Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Introduction: Comics Framing and the Construction of Facts

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Frames and Framing in Documentary Comics

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels ((PSCGN))

  • 423 Accesses

Abstract

The introductory chapter explains the concept of frames and framing and defines documentary comics as a distinct form of graphic nonfiction in the tradition of social documentary. With a brief history of comics as a documentary form and an overview of the addressed primary works, the fundamental idea of conscientious authentication and the book’s multilevel framing approach is established. Moreover, the corpus is introduced, which consists of Safe Area Goražde (2000), The Fixer (2004) and Footnotes in Gaza (2009) by pioneering author Joe Sacco; A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge (2009) by Josh Neufeld; Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City (2011) by Guy Delisle; as well as Sarah Glidden’s Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq (2016). The chapter then explores the status of documentary comics as a counterapproach to contemporary media culture, especially with regard to digitalization and post-truth politics.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Following Hillary Chute, I conceive of comics as “materializing” the represented events to stress the fact that graphic narratives “are not only about events but also, explicitly, about how we frame them” (2010, 2–3; original emphasis).

  2. 2.

    To highlight the fact that comics is a medium in its own right—one that is “plural in form,” the term “comics” will be “used with a singular verb” when referring to the medium (McCloud 1994, 9; see also Chute 2010, 5; 2017, 2). In turn, to enhance readability, individual works of documentary comics will be referred to as “documentary graphic narratives” where applicable (see Chute and DeKoven 2006).

  3. 3.

    In recent years, the product range of educational comics has increasingly incorporated works aimed at adult readers, such as Josh Neufeld’s adaptation of The Influencing Machine: Brook Gladstone on the Media (Gladstone and Neufeld 2012) or the “Graphic Guides” of the Introducing series by publisher Icon Books that include a variety of topics from physics to politics and history.

  4. 4.

    One notable exception would be true crime comics which retell stories of scandalous transgressions based on actual events and also emerged in the 1940s. These works are chiefly conceptualized as entertainments and are characterized by “melodrama, lurid sensationalism, and graphic depictions of violence” (Mickwitz 2016, 15; see also 2019).

  5. 5.

    Whereas authors of documentary comics commonly “employ autobiographic devices that serve to privilege narrative authenticity and to certify documentary truth, as they perceived it” (Adams 2008, 11), these accounts pointedly serve as a conduit to tell the stories of others. Hence, autobiographic elements serve as a means to an end, rather than as an end in itself (see also Schmid 2020).

  6. 6.

    Nina Mickwitz opts for another option by claiming “documentary of social concern” as a sub-category (2016, 115). Yet, social concern will be treated here as a core element of documentary comics (see also Adams 2008, 9) and be considered a prerequisite for inclusion in the category.

  7. 7.

    Published after the completion of my PhD thesis on which this book is based, Drawing on the Past includes a chapter on Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza that addresses several of the same scenes and issues. Any similarities are coincidental.

  8. 8.

    Several of the selected works have also been published as eBooks on Kindle or ComiXology. This study will focus on the graphic narrative book as a bounded assemblage of printed pages, or codex (see Borsuk 2018, 47). As an emerging form, the documentary graphic narrative book in its digital form deserves scholarly attention in its own right. However, this study will assume that the printed materiality of the graphic narrative book is a constitutive element of its documentary practices (cf. Chute 2016, 14).

  9. 9.

    It is true that comics can be read very quickly—more so than other media, especially verbal literature. Nevertheless, documentary graphic narratives are generally designed to make the process of reading mindful and thorough in order to be gratifying and to unfold the medium’s unique potential.

  10. 10.

    Latour pioneered theorizing the constructedness of scientific facts and demonstrated how they are persuasively generated in conversations and discussions among scientists and through literary inscription into documents (Latour and Woolgar 1986, 88, 151, 154). Yet, even in Laboratory Life, the authors stress, “Our argument is not that facts are not real, nor that they are merely artificial” (176).

