Drawing, Redrawing, and Undrawing

Drawing comics holds an ambiguous status, between graphic trace and mechanical reproduction. This chapter examines practices of copying that play up this ambiguity, looking at comics, redrawn and undrawn, that foreground the questions: What does it mean to draw without drawing? What does it mean to copy and redraw or even to disengage from the very act of drawing? By reading through a selection of contemporary small-press comics from both Europe and North America that draw from archives, this chapter works toward elaborating a “graphic archiveology,” analyzing the way creators materially engage with the past, literally redrawing from loose, often self-curated archives of comics.