A Few Words About the System of Comics

A Few Words about The System of Comicsand More...

Thierry Groensteen

Abstract

The following text is the transcript of the presentation given by Thierry Groen-steen at the conference of the International Bande Dessin6e Society at the FrenchInstitute in London on 14 April 2007, in which he outlined the key elementsof his semiotic approach to the analysis of the comics medium in the recentlytranslated System of Comics, the first part of a trilogy subsequently completed bythe historical overview of Ast6rix, Barbarella K Ci e ['Asterix, Barbarella & Co.'], andthe analysis of the cultural positioning of comics in France in Un objet culturelnon identifi6 ['An Unidentified Cultural Object']. He also spoke of his prioritiesas a publisher: the affirmation of a European artistic tradition, the promotion ofwork by female artists, and the establishment of a dialogue between creativityand reflection.

Let me first say how honoured I feel to have been asked to address the confer-ence. I have been invited to say a few words about the translation of my book,SystWme de la bande dessin6e, by the University Press of Mississippi.' TheAmerican edition appeared in February 2007 under the title The System ofComics.' The French edition was published in 1999, three years after my viva atToulouse University. My doctoral thesis had the same title, SystWme de la bandedessin&e. It was divided into four parts, three of which consisted of a collec-tion of previously published articles and studies. The only new materials werethe general introduction and the second part, which is the one that was laterpublished by PUF and that is now available in English.

I do not know if this book can be considered 'the most important semioticanalysis of the medium published to date', as my translators, Bart Beaty andNick Nguyen, were kind enough to write in their foreword. But it is a verysystematic and in-depth examination of the structural working of comics.

i Thierry Groensteen, Systeme de la bande dessin6e (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999).2 Thierry Groensteen, The System of Comics, trans. Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen (Jackson: University

Press of Mississippi, 2007).

European Comic Art m.i ISSN 1754-3797 (print) 1754-38oo (online) © Liverpool University Press

THIERRY GROENSTEEN

ýYSTýYmg LE pI A YAOWP

Artwork by Tanitoc

88

A Few Words about The System of Comics and More...

The description of every constituent of the medium (the panel, the frame, theballoon, the strip, the page...) is as rigorous as possible, and I tried to approachthem both in the way that they function and in the various possibilities that theyoffer to creators. In this sense, my work falls within the province of semiotictheory but also aesthetics. The theoretical description of the language of comicsraises the question of the varying ways in which it may exploited artistically,and, ultimately, the question of how any individual application of this languagemay be evaluated aesthetically. My ambition was to provide a 'toolbox' whichcould be used to discuss any actualisation of the 'Ninth Art'.

The title of the book needs a little explanation. System means 'a set of itemsthat are held together'. I wanted to emphasise the idea that comic art is anorganic totality that brings together multiple parameters and procedures, acombination of elements and codes, of which some are specific and others arenot. They are all interrelated, and it is the simultaneous mobilisation of all thesecomponents that constitutes the unique language of comics. I suppose that theorigin of my thesis was an article I wrote in Les Cahiers de la Bande Dessin6e in1986, under the title 'L'Introuvable sp6cificit6' ['The Elusive Specificity'],3 inwhich I expressed my dissatisfaction with some recent academic essays aboutcomics. One of my reproaches was that the authors founded general conclu-sions on a corpus that was much too restricted. They conflated the perform-ance of an individual artist with the competence of the medium as a whole. Myconclusion was that the real challenge for a theory of comics was to be able totake into account the true diversity of the achievements of the medium. Tenyears later, SystWme de la bande dessinie would be my own attempt to take upthis challenge.

In American comics criticism, scholars have given scant attention to semi-otics, and the most significant works that can be mentioned are Will Eisner'sComics and Sequential Art and Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics.4 Asboth authors are artists themselves, it is not surprising that they have empha-sised 'storytelling techniques'. Since the pioneering work of Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle,5 however, France has developed a tradition of a more theoretical andanalytical approach. I have tried to sum up the experience of my predecessors,and to clear comics theory of a few non-issues that had been the cause of amajor waste of time and effort. At the same time, I have tried to expand on moregeneral studies of word and image, and to take advantage of debates in the areaof literature, painting or film, insofar as they could shed light on some of thequestions raised within our own field.

The collection in which my book originally appeared is called Formes

3 Thierry Groensteen, 'Lintrouvable sp6cificitf', Cahiers de la bande dessinee 70 (1986), 43-47.4 Will Eisner, Comics and Sequential Art (Florida: Poorhouse Press, 1985); Scott McCloud, Under-

standing Comics (New York: Harper Collins, 1993).5 Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle, La Bande dessinee: Essai d'analyse semiotique ['Bande dessin6e: Towards a

Semiotic Analysis'] (Paris: Hachette, 1972).