References

  • Adams, Jeff. 2008. Documentary Graphic Novels and Social Realism. Bern: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bachmann, Christian A., and Johannes C.P. Schmid, eds. 2021. Framing [in] Comics and Cartoons: Essays on Aesthetics, History, and Mediality. Berlin: Ch. A. Bachmann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bal, Mieke. 2002. Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide. Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Böger, Astrid. 2017. Kreative Zwischenräume. Medienästhetische Strategien des Rahmens und Übersetzens in Graphic Novels. In Übersetzen und Rahmen. Praktiken medialer Transformationen, ed. Claudia Benthien and Gabriele Klein, 75–87. Paderborn: Fink.

    Google Scholar 

  • Borsuk, Amaranth. 2018. The Book. Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Brabner, Joyce, Alan Moore, Thomas Yeates, and Bill Sienkiewicz. 1989. Brought to Light: A Graphic Docudrama. New York: Eclipse Comics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chaney, Michal A. 2011. Introduction. In Graphic Subjects: Critical Essays on Autobiography and Graphic Novels, ed. Michael A. Chaney, 3–12. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chute, Hillary L. 2010. Graphic Women: Life Narrative & Contemporary Comics. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2016. Disaster Drawn. Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2017. Why Comics? From Underground to Everywhere. New York: HarperCollins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chute, Hillary, and Marianne DeKoven. 2006. Introduction: Graphic Narrative. MFS Modern Fiction Studies 52 (4, Winter): 767–782.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cohn, Neil. 2013. The Visual Language of Comics. Bloomsbury: London et al.

    Google Scholar 

  • Corner, John. 2002. Performing the Real: Documentary Diversions. Television & New Media 3 (3, Aug.): 255–269.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • CSpanClassics. 2010. GHW Bush: ‘I don’t care what the facts are.’ YouTube, December 20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10qatUWwIeg.

  • Curran, James. 2013. Global Journalism: A Case Study of the Internet. In Contesting Media Power: Institutions, Politics, and Culture, ed. Nick Couldry and James Curran, 227–242. Lanham et al.: Rowman & Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

  • Delisle, Guy. 2015. Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City. Translated by Helge Drescher. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly.

    Google Scholar 

  • Denson, Shane. 2012. Frame, Sequence, Medium: Comics in Plurimedial and Transnational Perspective. In Transnational American Studies, ed. Udo J. Hebel, 561–580. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duncan, Randy, Michael Ray Taylor, and David Stoddard. 2016. Creating Comics as Journalism, Memoir and Nonfiction. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • The Economist. 2016. Art of the Lie: Post-Truth Politics. Leaders, September 10. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2016/09/10/art-of-the-lie.

  • Eisner, Will. 2008. Comics and Sequential Art. New York: Norton & Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Enli, Gunn. 2015. Mediated Authenticity: How the Media Constructs Reality. Frankfurt am Main et al.: Peter Lang.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Entman, Robert M. 1993. Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm. Journal of Communication 43 (4, Autumn): 51–58.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fine, Cordelia. 2006. A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives. New York: Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fisher Davies, Paul. 2018. Goffman’s Frame Analysis, Modality and Comics. Studies in Comics 9 (2): 297–295.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel. 1984. Truth and Power. In The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, 51–76. New York: Pantheon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Genette, Gérard. 1983. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilbert, Daniel T. 1991. How Mental Systems Believe. American Psychologist 46 (2 Feb.): 107–119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gitlin, Todd. 1998. Public Sphere or Public Sphericules? In Media, Ritual, and Identity, ed. Tamar Liebes and James Curran, 168–174. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gladstone, Brooke, and Josh Neufeld. 2012. The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media. New York and London: Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Glidden, Sarah. 2011. The Waiting Room. Cartoon Movement, April 13. http://www.cartoonmovement.com/comic/10.

  • ———. 2016. Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly.

    Google Scholar 

  • Green, Melanie C., Jennifer Garst, and Timothy C. Brock. 2004. The Power of Fiction: Determinants and Boundaries. In The Psychology of Entertainment Media: Blurring the Lines Between Entertainment and Persuasion, ed. J.J. Shrum, 161–176. Mahwah, NJ and London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

    Google Scholar 

  • Groensteen, Thierry. 2007. The System of Comics. Translated by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Halpern, Jake, and Michael Sloan. 2017. Welcome to the New World. New York Times, January 6–September 30. https://www.nytimes.com/series/syrian-refugee-family-welcome-america.

