Search results for "interfigurality"

Something Borrowed : Interfigural Characterisation in Anglo-American Fantasy Comics

2016

It is no secret that comics’ formal structure resembles a pastiche: images, words and gaps of different styles and abstraction levels mix to tell a story that is more than their sum. Is it any wonder, then, that modern, myth-driven graphic novels tend to borrow their content elements – such as characters – from several heterogeneous sources as well? Wolfgang G. Müller's little-known but widely applicable theory of interfigurality (1991) shows how literary characters gain depth and resonance by sharing elements with characters in other works. The chapter revises his theory and shows how it could also be used in the analysis of comic book characters. Fantasy comics from Vertigo series like Fa…