113

Left History
10.2 (Fall 2005)
Graphic Novels as History:
Representing and Reliving the Past
Ben Lander
York University
Chester Brown, Louis Riel: A comic-strip biography (Montreal: Drawn and
Quarterly, 2001).
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The story of a childhood (New York: Pantheon,
2003).
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The story of a return (New York: Pantheon,
2004).
Art Spiegelman, In the Shadow of No Towers (New York: Pantheon, 2004).
When Art Spiegelman won a Pulitzer Prize for Maus: A Survivors Tale, in
1986, sequential art in the form of comics and graphic novels began to receive
interest as a serious medium for artistic expression. Since the mid-80s, comics
and graphic novels have been staking a greater space within contemporary cul-
ture. With the appearance of feature films based on comic books, including
American Splendor, Ghost World, and Sin City, not to mention Spiderman and
the various incarnations of Batman, cinema audiences have been treated to a
broad spectrum of what the medium has to offer. In their paper form, graphic
novels have also been receiving critical acclaim from literary reviews and can
be found in many bookstores with dedicated sections as well as most public
libraries.
The discipline of History has not been completely unmoved by this broad-
er cultural interest in sequential art. Instigated by the cultural turn in the 1980s
many scholars, with interests ranging from gender, politics, and culture have
turned to comics as a primary source of information on a variety of topics. This
work, much of it excellent, utilizes textual analysis to examine comics in a
detailed and thorough way in search of linguistic, narrative, and artistic nuance.
Yet despite this interest in comics as a primary source, there has been little inter-
est in the possibility that comics might provide an alternative form for repre-
senting historical narratives. Joseph Witeks Comic Books as History: The
Narrative Art of Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar (1989) is the
only monograph on the subject and appeared over a decade and a half ago.
Historians are aware, however, of the representational limitations of the
text-based narrative form. Indeed, Hayden White, throughout his oeuvre, par-
ticularly Figural Realism (1999), The Content of the Form (1987), and Tropics
of Discourse (1978), has been hammering the point home that the representa-
tional strategies of History remain tied to the disciplines conservative episte-
mological foundation. Historians, White argues, continue to write like nine-
teenth-century English novelists, unable or unwilling to acknowledge the inher-
ent problematic nature of this omniscient literary style.
1
White makes a strong
case for historians to employ alternative forms of history when they write about
the past.
2
In The Content of the Form White is concerned with the relation between
narrative discourse and historical representation, and particularly the problems
this relationship causes for historical theory. Historians, White argues, need
to realize that,
narrative is not merely a neutral discursive form that may or
may not be used to represent real events in their aspect as
developmental processes but rather entails ontological and
epistemic choices with distinct ideological and even specifi-
cally political implications.
3
White explains that the exclusive use of the third person in historical narra-
tion means the story is presented as entirely objective, with the historian hidden
behind an omniscient narrative, which becomes a problem when recording peo-
ple and events. In these instances the narrative makes truth claims that the evi-
dence can never fully support.
4
Every historian pushes evidence in places when
it does not quite fit, often laying a narrative across an omission like a board
across a fissure. This is a central issue for a discipline whose epistemological
claim rests on the ability to provide a true representation of the past. The prob-
lem is compounded when we realise that historians rely on particular narrative
techniques when writing their purportedly true portrayals, and this is something
that historians do not generally admit.
5
Instead they present the story as if it
were found in the events, there to be discovered by the diligent historian, not
the result of creative artifice on their part.
6
This is not the case in comic histo-
ries, where the medium itself, as well as the culture of comic artists, makes the
authors role in the creation of the narrative a central element of the represen-
tative process.
In Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth in Historical
Representation, White argues that Spiegelmans Maus manages to raise all of
the crucial issues regarding the limits of representation.
7
He views Maus as an
example of historical representation that chooses a seemingly inappropriate
mode of emplotment, a satirical allegory, in an equally inappropriate form, the
comic book, to represent the Holocaust. Yet, as White argues, by making the
subject of the book the effort on Spiegelmans part to extract the story of his
parents experience of the Holocaust, Spiegelman frames the historical narra-
Lander 114
tive within a further frame. Maus is precisely about the representational strug-
gle of presenting even a small part of the larger history of the Holocaust.