  • Hatfield, Charles. 2005. Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hill, Gord. 2010. The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2018. The Antifa Comic Book. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoefer, Anthony Dyer. 2012. A Revision of the Record: The Demands of Reading Josh Neufeld’s A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. In Comics and the American South, ed. Brannon Costello and Qiana Whitted, 293–323. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kahneman, Daniel. 2012. Thinking, Fast and Slow. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky. 1984. Choices, Values, and Frames. American Psychologist 39 (4, Apr.): 341–350.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keyes, Ralph. 2004. The Post-Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life. New York: St. Martin’s.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuypers, Jim A. 2010. Framing Analysis from a Rhetorical Perspective. In Doing News Framing Analysis: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives, ed. Paul D’Angelo and Jim Kuypers, 286–311. New York and London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2014. The All New Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. White River Junction: Chelsea Green.

    Google Scholar 

  • Latour, Bruno. 2004. Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern. Critical Inquiry 30 (Winter): 225–248.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2018. Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Cambridge and Medford: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. 1986. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lefèvre, Pascal. 2012. Mise en scène and Framing: Visual Storytelling in Lone Wolf and Cub. In Critical Approaches to Comics, Theories and Methods, ed. Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan, 71–83. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2013. The Modes of Documentary Comics. In Der dokumentarische Comic. Reportage und Biographie, ed. Dietrich Grünewald, 50–61. Berlin: Ch. A. Bachmann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Macrae, Neil C., and Galen V. Bodenhausen. 2000. Social Cognition: Thinking Categorically about Others. Annual Review of Psychology 51: 93–120.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCloud, Scott. 1994. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: William Morrow.

    Google Scholar 

  • McIntyre, Lee C. 2018. Post-Truth. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Meyer, Christina. 2010. ‘Putting it into boxes’: Framing Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers. In Trauma’s Continuum September 11th Re-visited, ed. MaryAnn Snyder-Körber, and Andrew Gross. Special Issue of Amerikastudien/American Studies 55 (3): 479–494.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mickwitz, Nina. 2016. Documentary Comics. Graphic Truth-Telling in a Skeptical Age. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2019. “True Story”: The Aesthetic Balancing Act of Documentary Comics. In Graphic Realities: Comics as Documentary, History, and Journalism, ed. Laura Schlichting and Johannes C. P. Schmid, Special Issue of ImageTexT 11 (1).

    Google Scholar 

  • Neufeld, Josh. 2007–2008. A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge. Smith Magazine. http://www.smithmag.net/afterthedeluge/.

  • ———. 2009. A. D.: New Orleans after the Deluge. Hardcover. New York: Pantheon.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2016. The Road to Germany: $2400. Foreign Policy, January 29. https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/01/29/the-road-to-germany-2400-refugee-syria-migrant-germany-nonfiction-comic/.

  • Nichols, Bill. 2001. Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pekar, Harvey. 2003. American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar. New York: Ballantine Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Positive Negatives. 2015. A Perilous Journey: Khalid’s Flight to Europe from Syria—An Illustrated Account. The Guardian, November 11. https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2015/nov/11/a-perilous-journey-khalids-story-syrian-refugee.

  • Quinn, Audrey, and Jackie Roche. 2014. “Syria’s Climate-Fueled Conflict, In One Stunning Comic Strip.” Mother Jones, May 29, 2014. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/05/syria-climate-years-living-dangerously-symbolia/.

  • Rabin, Nathan. 2006. Interview: Stephen Colbert. Interview with Stephen Colbert. AV Club, January 25. https://tv.avclub.com/stephen-colbert-1798208958.

  • Rosler, Martha. 2004. Post-Documentary, Post-Photography? In Decoys and Disruptions. Selected Writings, 1975–2001, 207–244. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sacco, Joe. 2000. Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992–95. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2003. The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo. Hardcover. London: Jonathan Cape.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2006. Palestine. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2009. Footnotes in Gaza. New York: Metropolitan.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2010. The Unwanted, Part 1. Virginia Quarterly Review. https://www.vqronline.org/vqr-gallery/unwanted-part-1.

