The most memorable aspect of growing up with comic books is the impression that nothing in them is insignificant. Children know this best, often to the chagrin of adults or dismissive cultural critics. The quality, feel, or smell of paper, every colour, every motion line, every depicted character and every word is part of a synaesthetic package. Indeed, comic art is unique, combining verbal narration and sequential visual depiction, both adhering to and flouting literary and cinematic norms. Comic book readers come to acquire special reading skills (see Mikkonen 2017, pp.55â65): they detect continuities (cohesion/coherence) and distinct rhythms in how information flows within a combined visual-verbal track; they develop an interest in characters and their actions as they follow the plot across panels and pages; they selectively bring their past experience, background knowledge, ideological and emotional baggage or stereotypes into the reading process.
Whilst a lot depends on the eye of the beholder, there are some constants in this complex act of reading. In this book, I will focus on what I consider to be one of those constantsâhumourâbecause humour sticks. It is something memorable we instinctively wish to share. We discuss funny characters, images or lines, recommend comic books to others, share or buy them as gifts and, if professionally active in the field, we may choose them for translation into other languages. Readers of this book might share my view that humour appreciation is perhaps the earliest aspect of comic book reading we develop. After all, several books addressing children entail some element of humour/playfulness. Those who grow up with funny comic books can subsequently take a look at a cover page and immediately form expectations about the type of visual/verbal humour they can experience on the pages within. They gather that a book is entertaining, requires a certain pace of reading and has a happy denouement simply by a quick observation of the bookâs format, length, number of panels per page, style of drawing or dialogues in random panels. When reading, they activate different types of expectations as to what is clichĂ© or unexpected, bizarre or entertaining, based on clues in the visual-verbal channel and on their background knowledge.
Comic artists exploit the above expectations and may use humour for branding purposes. A good example is Marvelâs Deadpool (1991âpresent), which relies on standard superhero iconography, gory violence and structural oppositions (goodâevil), just as it brims with distinctive irreverent language. The comic bookâs covers and web presence1 often highlight humour as a selling point: visually, with Deadpool in various comic postures, or shown gloating; and verbally, in tongue-in-cheek descriptions of Deadpoolâs enticing yet amoral, annoying personality. This general levity is reinforced in the language within the book, most notably, Deadpoolâs funny retorts or his breaking of the fourth wall by addressing readers. In almost three decades and over several relaunches, various authors and illustrators moulded this narrative into a relatively coherent, darkly comic tone leading to commercial success.
The above example indicates the chicken-egg conundrum of humour. Humour can be indispensable in experimentation with genre conventions, leading to a bookâs popularity. Conversely, humour may be established as a staple feature that fans expect to see. In this book I examine comic book adaptations of classical comedy, material that is revealing (more so than Deadpool) as to how comic branding is created. The adaptations were locally produced in Modern Greek by just one artist-writer duo, achieving success in a span of less than 10 years and circulating for another 25 years up to the present. The books feature outrageous roguish characters that break the fourth wall, as well as elements harking back to the medley of satire, fantasy, slapstick, bawdiness and poetry that Aristophanes (540â388 BCE) became known for, and which survived through a string of adaptations for the stage/page long before the comic books appeared. The ancient dramaturgâs recognisable name, image and oeuvre must have buttressed comic branding for the comic book adaptations. Indeed, having sold over 1,000,000 copies, the books have become popular among children and adults alike. Translations out of Greek have also appeared in two locales: English, French and German translations done in Greece, and Turkish translations done in Turkey. As such, the books represent a cultural flow in a South-to-South paradigm, in non-dominant locales for comic book production (unlike, say, France, Italy, Japan or the USA). They are publication oddities, given the usual editorial or economic barriers for translation generally (Dalkey Archive 2011), or the fact that there is no major translation tradition between Greece and Turkey (in the field of comic books). This is a humour dissemination phenomenon worth explaining.
More specifically, examining the Aristophanic series constitutes a vantage point of theoretical, institutional and textual intersections. The comic book series can offer insights into the formation of contingent networks of publication. So the questions that arise here are: Who are the creators, translators and publishers? When and why did they disseminate these texts?
To answer these questions, I have used semi-structured interviews (see Appendix) because they can offer information about text-authoring or translation intentions as well as verify general (con)textual facts. Information on the above can only be partially gleaned by close reading of texts (see below) or by consulting publication lists. For example, publicly available archives, such as library catalogues are useful tools, but often lack difficult-to-obtain originals/translations or information on publication dates and translators, especially for ephemeral publications like comic books. The Aristophanic series is not an exception in this respect. Another advantage is that interviews help capture personal narratives in non-mainstream, non-prestigious and probably short-lived professions that would otherwise remain invisible. Such narratives can reveal how comic books âgo-betweenersâ think, what opportunities and constraints they see, or how they tackle the important issue of humour. Thus, the book serves as a bridge to a theme with growing interest in Comics Studies, namely the international production of comic books and the treatment of universal/political themes (Meneses 2014), with the âglocalâ genre of Aristophanic adaptations serving as exemplar. Chapter 2 establishes the socio-historical context of this genre and discusses the views of key players, using Lefevereâs concept of rewriting as theoretical framework (Lefevere 2017).2
From a textual point of view, comedy constitutes a research gap in Adaptation Studies too, because the overwhelming focus is on transfer techniques for drama adaptations (Sabeti 2014). Similarly, whist Aristophanesâ plays are a staple in the Classics, the language of humour is not examined systematically (Olson 2014). In Translation Studies, where the issue of humour is addressed extensively (Zanettin 2008), the main trend is one of problem stating, namely, developing typologies of primarily word-level humorous devices (e.g. cultural references, puns). Alternatively, there is a focus on problem solving, or describing how playful language can be relayed, how stylistic compensation occurs, or how multimodality may facilitate the transfer of puns (Grassegger 1985, pp.100â103; Harvey 1995, p.69; Kaindl 2004, p.176). This book constitutes a methodological departure as it starts by defining tone, style and motifs of characterisation and then deploys a suitable linguistic kit. Such a top-down approach may help a researcher to link different stylistic features to the bigger picture, the crafting of humorous contexts where funny, incongruous characters operate. It is a methodology that shifts emphasis away from the painstaking examination of individual linguistic features and their distribution within one case-study/work; instead, it may flexibly lead to generalisations as to how humour is realised visually, verbally and across different works.
The above-mentioned argument gives rise to questions which have not received sufficient attention in various areas of study: how can humour in comics be understood (from a Humour Studies perspective)? How does it travel (i) from plays to the medium of comics ( intersemiotic translati...