postmemory
Liminal Spaces, Narrative Ruptures: Navigating Ephemeral Technologies
A Cacophony of Sound and Energy: These Memories as Enhanced Webcomic
Chapter 3. “You Can't Combat Nothing”: Allie Brosh and the Ethical Dimensions of Graphic Medicine
Speaking in Lay Terms: Representing Illness Online
Cycles, Closures, and Confronting the Restitution Narrative
“Does Anybody Know What is Happening with Allie Brosh”: Negotiating Absence and Audience Desires
Chapter 4. Mundane Bodies, Extraordinary Embodiment in Alec MacDonald's @alecwithpen
Coding the Other: Apprehending Illness through Iconography
Navigating Everyday Life with a “Bad Brain”
Influencers of Illness: Reading Instagram Webcomics
Chapter 5. Slow Violences: The Affective Weight of Re-presenting Lives in Kate Beaton's “Regular Life” Webcomics
Mundane, Intimate, Anecdotal: Family Narratives Online
Illness, Loss, and Visual Labour
#HourlyComicsDay: Everyday Webcomics in Dialogic Spaces
Chapter 6. Subversive “Wimmen” and Bad “MUTHAs”: Genealogies of Women's Web/Comix
Reading and Reconciling the Counter-publics of Wimmen's Comix
De/constructing MUTHAhood: Self-exposure, Vulnerability, Rebellion
Digital Intimate Publics and the “Bad Mom” Movement
Chapter 7. “It's Not Brave, It's Easy”: Mary Leunig's Webcomics During the #MeToo Era
The Risk of Telling Trauma amid an Australian #MeToo
Art, Excess, Exaggeration, Imagination
“No Small Thing”: Complex Representations of Systemic Violence
Conclusion. Webcomics, What Now?
Bibliography
Index
Product details
| Published | 04 Mar 2027 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 240 |
| ISBN | 9781350447592 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 15 colour illus |
| Series | New Directions in Life Narrative |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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