89

THIERRY GROENSTEEN

S6miotiques and has included the work of Algirdas Greimas and the so-called'Ecole de Paris'. Since my methods and concepts have little in common withthe orthodoxy of this famous master of semiotics, the publisher felt it neces-sary to warn the reader, on the back cover, that my essay was very far from thetheoretical horizon of the books that had been previously published in the sameseries. He obviously felt the need to apologise for publishing such a weird workon such a bizarre subject! Indeed, I share the opinion of my friend and fellowscholar Harry Morgan, who has demonstrated in his own essay, Principes deslittiratures dessin6es ['Principles of Drawn Literatures'], 6 that classic semiotictheory is inadequate for an understanding and description of visual messages.There are many reasons for this, and a complete account of these would bevery lengthy. For the sake of brevity, I would just make the point that a picturecannot be broken down into discrete, stable, elementary units in the way thatlanguage can. So I tried to establish that the basic unit of the language of comicart can only be the panel, and that the solidarity between panels (which I callediconic solidarity) is the true foundation of the medium, the main and perhapsonly unquestionable element of its definition.

My second basic statement is that breakdown and page layout are the twodominant processes of the language of comics. I am not sure that the Englishterm breakdown is as meaningful as the French d&coupage, which conveys theidea of cutting out. Dicoupage should be understood in two different ways: thatwhich is cut out (or broken off) refers not only to moments within the narra-tive tissue (the key moments of the action); it refers also to the use of partialviews, selective framing that zooms in on pertinent zones, and the placing ofcertain information outside the frame. What is designated by the term pagelayout (mise en page) is mainly a matter of proportional and positional relation-ships amongst the panels, inside the multiframe that delineates a comics page.But I tried to demonstrate that many other questions need to be raised underthe heading of page layout - notably the network composed by the balloons thatare scattered across the page as a whole. Indeed, the relationship between theballoon and the panel is at once a relation between two forms and two areas:the positioning of the balloon within the panel is by no means arbitrary, sinceit is always relative to three different elements: the character who is speaking,the frame of the panel and, finally, the neighbouring balloons.

I have not merely tried to produce a complete description of the materialityof the page. My other main goal was to understand how the reader approachescomics and how the medium achieves meaning. To go into the details of thesecomplex questions would require another lecture. For the time being, I justwant to share one important conclusion of my research, a conclusion thatapplies to any kind of image and not only to comics. An image is always an

6 Harry Morgan, Principes des litteratures dessinees (Angoul&me: Pditions de I'An 2, 2003).

go


utterable (Mnonýable), in Deleuzian terms.7 An utterable, because I can translateor express what I see in linguistic terms. But it is also a describable and an inter-pretable. But that is not enough to restore to the image its semantic richness.As a reader, I can construct a more complete description of the image, but itnecessitates a change in the modalities of reading.

To read a comic, in the first instance, is always to attach priority to the chainof events, to the dynamic of the story. At this stage, the image is apprehendedprincipally in its enunciable quality, as an utterable, therefore. In order to accedeto a descriptive reading, it is necessary to establish an inventory of informationcontained in the image. And we must keep in mind that the drawn image isdoubly describable: on the one hand, because it always shows more than isnecessary to the intelligibility of the action; on the other hand because it is theproduct of a unique graphic style, arising out of the artist's skill and vision, sothat each line is specific. A description has to take into account both the drawnelements and the manner in which they are drawn. Finally, every panel is alsoan interpretable, because it enters into relations, over and above the level of thenarrative, with other panels, whether close to it or distant, which determine thefinal meaning of what is delivered in the image.

It is my conviction that the theory of comics has to confront the two polesof production and reception: how comics are made, and how they are read.For the last ten years, I have been editing the journal 9c Art ['Ninth Art'] and Ihave written half a dozen other books about comics. Retrospectively, I wouldconsider The System of Comics as the first part of a trilogy: the semiotic approachwas complemented later by a historical approach in Ast6rix, Barbarella K Cie['Asterix, Barbarella and Co.'], 8 which is a history of French-language comicsfrom their origin to the turn of the twenty-first century, and more recently byUn Objet culturel non identifij ['An Unidentified Cultural Object'], which is anessay on the cultural status of bande dessin6e, and how it is treated by the media,academics, national cultural policy, etc.9 Comics are considered in SystMme dela bande dessin&e as a language, in Astirix, Barbarella oZ Ci as an art form, andin Un objet culturel non identifij as a cultural phenomenon. Semiotics, historyand sociology are, it seems, the three major academic disciplines brought intoplay by the study of comics, and so I believe that I have proposed a compre-hensive description of the medium, even if the historical and sociological partswere restricted to the French scene. Of course, these works are provisionalsyntheses, and today I could easily write a revised version of The System ofComics, including all sorts of additional considerations. But I am afraid that,even in France, it would be very difficult to find a publisher.