  • ———. 2012. Preface: A Manifesto, Anyone? In Journalism, xi–xiv. New York: Metropolitan.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2014. Bumf vol. 1. London: Jonathan Cape.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scherr, Rebecca. 2015. Framing Human Rights: Comics Form and the Politics of Recognition in Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza. Textual Practice 29 (1): 111–132.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schmid, Johannes C.P. 2016. Shooting Pictures, Drawing Blood: The Photographic Image in the Graphic War Memoir. Berlin: Ch. A. Bachmann.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2018. Graphic Nonviolence: Framing ‘Good Trouble’ in John Lewis’ March. In Envisioning Justice: Mediating the Question of Rights in American Visual Culture, ed. Astrid Böger and Nicole Maruo-Schröder. Special Issue of European Journal of American Studies 13 (4). http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/13922.

  • ———. 2019. “Documentary Webcomics: Mediality and Contexts.” In Perspectives on Digital Comics, edited by Jeffrey S. J. Kirchoff and Mike P. Cook, 63–88. Jefferson: McFarland.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2020. Comics as Memoir and Documentary: A Case Study of Sarah Glidden. In Documenting Trauma in Comics: Traumatic Pasts, Embodied Histories & Graphic Reportage, ed. Dominic Davies and Candida Rifkind, 317–333. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Sikoryak, R. 2017a. The Unquotable Trump. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2017b. Terms and Conditions. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simon, Adama F., and Jennifer Jerit. 2007. Toward a Theory Relating Political Discourse, Media, and Public Opinion. Journal of Communication 57: 254–271.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spiegelman, Art. 2003. The Complete Maus. London et al.: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stein, Sarah R., and Shaun Cashman. 2009. Documentaries, Motion Picture. In Encyclopedia of Journalism, ed. Christopher H. Sterling, 449–457. Los Angeles et al.: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Swaine, Jon. 2018. Trump Inauguration Crows Photos Were Edited after He Intervened. The Guardian, September 6. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/06/donald-trump-inauguration-crowd-size-photos-edited.

  • Tesich, Steve. 1992. A Government of Lies. The Nation 254 (1, Jan.): 12–14.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. 1981. The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice. Science 211 (4481, Jan.): 453–458.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Uricchio, William. 2019. Reassessing the Situation of the Text in the Algorithmic Age. In Situated in Translation: Cultural Communities and Media Practices, ed. Michaela Ott and Thomas Weber, 23–38. Bielefeld: Transcript.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vanderbeke, Dirk. 2010. In the Art of the Beholder: Comics as Political Journalism. In Comics as a Nexus of Cultures. Essays on the Interplay of Media, Disciplines and International Perspectives, ed. Mark Berninger et al., 70–81. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2019. “Graphic Narratives as Non-Fiction in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Era.” In Graphic Realities: Comics as Documentary, History, and Journalism, ed. Laura Schlichting and Johannes C. P. Schmid. Special Issue of ImageTexT 11 (1).

    Google Scholar 

  • Weber, Wibke, and Hans-Martin Rall. 2017. Authenticity in Comics Journalism. Visual Strategies for Reporting Facts. Journal of Comics and Graphic Novels. https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2017.1299020.

  • Wege, Birte. 2019. Drawing on the Past: Graphic Narrative Documentary. Frankfurt and New York: Campus.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wirth, Uwe. 2013. Rahmenbrüche, Rahmenwechsel. Nachwort des Herausgebers, welches aus Versehen des Druckers zu einem Vorwort gemacht wurde. In Rahmenbrüche, Rahmenwechsel, ed. Uwe Wirth, 15–60. Berlin: Kadmos.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolf, Werner. 2006. Introduction: Frames, Framings and Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media. In Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media, ed. Werner Wolf and Walter Bernhart, 1–42. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Woo, Benjamin. 2010. Reconsidering Comics Journalism: Information and Experience in Joe Sacco’s Palestine. In The Rise and Reason of Comics and Graphic Literature: Critical Essays on the Form, ed. Joyce Goggin and Dan Hassler-Forest, 166–177. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

    Google Scholar 

  • Worden, Daniel, ed. 2015. The Comics of Joe Sacco: Journalism in a Visual World. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. English and American Studies, University of Flensburg, Flensburg, Germany

    Johannes C. P. Schmid

Authors
  1. Johannes C. P. Schmid
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Johannes C. P. Schmid .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Schmid, J.C.P. (2021). Introduction: Comics Framing and the Construction of Facts. In: Frames and Framing in Documentary Comics. Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63303-5_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation