Frame Escapes: Graphic Novel Intertexts

Book excerpt: This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2016. The graphic narrative – in merging text with image – showcases an experiential panorama of visceral emotions for the users. Central to the format are considerations about the place of the image story in history and location. Both the comic and the graphic novel appropriate and are appropriated by diverse media in the enactment of individual, social and cultural identity. Intermediality morphs literature into pictures, films into graphic fiction, images into frames, and incorporates a host of flexible production values linked to high/low graphic arts. The structure of the graphic novel, city imaging, food fetishes, autographics, parallel worlds, Superhero guises, character patterning and shifting identities are explored in the eclectic volume by a range of authors using multimodal devices to analyse the composition, reading and interpretation of graphic narratives. The unstoppable momentum of holistic literature promises a converged means of expression that transcends the separation of print, digital and screen while transporting the dialogue about comics into a central scenario of popular culture. Throughout, the story stands strong in parallel with the probing of key concepts such as boundary transgression, moral searching, and the predictiveness of ‘frame-casting’ that allows feedback between the comic book frame and the silhouette of the future city.