8
Comic artists use numerous techniques unique to their medium in order to
shape narrative and engage the reader.
A few words need to be said about the difference between reading comics
and reading text. The most important is the fact that comics are broken up into
numerous independent panels that are disposed in a specific manner on the
page. Indeed, the medium of comics demands that the narrative be fragment-
ed; time, space, and meaning are always fractured in ways literary modernism
could never approach. Independently, each panels meaning is limited; howev-
er, through the deliberate and voluntary acts taken by the reader the actions,
meanings, scenes, etc., represented in the panels are given significance through
the act of closure. In his comic book on the history and mechanics of comics,
Scott McCloud argues that closure is the act through which the reader com-
pletes the implied meaning of a panel, an act that allows us to connect those
moments and mentally construct a continuous, unified reality.
9
Closure is one
of the ways reading a comic or graphic novel is different from reading text.
In fact closure is not restricted to comics it is just more prevalent in this
medium than elsewhere. We use closure everyday to make sense of photo-
graphs, illustrations, moving images, and even text. A vivid example is the
famous photograph of the South Vietnamese police chief executing a suspected
Vietcong in a street full of journalists. The photograph shows us the moment
immediately preceding death. Robert Capa captured an eerily similar moment
in a photograph of a soldier being shot during the Spanish Civil War. In order
to understand these photographs we have to complete the implied action; i.e. we
have to complete the death of these individuals being photographed in order to
understand the images. The intense experience that closure involves the read-
er in is one which comics depend on over and over again, in two different ways:
within each frame and between each panel.
In the first form of closure, the same as in photographs, the reader is
required to interpret and understand the represented image. For example, when
Marjane Satrapi draws herself walking through the streets of Tehran, what actu-
ally appears on the page is a black figure standing in the air with one foot in
front of the other. It is up to the reader to take that motionless blob of ink, make
it into a person, and move it through the city. If the reader chooses not to per-
form these tasks the comic would be rendered meaningless. Comic artists have
developed several means to aid this process. Beyond the positioning of the
human body into recognizable positions, artists add motion lines and shading to
indicate movement, speed, and direction to assist the reader.
In a second form of closure, the reader is required to fill the gaps between
each and every panel (known as gutters in comic parlance) in a comic strip or
graphic novel. This type of closure is unique to comics. Its effect is to make
Graphic Novels as History 115
the reader a willing and conscious collaborator where closure is the agent of
change, time and motion.
10
An evocative example of this can be found in
Chester Browns Louis Riel (2003). In one panel, Thomas Scott kneels on the
ground waiting to be executed with only the frozen ground and a brick wall as
company within the frame (72, panel 3). The reader views the lonely scene at
close range, just at the edge of the firing squad, possibly as part of that group,
one which stands barely outside the view of the frame. The next panel is com-
pletely blank. In the third panel Scott lies on his side, mouth open, blood stain-
ing his shirt. He has been shot by the firing squad. In closing both gutters and
the blank panel (itself functioning as an oversize gutter) the reader becomes
involved in the death of Scott. Making their way through the following four
panels, watching Scott moan on the ground as a man walks slowly to adminis-
ter the fatal shot, the reader closes five gaps in the narrative, and, in so doing,
closes out the life of Thomas Scott.
Closure is, perhaps, the single most important difference between reading
history in the form of graphic novels and traditional historical writing. When
reading comic histories the reader is inserted into and becomes involved in the
action of past events in a way that is not required when reading a traditional his-
torical text. The reader participates in the development of the narrative, there-
by coming much closer to the creative process of representing and understand-
ing the past. Atype of closure sometimes appears in text in the form of an ellip-
sis at the end of a sentence where the reader closes that which is previously
alluded to. While the use of this is rare in writing, the act of closure in comics
is never-ending, a situation that leaves the reader closing the implied actions
and meanings of all sorts of events and scenes, from the mundane to the most
significant. Closure incites the reader into a more engaged experience of read-
ing.
Alongside closure, the visual elements of comics further engross the read-
er. They allow the reader to linger on pages, often offering extra-narrative
meanings through their use of space and the juxtaposition of graphic details.
