149

Studies in Comics

Volume 1 Number 1

2010 Intellect Ltd Interview. English language. doi: 10.1386/stic.1.1.149/7

STIC 1 (1) pp. 149158 Intellect Limited 2010

INTERVIEW

LAURENCE GROVEUniversity of Glasgow

Harry Morgan: the twenty-first century Renaissance man ofgraphic novels

Like the graphic novel itself, Harry Morgan (born 1961, pen name of Christian Marc Wahl) crosses disciplines and mixes theory with practice. He is a well-established novelist (La Reine du ciel [The Queen of Heaven]; Paris: Rivages, 1997) and artist, but is probably best known to readers of Studies in Comics for his analysis of the historical and theoretical context of drawn literatures: his Principes des littratures dessines [Principles of Drawn Litteratures] (Angoulme: ditions de lAn 2, 2003) explores the structure and development of the graphic novel in terms of literary antecedents, leaning particularly on examples taken from the Victorian era.

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Le Petit Critique illustr, co-authored with Manuel Hirtz and now in its second edition (Paris: PLG, 2005; first edition 1997), provides the definitive bibliography of secondary sources on the bande dessine in particular and comics in general. Regular updates are added on Morgans site, The Adamantine (www.theadamantine.free.fr), which provides a quirky and often forthright exploration of critical approaches to the genre.

In 2009 Morgan received a doctorate from the Universit de Paris VII for his monumental work contrasting techniques in European and North American traditions, drawing specifically on the crea-tions of Jack Kirby, Alain Saint-Ogan and Jean-Claude Forest. In spanning the boundaries of conti-nents, time and language, Morgans analysis is unique amongst the scholarship of comics.

The following interview was conducted by e-mail in December 2009.

How would your own description of yourself differ from that given above?

Lensemble de la description est beaucoup trop flatteur.

On the whole the description is far too flattering.

Do you see yourself primarily as a creator or a critic?

Mon talent nest pas dans le dessin et mes quelques griffonnages (my meagre scratchings) ont surtout lintrt de me faire toucher du doigt les contraintes de la cration en bande dessine. Dans ce sens, je suis un critique, condition de situer le mot dans une certaine tradition pragmatique, o le critique frquente latelier de lartiste et a une connaissance concrte du mtier.

En gnralisant, jai peut-tre une intuition de ce quen franais on appellerait le gnie du mdium, une comprhension de sa logique et de ses possibilits. En ce sens aussi, je rflchis sans doute comme un critique lancienne mode, ou comme un crateur.

La combinaison dune approche thoricienne et de cette intuition des contraintes techniques et du gnie du mdium mamne naturellement vers une potique de la bande dessine. Je mintresse donc particulirement la discrtisation du contenu narratif, constitutif de la squence, la gestion du temps dans le dispositif, laquelle jai donn le nom de chronoscope, des questions narratologiques, en par-ticulier celle de la perspective et celle du rflecteur. Quant au gnie propre des littratures dessines, il dbouche sur la constitution dun univers spcifique, du fait des contraintes propres au mdium. Dcrire les lois sous-jacentes qui donnent leur physionomie aux univers dessins est videmment une ide de crateur.

Drawing is not where my talent lies and my meagre scratchings are above all of interest in that they allow me to keep contact with the constraints involved in the creation of bande dessine. In that sense

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1. Insertions in square brackets are clarifica-tions for linguistic purposes. In all other cases additions and emphasis in the French text are those of Harry Morgan. Sidenotes are my own.

I am a critic insofar as I place what I write within a certain pragmatic tradition, one in which the critic is often present in the artists studio and boasts concrete understanding of the tricks of the trade.

In general terms, I perhaps have a sort of intuition regarding what in French might be called the spirit [gnie] of the medium,1 an understanding of its logic and of its possibilities. In that respect as well I probably think as would an old-fashioned critic, or as would a creator.

The combination of a theoretical approach to both that intuition regarding technical constraints and to the spirit of the medium naturally draws me to construct a literary theory [potique] for the bande dessine (BD). I am therefore particularly interested in the discrete nature of narrative content that makes up sequentiality, in the handling of time in the way the BD functions, something I have labelled as chronoscope, in questions of narratology, in particular that of perspective and of the reflector-character [rflecteur]. As for the specific spirit of drawn literatures, it opens the way to the setting-up of a specific universe as a result of the constraints that are specific to the medium. To describe the underlying laws that give their physiognomy to drawn universes is obviously a creators notion.

Is it possible to imagine a graphic novel without narrative?

