Abstract

How do comics present characters? This talk will take a look at the means by which comics prompt their readers to ascribe traits and properties to their characters, and construe a sense of a person. In particular, the talk will focus on the main parameters of characterisation in comics with regard to the characters’ mimetic (realist) function, i.e. how characters can be perceived as plausible persons. The talk will also raise the question of medium-specificity regarding complexity in characters. Examples are drawn from a wide range of comics, including a Disney and a Punk aesthetic adaptation of Dante’s Inferno, and a number of it-narratives.

Kai Mikkonen is Senior Lecturer of Comparative Literature at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and a life member of Clare Hall College, University of Cambridge. He earned his M.A. at the University of Iowa, USA , and Ph.D. at the University of Tampere, Finland. His main research and teaching interests include 19th and 20th century French and British literature, travel writing, graphic narratives and comics, multimodality and narrative theory.