The desire to involve the reader in the narrative as an active member is critical
to the experience of comics. Spiegelman recently spoke on this subject in the
context of Maus. My drawing technique was meant to have an intimacy of
handwriting. I wanted a certain kind of directness and casualness. I did not
want to use a technique that separated the work from the reader.
11
These words
reflect a preoccupation Spiegelman, Satrapi, and Brown share; indeed, they also
speak to two important differences between a traditional written history and a
comic history, those of style and interest.
I believe there is a connection between the form and the subject of tradi-
tional and comic histories that needs fleshing out. In traditional histories it is
the public arena that receives the most attention, and this space is narrated from
a distance which itself mimics, or is mimicked by, the largeness and perceived
Lander 116
importance of the subject. Of course, the distance is itself a tool that allows the
author, and reader, to view the past from a position of authority, one that is
detached, often inhuman in its scope. On the other hand, comic histories tend
to revel in the minute personal details of everyday life, which receive their due
respect because of their personal or symbolic weight within the lives of the
characters and the narrative that is being constructed. This concern with peo-
ple and symbols is obvious for anyone who reads these beautifully crafted
works where the hand and brush of the artist is always evident and the scenes
are viewed from within the narrative. A comparison could even be made
between the artisanal quality of comics and their reliance on ancient forms of
storytelling and the industrial aspects of academia with its arcane rules, massive
bureaucracy and with the mechanical interface of the printed word. The goal of
these and other comic artists is, in part, to transcend the divide between creator
and reader, a situation that leaves open numerous possibilities for understand-
ing the past as well as its representation.
Browns epic comic-strip biography Louis Riel was rightly celebrated as an
ambitious rendering of an often-overlooked figure of dissent in the conservative
field of popular Canadian history. The book is exceptional for its use of space
and details to control the tone, timing, and speed of the narrative. Within the
form of comics time and space are one and the same, both dependent upon
the shape and size of the panel where the scene is represented.
12
Brown uses a
traditional six panel per page layout, a style from which he does not divert. This
uniformity provides a steady speed to the book, like a metronome or heartbeat,
the perfect pace for a biographical narrative. In order to draw attention to the
passage of time, Brown lingers on moments to emphasize their importance to
the story of Louis Riel. These include: Riels 1876 imprisonment in the insane
asylum LHospice St. Jean de Dieu near Montreal; the events leading up to and
including the execution of Thomas Scott on 4 March 1870; and most dramati-
cally, Riels trial in Regina in July 1885 where the events appear on 29 consec-
utive panels where the usual white background has become black and the fig-
ures appear as ghosts against the oppressive gloom. Brown uses this technique
at select moments in the book to dramatise significant moments.
Brown controls the tone of the book in a similarly sparse manner. Visual
details are kept to a minimum, thus avoiding symbolic clutter that could deflect
from the narrative. This is not to suggest that Louis Riel is simply illustrated,
but that details are reserved to emphasize the tone of panels; they also mimic
the flatness of the prairie landscape where the events took place. The amount
of black or white that appears as the background in each panel is the primary
indicator of tone; however, the degree of sharp angles and curved lines, and
detail of surroundings, also shape the mood in which each panel and page is
presented. Brown tends to use the background to emphasize the dialogue or
action, where both sparse or empty space and dramatic cross-hatching are used.
Graphic Novels as History 117
Lander 118
Thomas Scotts death in Chester Brown, Louis Riel: A comic-strip biography
(Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, 2001), 72, panels 3-6.
The killing of Norbert Parisien by Thomas Scott in Chester Brown, Louis Riel: A
comic-strip biography (Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, 2001), 55, panels 1-2.
Brown notes that this style was a result of his love of Hergs Tintin, but more
directly influenced by Harold Grays Little Orphan Annie. The influence of his-
torical comics on present comic artists is common and connects Brown to
Spiegelman who mobilizes that history in new and radical ways.
