Drawing from the Archives: Comics Memory in the Contemporary Graphic Novel (Cambridge Studies in Graphic Narratives)

Following Art Spiegelman's declaration that 'the future of comics is in the past,' this book considers comics memory in the contemporary North American graphic novel. Cartoonists such as Chris Ware, Seth, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, and others have not only produced some of the most important graphic novels, they have also turned to the history of comics as a common visual heritage to pass on to new readers. This book is a full-length study of contemporary cartoonists when they are at work as historians: it offers a detailed description of how they draw from the archives of comics history, examining the different gestures of collecting, curating, reprinting, forging, swiping, and undrawing that give shape to their engagement with the past. In recognizing these different acts of transmission, this book argues for a material and vernacular history of how comics are remembered, shared, and recirculated over time.

Benoît Crucifix is Assistant Professor Cultural Studies at KU Leuven and researcher at the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR), working on the FED-tWIN 'Pop Heritage' project. He coedited Comics Memory: Archives and Styles (2018) and Abstraction and Comics (2019). He is a member of ACME and a coeditor for the journal Comicalités.