Rethinking Comics Memory through Polygraphy

Conceptualizing and understanding memory in comics inevitably opens up a can of worms, not only because of the inherent monstrosity of the concept of memory, which produces a wide range of vectors (such as individual and collective memory), but also because of the many ways in which comics interact with memory. In this paper, we would like to show how style in comics functions as a node where personal, collective memories meet and interact with the memory of the medium of comics. For this we will turn to Thierry Smolderen’s groundbreaking Origins of Comics (2014), where he advances the notion of “polygraphic humor” to designate how cartoonists of the 19th and early 20th century dialogue with the visual culture of their times, humorously responding to the new ways of seeing by tapping into a deep cultural memory of graphic forms. Interacting with the concept of polygraphy, we would like to introduce and test the concept of media memories (Ahmed 2017) in order to understand how comics simultaneously tap into and reinforce an assemblage of memories hailing from previous comics but also from other related media particularly those relying on images and (variations of) sequentiality. We suggest that the first traces of such media memories are already discernible in the kinds of styles (particularly ‘retro’ ones) chosen by comics authors. By teasing out key media memories in two graphic novels engaging with consciously cartoony and comicsy (Beineke 2017) styles (Thierry Smolderen and Alexandre Clérisse's "L'Été Diabolik") as well as the stylistically hybrid "Unastoria" by Gipi, we hope to demonstrate a new way of reading style in comics as engaged in a polygraphic dialogue with media memories. This conceptual framework will acknowledge narrative drawing as a deeply memorious practice, helping us to understand how comics themselves produce a specific form of historical time that is embedded in the memories of comics and related visual media, especially the uses and applications of those media and their thematic preferences.