The rigid structure of Louis Riel means that the almost essential authorial
commentary is reserved for the notes section at the end of the book (this style
of commentary, along with deprecating self-depictions, is a major part of North
American comic culture; it is a different form of the self-awareness and indul-
gence played out in the mix of sex, violence, and awkwardness that character-
ize the 1960s comix). In this section, alongside the bibliography, we learn
much about the construction and methodology of Browns work. First of all,
Brown relies on secondary sources for his information, and builds his narrative
by evaluating different versions of the same event and shaping them according
to his own vision of how history should be told. It turns out to be one where
the hand of the creator is just as strong as that of an academic but unlike the lat-
ter, in comics the creator usually reveals his role in the construction of the nar-
rative. The notes themselves are of importance in understanding the relation
between comic histories and academic histories. Whereas notes in an academ-
ic history are meant almost solely to bolster the truth claims of the narrative,
Brown uses his notes to point out the numerous gaps and authorial intrusions in
his narrative. These include places where he fudged the information in the his-
torical record to make it conform to his narrative and to the visual nature of his
particular comic form. For instance, Thomas Scott is drawn as the sole and
merciless killer of Norbert Parisien. Brown admits in the notes that its likely
that the murder was more of a group effort yet drew it as he did because the
single figure wielding an axe was more dramatic (248). Notably, this represen-
tational decision places the reader in the position of Scott, closure coming to the
sickening sound of metal on flesh thk (55, panel 2). One reason this works
in comics is that its form is amenable to the use of symbols, thus Scott appears
on the page both as himself and as a symbol of the violence, racism, and rough
masculinity that characterized Western Canada at the time.
Historical fiction and historical cinema reshape the historical record in sim-
ilar and equally effective ways. In a review of the film The Gangs of New York,
a film which in truth I disliked, Bryan Palmer argues that the combination of a
conceptual imagination with a rigorous and disciplined recourse to actualities
of evidence and event, thrives first and foremost through its creative licence.
That creative licence succeeds, Palmer argues,
if it historicises experience in ways that illuminate truths that
are often obscured over time, and that have remained hidden
from engagement precisely because large connections and
continuities in historical process have been seemingly frac-
tured by change, the tyranny of present-mindedness (which
Graphic Novels as History 119
severs our lives from those of earlier generations), and the
necessary but unfortunate limitations of painstaking scholar-
ly reconstructions that often get the empirical detail of vari-
ous trees right only to lose sight of the broad expanse of the
forests of the longue dure.
13
Brown succeeds, I believe, in using his pen and brush to create a narrative that
speaks to the social and political climate of the present. The theme of the book,
the conflict between an individual forced to organize and defend a way of life
against the combined threat of the state and capital, symbolized by Prime
Minister John A. Macdonald and George Stephen, the president of the Canadian
Pacific Railway, draws numerous comparisons with events around the world
and in Canada. Browns treatment of Riels visions appear comprehensible, not
mad, in accord with present views of mental disorder.
Other instances of the hand of the artist show humility to acknowledge
ones mistakes while remaining true to the goal of the project. Brown admits
he represented a person or object differently than is described in secondary
sources because he forgot to look at his notes, or discovered the information
once the panels had already been drawn. On this point Brown notes that he con-
sidered redrawing the panels, but then decided that I could live with that level
of inaccuracy (246). After all, drawing comics is time intensive and by work-
ing with the details Brown was able to create a stronger story. Such admissions
speak directly to Whites contention that the author of history removes himself
from the narrative by pretending that the emplotment was found in the facts
themselves. Brown never hides from the fact that Louis Riel is his creation,
built according to his understanding of the events that he deduced. Of course
Brown is not a historian but an artist and can therefore get away with these
creative decisions in a way that would not be acceptable in the work of an aca-
demic historian. Although I am not necessarily advocating making similar
decisions, I do find his candour admirable. By providing these notes, Brown
allows the reader to walk away from Louis Riel having read and experienced a
fascinating story based extensively on historical record, while being engaged by
universal themes of power and resistance that Brown made central to his narra-
tive of Riels life.
A similar honesty pervades the first two volumes of Marjane Satrapis
Persepolis (2003, 2004) as their foundation in memory leads to narratives that
juxtapose public and private events. The books narrate Satrapis life story
alongside the history of Iran, in particular the effects of the Islamic Revolution.