In recent years, I have also concentrated on more narrowly focused studies,

7 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: L'Image-temps ['Cinema 2: The Time-Image'] (Paris: Minuit, 1985), 43.8 Thierry Groensteen, Ast6rix, Barbarella K C' (Paris: Somogy tditions d'Art/Angoul&me: CNBDI,

2000).9 Thierry Groensteen, Un Objet culturel non-identifie (Angoul&me: Mditions de IAn 2, 2006).

91

THIERRY GROENSTEEN

some with specific themes, such as censorship or the importance of the humanface and physiognomic expressions in the aesthetics of comics,'" and othersbased on specific authors, from the classic Herg6 to the challenging avant-gardeartist Martin Vaughn-James." My current work is marked by the same distinc-tion, since I am writing a survey of autobiographical comics and, at the sametime, an in-depth study of the work of Edmond Baudoin. I have been interestedto note that these two subjects have been touched on during this conference.

I have always voiced my disagreement when journalists or others triedto describe or introduce me as a 'walking encyclopedia' of comics. Not onlybecause the same goes for comics as for any other domain: the more you knowabout it, the more you realise how many facts and aspects you are ignorant of.But the very idea of an encyclopedic knowledge about comics seems absurd anddepressing to me: on the French market alone, the sum total of new titles beingpublished in a year is now more than 3,5oo. Even if you were to concentrateonly on French bande dessin6e, American comics and Japanese manga and totry to follow up all the emerging trends and artists on these three major scenes,this would be a task far beyond the capacity of a normal human being, unlessyou never read anything except comics and you gave up all social and familylife. Personally, I have decided to focus on the French scene and, even so, I don'teven read io per cent of what is being published.

Of course, since I founded my own publishing company in 2002, LesEditions de l'An 2, now part of Actes Sud, I have been so involved with thepublishing process, including the publication of the annual journal 9g Art,that it has been difficult for me to keep up with criticism or theory. But in myopinion, publishing is an extension of criticism, by other means. I consider thatevery new title published by l'An 2 is a statement about comics: a manifesto. Ibelieve that you cannot expect anything exciting from a publisher unless s/heis, in a way, an activist, someone who wants to defend certain ideas. Some ofmy own initiatives, as a publisher, have been to establish links between comicsand illustration, to promote the rediscovery of neglected works from the richheritage of comics, and to encourage female artists, who are still under-repre-sented in the comics industry. The proportion of women on the French comicsscene is less than io per cent, whereas they constitute more than 40 per centof my catalogue.

Finally, I am also endeavouring to develop exchanges among the varioustraditions within European comics. The linguistic barrier between Europeancreators seems to be an obstacle for the circulation of their work. Mainstreampublishers are obsessed by American and Japanese comics, supposedly more

io Thierry Groensteen, Lignes de vie ['Life lines'] (Grenoble: Mosquito, 2003).ii Thierry Groensteen, Le Rire de Tintin, Essai sur le comique hergeen ['Tintin's Laugh: Essay on Comedy

in Herg6'] (Tournai: Editions Moulinsart, 2oo6); Thierry Groensteen, La Construction de La Cage,Autopsie d'un roman visuel ['The Construction of The Cage, Autopsy of a Visual Novel'] (Paris: LesImpressions Nouvelles, 2002).

92


popular and universal, and they simply do not pay attention to what is happeningin neighbouring countries. For my part, I have always felt that the affirmationof a European identity, the instilling of a shared sense of belonging, begins atthe cultural level. Back in the year 2000, I curated a major exhibition for theBibliothýque Nationale in Paris with the title Masters of European Comics. Forthe first time, original works of 69 artists representing thirteen countries andranging from the nineteenth century up to the end of the twentieth were assem-bled and could be admired side by side. But, for some reason, novels seem tobe more easily translated from one European country to another than comics.Since mainstream publishers are not really interested, we, the small players,have elbow room. So, I have published, under my own label, work by artistsfrom Spain, Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland,Finland and the Czech Republic.

I firmly believe that these encounters between different national traditions,the opening up to female sensibility and finally the dialogue between creativespontaneity and critical reflection are three conditions that must be satisfiedif we want to keep the comics industry lively and innovative. These are thegoals that sustain my own interest in comics and, after twenty-eight years ofprofessional involvement in this business, keep alive my curiosity about newdevelopments.

93

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

TITLE: A Few Words about “The System of Comics” and More. . .

SOURCE: Eur Comic Art 1 no1 Spr 2008

The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and itis reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article inviolation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher:www.liverpool-unipress.co.uk

Documents

A Few Words About the System of Comics