Never before have comics seemed so popular or diversified,
proliferating across a broad spectrum of genres, experimenting with
a variety of techniques, and gaining recognition as a legitimate,
rich form of art. Maaheen Ahmed examines this trend by taking up
philosopher Umberto Eco's notion of the open work of art, whereby
the reader - or listener or viewer, as the case may be - is offered
several possibilities of interpretation in a cohesive narrative and
aesthetic structure. Ahmed delineates the visual, literary, and
other medium-specific features used by comics to form open rather
than closed works, methods by which comics generate or limit
meaning as well as increase and structure the scope of reading into
a work. Ahmed analyzes a diverse group of British, American, and
European (Franco-Belgian, German, Finnish) comics. She treats
examples from the key genre categories of fictionalized memoirs and
biographies, adventure and superhero, noir, black comedy and crime,
science fiction and fantasy. Her analyses demonstrate the ways in
which comics generate openness by concentrating on the gaps
essential to the very medium of comics, the range of meaning
ensconced within words and images as well as their interaction with
each other. The analyzed comics, extending from famous to lesser
known works, include Will Eisner's The Contract with God Trilogy,
Jacques Tardi's It Was the War of the Trenches, Hugo Pratt's The
Ballad of the Salty Sea, Edmond Baudoin's The Voyage, Grant
Morrison and Dave McKean's Arkham Asylum, Neil Gaiman's Sandman
series, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell, Moebius's
Arzach, Yslaire's Cloud 99 series, and Jarmo Makila's Taxi Ride to
Van Gogh's Ear.
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