Donner une squence imagire qui ne soit pas un rcit, qui ne raconte rien, cest ce qua fait Martin Vaughn-James dans La Cage. Mais lexercice me parat un peu vain du fait que la raction spontane du lecteur devant une image est quelle raconte quelque chose, en dpit de toutes les polmiques antimim-tiques entretenues par la littrature savante. De mme, devant la suite imagire, le lecteur tisse naturelle-ment des relations dordre squentiel.

cet gard, tout le courant thorique qui postule une dficience soit de limage soit de la squence imagire en matire de narration me parat peu pertinent. Il est parfaitement exact que le lecteur reconstitue le rcit, quil dduit les relations de causalit et de conscution partir dindices, mais cette reconstitution ne pose aucun problme particulier si tant est quon ait appris lire une image ou une bande dessine. Il est donc inutile de nous expliquer continuellement que le rcit se trouve en amont ou en aval, mais pas dans la squence imagire proprement dite, que, pour raconter, la BD doit tricher la fois avec le texte et avec limage, etc.

Je laisse de ct la question du narrateur (narrator), cest--dire de la prsence autoriale dans le rcit dessin, qui est un problme complexe. Pour me borner des remarques trs gnrales, le rcit dessin dun Tpffer, dun Wilhelm Busch ou dun Christophe, est clairement autorial, exactement comme le roman de cette poque. Au contraire, les grands strips des annes 1920 et 1930 sont des rcits sans nar-rateurs, relevant de la narration scnique. Je brosse ici grands traits une volution qui demande tre analyse de faon plus fine. Mais la distinction me semble expliquer le statut du texte sous limage et lutilisation de la bulle de faon beaucoup plus convaincante que lanalyse en termes de rapports du texte et de limage.

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In The Cage Martin Vaughn-James created a sequence of images that was not a narrative, in which no story was told. But I find the exercise somewhat stilted in that the readers spontaneous reaction when faced with an image is that it must tell some story, whatever the anti-mimetic polemics put forward by learned criticism. In the same way, when faced with a sequence of images it is second nature for the reader to sew things together in terms of sequential order.

In that respect I take issue with the theoretical school that, in terms of narration, sees some sort of shortcoming in the image or in the image-based sequence. We cannot deny that the reader reconstitutes the story, that he or she draws upon clues to put together the relationship that exists with respect to causality and consequence, but this type of reconstitution does not pose any problem if this is the way in which one has learnt to read an image or a bande dessine. It makes no sense therefore to suggest continually that the narration must be situated further up or lower down but not within the image sequence properly speaking, and that in order to tell a story the BD has to cheat both in terms of the text and of the image, etc.

Dare I broach the subject of authorial presence in the rcit dessine? If I can limit myself to a few very general comments, the rcit dessine by someone like Tpffer, Wilhelm Busch or Christophe is clearly authorial, exactly as was the novel of that time. On the other hand, the dominant mode in the great strips of the 1920s and 1930s is the rcit without narrator drawing upon scenic narra-tion. Of course I am giving a very broad picture of an evolution that deserves much closer analysis. But I believe the distinction accounts in a much more convincing way for the status of the text beneath the image, and the use of the speech bubble, than does analysis in terms of text/image relationship.

Can you explain what you mean by the term littratures dessines and why do you place such importance upon it?

Dans ltat actuel du dbat scientifique, la dfinition de la bande dessine (of what constitutes bande dess-ine) pose un problme inextricable car toute dfinition repose sur des postulats pralables. Toute dfini-tion est donc normative, pour ne pas dire performative. Historiquement, ce dbat sest dailleurs signal par des fermetures successives. Par exemple, en France, les premiers exgtes runis dans les annes 1960 autour de la revue Giff Wiff ne reconnaissent comme bande dessine que le newspaper strip, et considrent les comic books comme une dgnrescence du mdium. Aux tats-Unis, la parution des volumes de David Kunzle sur la bande dessine des sicles passs, amne une protestation de Bill Blackbeard contre lutilisation mme du titre History of the Comic Strip (mislabelled books). Pour couper court toute contestation, jai donc rajeuni lexpression littratures dessines (elle tait dj utilise par la SOCERLID, transfuge du CELEG, dans les annes 1960) pour tous les rcits en images adoptant le support du livre ou de ses quivalents.

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2. Socit Civile dtudes et de Recherches des Littratures Dessines or Civil Society for the Study of and for Research into Drawn Literatures.

3. Centre dtude des Littratures dExpression Graphique or Centre for the Study of Literatures of Graphic Expression, publisher of Giff-Wiff.