Their basis as works of memory is reflected in the layout and style of both
books. Satrapi shapes her panels according to their importance in her memory;
moments of private trauma and thought fill much of the book. This, of course,
is a unique representational tool for comic artists, and is used in various ways
to structure the speed, tone, meaning, and importance of particular narrative
Lander 120
Graphic Novels as History 121
Panels from The Veil in Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The story of a childhood (New
York: Pantheon, 2003), 3, panels 1-5.
events. As we saw with Brown, the use of space by comic artists can offer
much to the narrative. Satrapi often extends a panel horizontally where it then
takes the space of two panels, or extends along a whole row. This technique,
along with other types of page breakdowns and full-page panels, are well used
to convey the complexity and relative importance of different moments in
Satrapis life. One of her most successful representational strategies is the
depiction of scenes from her position within the narrative, i.e. we see scenes as
she saw them, scenes that look like photographs on the page, and indeed tend
to be moments when photographs were surely taken, such as her wedding (161,
panel 4). Satrapi also uses more common pictorial strategies such as the com-
parison frames (this not that) found in instructional literature.
Being a medium that is so suitable to dealing with symbols, it is appropri-
ate that this graphic novel begins with a chapter on the veil. The headscarf
makes appearances throughout the books where it is at the centre of Satrapis
relationship as a woman an educated and rebellious one with her society
in general and the guardians of the Islamic revolution in particular. In the first
chapter Satrapi explains that at the age of 10 when the revolution took place she
attended a French non-religious school where the veil received various amus-
ing responses from children reacting to rules they did not understand. In a large
panel covering half a page children play at school; one little girl shouts out
Execution in the name of freedom in a game with a friend, while another has
found or taken 4 veils and tied them together to form a skipping rope which she
uses as another girl looks on: Is she waiting for her turn? Hoping for her veil
back? Or just bemused as the reader no doubt is (2003, 3, panel 5)? Humour is
a foil Satrapi uses to represent the imposition and effect of state regulations on
her life, her family, friends, and society. Dark humour and irony are recurring
devices in comics to used to critique anything that rings of official doctrine. As
Browns use of notes shows the presence of the authors hand in the editing of
the narrative, Satrapi uses her own techniques to intrude on representations of
the past.
Alongside the veil, other aspects of fashion and the body are a central motif
in the first two of Satrapis books. In Persepolis: The story of a childhood,
Satrapi relays her exuberance of receiving a jean jacket from her parents, along
with punk music and posters, on their return from Turkey. Fashion and music
become a site of private rebellion against the restrictive regulations in Iran. In
the second book details of puberty and experimentation with hair and clothing
styles while at school appear alongside trials of life in Austria as a young
Iranian woman. Satrapi uses the form of comics to accentuate moments of anx-
iety or joy. By alternating the number of panels where she appears alone or
with others, the reader is able to view her loneliness, her internal thoughts, and
her relationships with individuals and groups. These stories are told alongside
more public events including the Iran-Iraq war and Republican crackdowns on
Lander 122
political dissidents; yet these also appear through the lens of Satrapis experi-
ence.
The relationship between personal and public trauma is at the centre of Art
Spiegelmans new book In the Shadow of No Towers (2005). Spiegelman
defines the space of the work as that faultline where World History and
Personal history collide (1). In trying to make sense of the chaos surrounding
the events of 9/11, from the panic in the streets to the US governments jingo-
istic response, Spiegelman turns to the collage-like nature of the newspaper
page to juxtapose [his] fragmentary thoughts in different styles (2). He uses
over a dozen styles of illustration, each specifically chosen to reflect not only
the tone but also the type of artwork suited to represent different memories,
scenes, and thoughts. The styles are raised from all ages of comic illustration,
an idea Spiegelman hits upon after turning to early twentieth-century comics for
solace. By connecting the aftermath of 9/11 to the history of comics,
Spiegelman develops a layer of meaning based upon issues of terrorism, race,
and disorder that historic comic artists drew upon to comment on American
society and which, as Spiegelman demonstrates, continue to haunt the psyche
of Americans. Spiegelman presses this argument, and an accompanying com-
ment on progress and history, through the reproduction of newspapers from
exactly a hundred years earlier when America was in a similar state of furious
excitement over the shooting of President McKinley. In reproducing primary
sources and incorporating their figures and ideas into his comics, Spiegelman
forces the reader to consider the relationship between the past and the present
in a direct and visual manner.
