b. Thierry Groensteen…

experience” (Cohn, 2018, par. 1.1). Thus, Cohn recognizes that as multimodal works, comics have a number of components working in unison. This kind of perspective changes the way comics are looked at, and impacts how they can be seen within certain domain studies, such e.g. pedagogy or translation.

Many of Cohn’s academic contributions (2013a; 2013b; 2013c; 2016; 2018; 2020; 2021) are dedicated to the meticulous dissection of the structure of comics, multimodality and visual language; Cohn often branches out into the realm of phonology, phonetics, syntax, semantics, culture, and compositional theory. However, one could write an entire dissertation pertaining to Cohn’s academic work alone; therefore, for the purposes of this paper, the prime focus will be on Cohn’s aforementioned contributions, with occasional reference to his other papers on comics and multimodality. Cohn’s most valuable contribution within the context of this thesis is the fact that he sees comics as a language, and brings to light the intricate patterns that govern the joined cooperation of modes, choosing to even focus on the content contained within sequences if it leads to better understanding. Such a framework, much like McCloud’s, is an important aid when studying comics within the context of a certain purpose- in this case, translation, which will be further described and applied in the following chapters. It is also important to mention that while McCloud’s basic framework seems to fade in comparison to Cohn’s, McCloud’s taxonomy was one of the first, and it allowed for the development of the question of mul timodality in comics;

furthermore, as can be seen, it served as a foundation not only for Cohn’s framework, but also for Groensteen’s comics theory.

1.4.3.b. Thierry Groensteen. Thierry Groensteen is a prolific French comics scholar who

from the European comics tradition in order to welcome other traditions, such as coming from Japan or the USA, and also discussing comics that are e.g. digital, or appear in text-less forms (Groensteen, 2011/2013, p. 15). Groensteen’s insight allows for not only the deeper assessment of the comic medium, but also helps analyze the entire form itself, allowing for its application to comics that are not solely created in print, but also online.

One of the most important postulates that Groensteen brings to light in his book The System of Comics is the titular notion of the comic medium as a system. As Groensteen (1999/2007) points out (original emphasis), “comics are therefore an original combination of a (or two, with writing) subject(s) of expression, and of a collection of codes. This is the reason that it can only be described in the terms of a system” (p. 6). With this statement, along with the notion that comics are in fact, to be considered a language, “an original ensemble of productive mechanisms of meaning” (p. 2), Groensteen emphasizes the dynamism of the comic medium and its specific nature, wherein modes combine, intertwine, and interact to create meaning. It is important to mention here that McCloud (1993) considers the comic medium as a language as well, namely claiming that the visual iconography poses as the vocabulary of comics, while the closure becomes the grammar (p. 67). As is known, McCloud sees comics as language largely because of the reader, or the “silent accomplice” (p. 68). On the other hand, Groensteen sees comics as language due to how they work together as a collective whole, made up of the spatio-topical arrangement of modes; citing Groensteen (1999/2007) himself, “comics is not only an art of fragments, of scattering, of distribution; it is also an art of conjunction, of repetition, of linking together” (p. 22). Groensteen (1999/2007) justifies this with the presumption that when creating a comic, an author needs to think in terms of space, distribution and arrangement (p. 22).

However, Groensteen (1999/2007) is staunchly against analyzing comics on the basis of breaking them down to the smallest units possible, especially speaking out against applying film theory to the comic medium (pp. 1-12). In fact, Groensteen “rejects any attempts to reduce comics to groups of component elements” (Kelp-Stebbins, 2008). Rather, Groensteen (1999/2007) focuses on larger units i.e. the page which, as he notes “govern the articulation, in time and space, of the units that we call panels” (p. 4). As such, while he does indeed focus on the panel as a unit, in general he focuses on the spatio-topical arrangement of the comic medium itself, introducing such terms as the hyperframe and the multiframe; the former is meant to denote the arrangement of panels on a page, while the latter is meant to denote all the panels, or their sum within the hyperframe, in a comic. Groensteen (1999/2007) defines both terms in the following way: “the notion of the hyperframe applies itself to a single unit, which is that of the page. The forms of the multiframe, on the other hand, are multiple. The strip, the page, the double page, and the book are multistage multiframes, systems of panel proliferation that are increasingly inclusive” (p. 30).

Groensteen’s approach to seeing not just the page, but the entirety of the comic book as a complete

whole proves a useful approach to comics and webcomics theory alike; as was shown with webcomics, it is their entire scope that needs to be taken into account when attempting translation.