In the current state of scholarly debate the definition of what constitutes a bande dessine poses an inextricable problem in that any definition depends on predetermined givens. Any definition is there-fore normative, or even performative. Historically this debate has been marked by successive clo-sures. For example, in France the first critics who came together in the 1960s, in the context of the fanzine Giff-Wiff, only recognized newspaper strips as bande dessine and saw comic books as a degeneration of the medium. In the United States the publication of David Kunzles volumes on bande dessine in past centuries lead to a protest from Bill Blackbeard against the very use of the title History of the Comic Strip, which he referred to as mislabelled books. So as to cut short any argu-ment, I therefore rejuvenated the expression drawn literatures [littratures dessines] (it had already been used by SOCERLID2, the spin-off of CELEG,3 in the 1960s) for all image-based rcits that drew upon the book format or its equivalents.

Did Rodolphe Tpffer invent the comic strip?

La question de linvention na pas de sens pour moi puisque la forme nest pas fige. Les arguments de Thierry Groensteen et Benot Peeters (Tpffer: LInvention de la bande dessine, Hermann, 1994) donnant Tpffer la primaut de linvention de ce que nous appelons aujourdhui bande dessine sont convaincants condition de privilgier les critres de nos thoriciens: le support (lalbum), le procd (lautographie), le dispositif (la mise en page rhtorique), la centralit du personnage et la conception de ce personnage, la fois type et flexi-ble. Tous ces traits rapprochent naturellement les rcits de Tpffer de la bande dessine actuelle, mais leur mise en avant rvle des choix esthtiques, voire idologiques, pralables de nos minents thoriciens.

Pour ne donner quun seul exemple, lautographie tpfferienne est, entre autres, cense favoriser la libert inventive du dessinateur, dans une sorte dcriture graphique, o llment cl serait la rapidit dexcution, et qui serait la source dune nouvelle forme de dessin-rcit (LInvention de la bande dessine, pp. 8893). Mais ce spontanisme me semble une position assez fragile. Les dessins de Wilhelm Busch, qui sont plus pousss que ceux de Tpffer, car ils sont destins une gravure sur bois, manifestent-ils une moindre libert inventive ? Inversement, quels sont les dessinateurs modernes qui se placent dans cette libert complte et cette maladresse assume du trac de Tpffer ? Il me semble que, dans laire culturelle francophone du moins, on les trouve plutt en marge du mdium, du ct du dessin de presse, de la satire politique ou sociale (par exemple dans les publications des ditions du Square, lhebdo Hara-Kiri, Charlie Hebdo, ou chez une Claire Bretcher). Ce que fait Tpffer sur son papier lithographique sassimile un griffonnage libre, directement lencre. Mais ce trac direct, assumant sa laideur (pour lequel jai propos rcemment le terme de cacography) me parat encore une fois, correspondre plus la tradition du dessin satirique qu la bande dessine.

The question of invention has no sense for me because the form is not fixed. The arguments put forward by Thierry Groensteen and Benot Peeters in Tpffer: LInvention de la bande dessine (Paris:

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Hermann, 1994) that give Tpffer the leading role in the invention of what we now call bande dess-ine are convincing only as long as we accept their criteria: the format (the album), the process (lithographic reproduction of handwritten text [autographie]), the set-up (rhetorical mise en page), the centrality of the character and the conception of that character that is both stereotyped and flex-ible. All of these features naturally link Tpffers rcits with todays bande dessine, but the emphasis laid upon them reveals the aesthetic, or indeed ideological, choices made by Groensteen and Peeters.

If I can limit myself to a single example, Tpffers method of autographie is, amongst other things, supposed to favour the artists inventive freedom via a sort of graphic writing whereby the key ele-ment is swiftness of execution: one that is meant to be the base for a new form of drawing-based rcit (Groensteen and Peeters 1994: 8893). But I see this emphasis on spontaneity as a fairly weak stance. Do the drawings of Wilhelm Busch, which are deeper than those of Tpffer since they were intended for woodcut engravings, show any less freedom of invention? Conversely, which modern artists can be categorized in terms of the complete freedom and assumed awkwardness we associate with Tpffers stroke? It seems to me that at least in the domain of French-language culture they are most likely to be found in the margins of the medium, in the fields of newspaper cartoons, and political and social satire (for example in works published by Les ditions du Square, weekly in Hara-Kiri, Charlie Hebdo, or by the likes of Claire Bretcher). What Tpffer does on his lithographic paper can be compared to free scribblings directly in ink. But this direct stroke, of which ugliness is a part (I recently suggested the term cacography for it) seems once again to correspond to the tradition of satirical drawing rather than to bande dessine.

