DIPLOMARBEIT Titel der Diplomarbeit Darkness Returns Frank Miller and His Retroactive Influence on Representations of the Graphic Novel Verfasser Valentin Freyler angestrebter akademischer Grad Magister der Philosophie (Mag.phil.) Wien, Mai 2012 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt: A 343 Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt: Anglistik und Amerikanistik Betreuerin: Ao. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Monika Seidl I want to thank Monika for her inspiration and mentoring Babsi for just about everything – I don’t know if you know how much My parents for their support and especially their patience Kathi for sharing tdo SK Table of Contents 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................1 2. “You mean like pornographic?” – Comics and the Rise of the Graphic Novel ....................4 2.1 Comics – A Medium and Its Emergence .........................................................................5 2.1.1 Early American Comics History – An Overview ........................................................7 2.2 The Graphic Novel .......................................................................................................10 3. Frank Miller and His Retroactive Influence on a Genre ....................................................14 3.1 Frank Miller .................................................................................................................14 3.2 Miller’s Influence on the (Perception of a) Genre - Retroactivity .................................17 3.2.1 Retroactivity – A Concept and Its Journey .............................................................18 3.2.2 Turning Around the Temporal Logic ......................................................................20 4. A Multimodal Social-Semiotic Analysis of Frank Miller’s Work........................................23 4.1 Various Panels – One Framework: A Social-Semiotic Approach to Multimodality .......24 4.1.1 Multimodality .......................................................................................................25 4.1.2 Social-Semiotic Theory ..........................................................................................27 4.1.3 From Theory to Practice: Frank Miller as the Sign-Maker ......................................29 4.2 A Close Reading of The Dark Knight Returns and Sin City: The Hard Goodbye ..............31 4.2.1 Understanding Comics – of Panels, Gutters, and Speech Balloons ........................32 4.2.2 The Dark Knight Returns – Figure 1 ‘Falling’ ..........................................................33 4.2.3 The Dark Knight Returns – Figure 2 ‘A Chase in the Air’ .........................................40 4.2.4 The Dark Knight Returns – (From Figure 2 to) Figure 3 ‘Tumbling Like Lovers’ ......52 4.2.5 An Excursion: Unreliable First Person Narration ...................................................55 4.2.6 Sin City: The Hard Goodbye – Figure 4 ‘Marv Approaching’ ...................................58 4.2.7 Sin City: The Hard Goodbye – Figure 5 ‘Observing and Preparing’ .........................60 4.2.8 Sin City: The Hard Goodbye – Figure 6 ‘Marv Attacks’ ..........................................62 5. Towards a Definition of Darkness ....................................................................................68 5.1 Dichotomies ................................................................................................................68 5.1.1 Silhouettes ............................................................................................................71 5.2 Contradictions .............................................................................................................74 5.2.1 Unreliable First Person Narration in Sin City: The Hard Goodbye ...........................75 5.3 Parallels to Hard-boiled Detective Fiction and Film Noir ..............................................78 6. Representations of ‘Darkness’ in Movie Posters ..............................................................82 6.1 Frank Miller’s Sin City (2005) .......................................................................................83 6.2 Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008)......................................................85 6.3 Captain America – The First Avenger (2011) ................................................................87 6.4 V for Vendetta (2006) ..................................................................................................88 6.5 Watchmen (2009) .......................................................................................................89 7. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................91 8. References .......................................................................................................................94 9. Table of Illustrations ........................................................................................................99 10. Acknowledgement Images ........................................................................................... 100 11. Appendix ...................................................................................................................... 101 11.1 Illustrations ............................................................................................................. 101 11.2 Abstract (German) ................................................................................................... 111 11.3 Curriculum Vitae ..................................................................................................... 113 1. Introduction “The reading of the comic book is an act of both aesthetic perception and intellectual pursuit” (Will Eisner). Comics and graphic novels have long stepped out of the shadows of childhood and adolescence. Academic discourse has started to embrace this medium more than two decades ago and has not released, but rather held it closer, ever since. The quite recent emergence of the field of Comic Studies – in the wake of Cultural Studies’ engagement with ‘lived experience’ and practices of ‘everday life’ – only emphasizes that. Universities around the globe dedicate increasing resources to Comic Studies. They are not only taught at US universities1, but are also widespread in Europe, where even Master degrees are offered2. But comics have come a long way. Even a Pulitzer Prize3 lies in the recent past of the turbulent medium, which has developed social and cultural acceptance. Comics and graphic novels can now be found in bookshops between crime-fiction and non-fiction books. This is doubtless – at least to some extent – owed to the fact that three of the twenty all time highest grossing movies in the US are adaptations of graphic novels4. The general success of movie adaptations of graphic novels and the corresponding franchises has, since the new millennium, lead to a heyday of the medium and considerable sales figures with it. What I find intriguing, however, is the lack of diversity in the public representation of such a diverse genre. If one is to regard visual representations of different graphic novels on movie posters, websites, book covers, or other realms of the public sphere, it is quite obvious that parallels and strong similarities are employed. So, how come these representations all seem to aim at the construction of less diverse and more homogeneous identities of the graphic novel and their characters? After some preliminary research, the question after the source of these hegemonic representations, which manifest themselves in, what I see as, a particularly ‘dark’ approach, 1 A prominent example for such an institution would be the University of Florida. 2 Since 2011 at the University of Dundee, Scotland/UK. 3 In 1992 Art Spiegelman’s Maus – A Survivor’s Tale was awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Award. 4 http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/domestic.htm (01/04/2012). 1 arose. Tracing said source led me to engaging more closely with graphic novels and authorship, where I soon encountered one of the stars of comics writing and drawing, Frank Miller. Miller turned out to be a promising subject of analysis, since he is not only regarded one of the graphic novel authors, but also openly influenced directors and writers in their approaches to film-making. What is more, he provided the sources for various adaptations and also tried his luck as a director. Therefore, Frank Miller is going to serve as the starting point for my analysis. I am going to analyze his role as an author of graphic novels and more importantly his style, in order to show how he influenced the representation of a whole genre, dominant in the mainstream. I will pay specific attention to this style, which I see in the creation of ‘Darkness’, a concept composed of various factors that will be discussed and thoroughly laid out in the course of this thesis. I will work multimodally in my approach to Miller’s style, scrutinizing his use of semiotic resources across various modes in a close- reading in order to identify his distinctive take on graphic novel writing and drawing. Then, these stylistic elements will be traced into the public sphere and it will be shown how they manifest themselves in movie posters of graphic novel adaptations released over the last years. Section 2 will provide an introduction to the topic of comics and graphic novels, giving a historical overview of the development of a medium, with