Interestingly, Groensteen’s (1999/2007) understanding of comics marries the linguistic with the visual, much like in McCloud’s understanding: “comics are essentially a mixture of text and images, a specific combination of linguistic and visual codes, a meeting place between two

‘subjects of expression’” (p. 3). However, unlike McCloud, Groensteen (1999/2007) puts more emphasis on the visual, noting that not only is it obsolete to consider the image and the text of equal value within a webcomic (p. 8), but that comics are a truly “predominantly visual narrative form”

(p. 12). To Groensteen, the visual rules within the comics, guiding the comics story and allowing for the narrative to efficiently take place; in fact, Groensteen (1999/2007) posits that the so called iconic solidarity, borrowed from semiotic terminology, is the basic foundation of comics; he defines the term as “interdependent images that, participating in a series, present the double characteristic of being separated” (p. 18). As such, the visual iconicity of comics rests in the fact that the images make up a whole, but are at their core separated, be it through the use of panels, sequences of panels, pages, and so on. Citing Groensteen (1999/2007), “images will be multiple and correlated in some fashion” (p. 19). This correlation is further enforced by specific operations that allow for the coherence we experience in comics, ensuring the narrative dynamic flow in the story. One of these operations is, naturally, the aforementioned page layout; Groensteen also additionally mentions the idea of braiding (tressage in French) and breakdown (decoupage in French). All of these operations however subscribe to one specific term that Groensteen coins-arthrology.

As iconic solidarity is of utmost importance to Groensteen (1999/2007), he introduces a specific term to deal with the relations between images that comics create; arthrology, taken from the Greek word arthron, meaning articulation (p. 21). The term is meant to be general, encompassing how “comics panels, situated relationally, are, necessarily, placed in relation to space and operate on a share of space” (p. 21). Thus arthrology is also connected to Groensteen’s spatio-topia. While Groensteen goes into great detail discussing the instances of e.g. panel relations and page layouts, perhaps the most important distinction comes from the division between restricted arthrology and general arthrology, which in turn are connected to both the concept of braiding and the breakdown. Groensteen (1999/2007) defines restricted arthrology as being composed of the

“elementary relations, of the linear type (. . .) governed by the operation of breaking down (. . .) they put in place the sequential syntagms, which are most often subordinated to the narrative ends”

(p. 22). Therefore, restricted arthrology is linear, and often confined within the page or the page spread, describing the relations within a certain enclosed unit; in Groensteen’s theory, it often refers to simply the relations of panels to each other. Groensteen (1999/2007) notes that it is here that writing becomes of great importance, serving as a “complementary function of narration” (p. 22).

Furthermore, the concept of the breakdown connected to restricted arthrology allows for the

description of how the story in comics is distributed amongst the panels, and how i.e. they are either contextually dependent or independent from each other. The concept of the breakdown allows for the analysis of lower level units within restricted arthrology; as Hanna Miodrag (2013) in her book on comics and language notes, “decoupage (. . .) describes not only the apportioning of story content into discrete panels, but the demarcation of a particular viewpoint by each panel” (p. 217).

Thus, restricted arthrology refers to how one creates meaning on the lower, lineal level of comics.

However, general arthrology is a translinear notion, which “decline[s] all of the modalities of braiding [and] represents a more elaborated level of integration between the narrative flux (. . .) and the spatio-topical operation, in which the essential component, as Henri Van Lier has named it, is the <multiframe>” (Groensteen, 1999/2007, p. 22). Therefore, general arthrology denotes the relations between images, panels and/or sequences of panels on a higher level, across subsequent pages or/and portions of the comic itself. As the multiframe encompasses all visual totalities within a comic, one can understand Groensteen’s general arthrology as the relations between the images spanning the totality of a comic in a non-linear way, i.e. the image in a panel can be related to another image in another panel on another page. It is here that Groensteen’s idea of braiding becomes important, as it acts as a connector between said images; as Kelp-Stebbins (2008) defines it, braiding “addresses the potential relations between any panels that exist as a supplement to the intelligibility of the work”; meanwhile, comics scholar Neil Cohn (2008) understands Groensteen braiding as: “essentially the function of making connections across the multiframe.” Braiding is seen in the System of Comics as a compositional characteristic, important to the functioning of the comic medium in a coherent way.