How do you see the role of women in comics, both in terms of subject matter and as creators?

Je dplore que des corpus entiers soient centrs sur un lectorat masculin [male-centric?], par exemple la bande dessine franco-belge ou les comic books, domins par les super-hros. Je suis trs heureux de mtre compltement tromp il y a une quinzaine dannes en dclarant impossible le succs en Occident du shjo manga. Non seulement le shjo manga est traduit, mais le manga est une forme qui intresse autant les filles que les garons.

Une consquence de cette culture bdique centre sur le mle est le courant de sexisme quon dcle dans la bande dessine dexpression franaise. Le summum de lhumour dans certaines bandes humoristiques de lcole belge semble tre lallusion graveleuse ou mprisante, qui ramne la femme son infriorit constitutionnelle. Mme le fait pour les dessinateurs de reprsenter des personnages de petites-bourgeoises tout fait banales comme des sortes de pin-ups me parat contenir une nuance de sexisme. Et je ne parle pas de sries comme Les Blondes, centres sur les blagues de blondes

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(featuring the prototypical dumb blond), de Gaby et Dzack, chez Soleil. Onze volumes de gags dont pas un nest drle, et qui ne sont l que pour permettre au lecteur de se sentir suprieur cette pauvre cruche au sourire jusquaux oreilles et aux yeux en bille de loto (with a Pepsodent smile and google eyes?).

On a lhabitude en France de dplorer le manque dauteurs fminins, mais jadmire beaucoup les femmes qui se risquent dans un milieu pareil.

Ironiquement, la situation de la bande dessine fminine tait peut-tre meilleure quand la bande dess-ine ntait pas structure en microculture. Les revues franaises pour filles, en particulier celles des di-teurs catholiques (mes Vaillantes, aux ditions Fleurus), et aussi celles destines la petite enfance (Perlin et Pinpin, aux mmes ditions), employaient normment de dessinatrices. Lditeur populaire Marijac pouvait donner libre cours son got pour le mlodrame grands sentiments dans son heb-domadaire pour filles, Mireille. Cette bande dessine destine aux filles est morte avec les derniers petits formats des ditions Aredit, qui publiaient dailleurs du matriel anglais.

I deplore the fact that entire corpuses can be based upon a male-centric readership, for example Franco-Belgian bande dessine or comic books, dominated by superheroes. I am very happy to have been proven completely wrong when, fifteen years ago or so, I said that it would be impossible for shjo manga to be successful in the West. Not only is shjo manga translated, it a form that interests girls as much as boys.

One consequence of the existence of this male-centred BD culture is the sexist undercurrent to be found in French-language bande dessine. The height of humour in certain humorous strips of the Belgian school seems to be smutty or disdainful allusions bringing women down to their constitu-tional inferiority. Even the fact that artists represent completely anodyne bourgeois women charac-ters as some sort of pin-up seems to me to contain a nuance of sexism. And that is without broaching series such as Les Blondes by Gaby and Dzack, published by Soleil, that feature the prototypical dumb blonde: eleven volumes of gags of which not one is funny, and which only exist so as to allow the reader to feel superior to the poor bimbos with Pepsodent smiles and google-eyes.

In France the lack of female authors is often bemoaned, but I admire greatly the women who do venture into such a world.

Ironically the situation for female bande dessine was possibly better when the bande dessine was not structured as a micro-culture. French magazines for girls, in particular those from the Catholic publishing houses (mes Vaillantes from Fleurus), as well as those aimed at younger children (Perlin et Pinpin, also from Fleurus), would employ vast numbers of female artists. Marijac, a particularly popular editor, was able to give free rein to his penchant for highly sentimental melodrama in Mireille, his weekly for girls. In France, comics for girls died with the last small-format publications from Aredit, who also used to publish English material.

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How useful is it to apply critical theory to the graphic novel? I am thinking in particular of the works of Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida?

Barthes comprenait admirablement limage unique, par exemple la photographie, et manifestait une extraor-dinaire difficult apprhender limage squentielle, par exemple le cinma. Je pense quil est dangereux de vouloir sappuyer sur lui en matire de bande dessine. Ses positions apparemment scientifiques (les lments de smiologie) sont, comme on sait, considres aujourdhui comme les intuitions dun crivain. Jai lu les grands livres de Michel Foucault. Jen pense pis que pendre. Je nai jamais beaucoup lu Derrida.

Barthes had a wonderful understanding of the single image, for example the photograph, and showed enormous difficulty in grasping the sequential image, for example cinema. I feel it is dangerous to want to draw upon him as far as the bande dessine is concerned. His supposedly scholarly treatises (Elements of Semiology) are, as we know, seen today as writers intuition. I have read Michel Foucaults main works. I do not have a very high opinion of them. I have never read much of Derrida.