Spiegelman uses the form and space of the comic page as a driving force
in his narrative. This is explicit on numerous pages when vertical columns are
employed to mimic the standing or falling towers of the World Trade Centre.
On other pages, the reader follows the glowing image of the tower as it tumbles
to the ground; images of Spiegelmans tumbling body mimic the path numer-
ous unfortunate people took to their deaths. This example forces a similar type
of closure to that which Brown utilizes in Louis Riel to allow the reader to con-
sider Scotts death as a subject of history. On a further page, the two towers
stand as dark shadows covering the page. The outline of each tower encom-
passes a comic strip that is drawn within the boundaries of their shadowed bod-
ies. Spiegelman uses the space to add an extra narrative dimension to the page.
The element is a plane, like the one the hijackers crashed into the towers, which
appears in the blank space that separates the two towers on the page. It is not
part of the personal narrative on the page, an anecdote about the limits of free-
dom in post-9/11 America. At the point in the story where Spiegelman
describes New Yorkers paranoia, a clock/time bomb that he is holding
explodes. If the reader glances to the left to see the plane, the extra-narrative
element I mentioned earlier, they will see that its trajectory leads into the explo-
Graphic Novels as History 123
Lander 124
Richard Outcault, "The War Scare in Hogan's Alley," New York World, 15 March 1896,
reproduced in Art Spiegelman, In the Shadow of No Towers (New York: Pantheon,
2004), plate 2.
Graphic Novels as History 125
sion panel where all that appears is a jagged red panel with the word BOOM!
The plane that hit the WTC has interrupted Spiegelmans personal story. In this
brilliant use of form, Spiegelman draws together all the main themes of his
book: the attack on the WTC, the impact of public events on private life, and in
the panel after the explosion, where the author appears transformed into the car-
toon character Happy Hooligan, Spiegelman brings us back to his contention
that Americas problems are ones that have been around for a long, long time.
The comic histories written by Chester Brown, Marjane Satrapi, and Art
Spiegelman are provocative examples of how the past can be represented in an
alternative and, ultimately, more engaging form. The form of comic art and the
culture and history of the comic community have led comics to experiment with
many techniques that rupture the divide between the creator and writer that is
built into the omniscient narrative of traditional history. By challenging the
authority of the omnipotent third-person in text histories, the narratives of
comic and graphic novels invite the reader to see the difficulties, as well as the
process, of representing the past. The self-questioning tone of comic narratives
moves the reader beyond the imperative of truth and towards a more realistic
position where truth, the past, and historical representation can be presented as
the questions to be considered. Finally, through engagement with images and
symbols, the comic artist depends on the reader to perform closure; in doing so
she/he becomes an active accomplice in the historical events as well as in the
difficult decisions that have to be taken when representing them.
____________________
Notes
1
Hayden White, The Burden of History, in Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural
Criticism (Baltimore/London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 27-50.
2
See the forum on Writing History in Left History 10, 1 (2004): 8-53 where David
Leeson takes up Whites challenge to experiment with a modernist literary technique:
Cutting Through History: Hayden White, William S. Burroughs, and Surrealistic Battle
Narratives, 13-43.
3
Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical
Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), ix.
4
Ibid., 3.
5
White analyses several nineteenth-century historians and the narrative techniques they
employ in Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe
(Baltimore/London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973).
6
White, The Content of the Form, 21.
7
White, Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth in Historical Representation,
in Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect (Baltimore/London: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1999), 31-2.
Lander 126
8
Ibid., 31.
9
Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (New York: Paradox Press,
2000), 67.
10
Ibid., 65.
11
Art Spiegelman in conversation with Seth, 25th Annual International Festival of
Authors, Toronto, Canada, 22 October 2004.
12
McCloud, Understanding Comics, 100.
13
Bryan D. Palmer, The Hands That Built America: A Class-Politics Appreciation of
Martin Scorseses The Gangs of New York, Historical Materialism 11, 4 (2003): 317-
45, 320.