In their foreword to The System of Comics, Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen define braiding as:

“the way panels <more specifically, the images in the panels> can be linked in series <continuous or discontinuous> through non-narrative correspondences, be it iconic or other means” (qtd. in Groensteen, 1999/2007, p. ix). Adequate braiding allows the reader to make sense of the comic at hand; for instance, Groensteen (1999/2007) brings up the example of the famous smiley-face badge that can be found throughout Alan Moore’s Watchmen (p. 99-100) as an example of braiding.

Naturally, braiding doesn’t always exist in comics, as Groensteen (2016) himself admits in a paper on the uses of braiding (p. 89). Regardless, it is a highly useful device, and one which can create meaningful connections across any kind of comic. It is also worth mentioning gridding (quadrillage in French), which simply refers to how the page is first divided when mapping out a comic (Groensteen, 1999/2007, p. 28).

Groensteen delves further into the potential compositional characteristics of the comic medium, discussing frames, pages, panel compositions and shapes. For the purposes of this thesis, it is not necessary to delve further into these nuances. Rather, it is the concept of arthrology and the general spatio-topical system that carries the most importance. As Groensteen (1999/2007) sums up,

“to articulate the frames is the process of page layout. Breakdown and page layout are the two fundamental operations of arthrology, on which the braiding eventually puts the finishing touches”

(p. 23). Groensteen’s theoretical approach is thus inspired by the macro-semiotic and aims to visualize comics within a certain space, emphasizing that it is the aforementioned iconic solidarity that weaves comics into a whole.

It is in this notion that Groensteen’s comics theory becomes especially useful within the context of modern comics, and especially webcomics themselves. Much like McCloud, Groensteen takes a close look at the multimodality of comics and the varying roles imagery has within them;

however, he does not limit himself to panels, focusing on the whole of the comic. Moreover, Groensteen (1999/2007) notes how the disturbance of this spatio-topical arrangement can significantly alter the chain of meaning with a comic (p. 25), drawing attention to the fact that comics strongly preside within their context- an idea that has been thoroughly restated throughout this thesis. Citing Groensteen (1999/2007), “every alteration imposed on the image itself, by the fact of this intervention, is of a consequential order, and can be considered as indifferent at worst, and at best <?> as a necessary evil” (p. 25). This statement is of course referring to printed comics, but when one applies this statement to webcomics it certainly rings true as well. Webcomics, perhaps more than printed comics, suffer when the immediate environment they preside in undergoes change, or if they get placed in a context different than from where they originally presided. If one were to adapt Groensteen’s terminology, the original multiframe undergoes great change, given that the webcomic is not connected anymore e.g. to its host website when it is carried onto the printed form.

While Groensteen’s approach to comics theory is valuable, it has been met with criticism.

For instance Cohn (2008; 2010) deems the theoretical approach as somewhat superficial and lacking, criticizing the faux sophistication and academic jargon that The System of Comics heavily features. Cohn (2021, p. 27) occasionally points out this issue in his late academic works. On the other hand, Kelp-Stebbins (2008) welcomes Groensteen’s stylistic jargon, but criticizes the over-reliance on the Franco-Belgian comics tradition, as well as Groensteen’s “overly destructive critical stance” (n.p.). This can be observed through Groensteen’s lengthy disquisitions on previous comics theory and his subsequent dismantling of them, which “is repeatedly done at the expense of developing a new model to fill the-now excavated-void” (Kelp-Stebbins, 2008). However, both scholars do not undermine that Groensteen’s contributions to comics theory, with Kelp-Stebbins (2008) going as far to say that despite the low number of examples Groensteen provides: “his system can be used to read virtually any comic” (n.p.). Groensteen provides a novel framework and a perspective that still contributes to comics theory today (Miodrag, 2013; Goodbrey, 2017c;

Dudek, 2020; Cohn, 2021). For instance, Hannah Miodrag (2013) praises Groensteen’s analysis of comics in a spatial, not solely linear context (p. 128). Furthermore, Groensteen himself has rectified

and further explained his theoretical assumptions in later papers and his second book, Comics and Narration (2013), and has also acknowledged the outstanding role that digital technology has had in the shaping of the comic medium (Groensteen, 2014, p. 99). Along with McCloud’s multimodal approach, these perspectives can be used in the analysis of webcomics, as will be demonstrated in the following subchapter.

1.4.4. Webcomics, Translation and Multimodality: Thierry Groensteen, Scott McCloud, Neil