Apart from your own, which critical analyses of comics would you recommend?

Pour me borner aux auteurs francophones, les travaux de Thierry Groensteen, de Benot Peeters, de Thierry Smolderen, de Jan Baetens, de Pascal Lefvre, me paraissent incontournables. Jajouterai le pionnier de la smiologie de la bande dessine, Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle, qui a progressivement affin son analyse en la dbarrassant des ides un peu trop sduisantes du structuralisme.

Limiting myself to critics writing in French, I would say the works of Thierry Groensteen, Benot Peeters, Thierry Smolderen, Jan Baetens and Pascal Lefvre are indispensable. To these I would add the first pioneer of the semiology of bande dessine, Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle, who progressively refined his criticism by getting rid of notions that had fallen to the temptation of structuralism.

Gilles Deleuze famously provided a Abcdaire of himself, an alphabetical description. Could you please provide a mini Abcdaire based on any five letters of your choice.

A stands for animals. Mes meilleurs amis et mes plus proches compagnons ont toujours t des chats. De faon gnrale, je prfre les btes aux hommes, raison pour laquelle je vis aujourdhui la campagne. Lune des raisons que jai daimer les littratures dessines est que les animaux y tiennent une grande place et sont mis en gnral galit avec les hommes.

A stands for animals. My best friends and my closest companions have always been cats. On the whole I prefer animals to humans, which is the reason why I now live in the countryside. One of my

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reasons for loving drawn literatures is that animals have a major role in them and are, in general, placed on an equal footing with humans.

B stands for books. La passion presque exclusive de toute mon existence. Jen ai rempli ma maison.

B stands for books. My lifetimes almost unique passion. My house is full of them.

L stands for left. Jai toujours cru que jtais de gauche, par contagion des ides intellectuelles de mon temps, et par entranement gnrationnel (jtais adolescent pendant les annes 1970, o tout le monde en France tait devenu un peu fou). Mais des lecteurs intelligents mont fait remarquer que jtais, dans mon style, dans mes ides, dans mes gots, fondamentalement et incontestablement ractionnaire.

L stands for left. I have always believed that I was left wing, due to the influence of the intellectual ideas of my time, and through generational upbringing (I was an adolescent during the 1970s, a time when everyone in France had become slightly mad). But readers of intelligence have pointed out that as far as my style, my ideas and my tastes are concerned I am fundamentally and indubitably reactionary.

M stands for music. De toutes les choses que je sais faire plus ou moins bien (crire, dessiner, enseigner, etc.), celle que je fais de trs loin le moins bien cest jouer du piano. Ma cervelle et mon corps ne sont pas adapts la production de musique. Assis au piano, je suis comme une machine qui se dtraque. De plus lide mme dtre cout (ou de menregistrer) me fait perdre tous mes moyens. Jobserve cela avec une grande curiosit et aussi une certaine dsolation.

M stands for music. Of all the things that I can more or less manage (writing, drawing, teaching, etc.), the one that I do by far the least well is playing the piano. My brain and my body are not adapted to the production of music. When sitting at the piano I am like a machine that is breaking down. Furthermore the very idea of having people listen to me (or being recorded) sends me to pieces. It is something I observe with great curiosity but also a certain amount of sadness.

O stands for occultism. Plus personne ne sintresse au gnosticisme, au noplatonisme, la sorcellerie, la magie, au spiritisme. Cest une grande perte. La dernire ide occulte qui perdure, cest celle de la vie extraterrestre. Mais le mythe du vampire, par exemple, a t tellement vid de son contenu quil na plus rien docculte.

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O stands for occultism. Nobody is interested any more in Gnosticism, in Neoplatonism, in witch-craft, in magic, in Spiritism. That is a great loss. The last surviving occult notion is that of extrater-restrial life. But the myth of the vampire, for example, has been so emptied of its content that is has nothing occultist left about it.

References

Groensteen, Thierry and Benot Peeters. Tpffer: LInvention de la bande dessine. Paris: Hermann, 1994.

Morgan, Harry. La Reine du ciel [The Queen of Heaven]. Paris: Rivages, 1997. . Principes des littratures dessines [Principles of Drawn Litteratures]. Angoulme: ditions de

lAn 2, 2003.Morgan, Harry and Manuel Hirtz. Le Petit Critique illustr. Paris: PLG, 2005; first edition 1997.Harry Morgans website: The Adamantine: www.theadamantine.free.fr

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