Paratextual Reflexivity in Issue #1 of “Birthright”

 

Although the first issue of “Birthright” achieves a riveting narrative through its choice of moment and artwork, I found the issue’s paratext to be the most interesting element in regards to how meaning is created by this comic. The final page of the issue is juxtaposed against a heart-felt note by Joshua Williamson, the comic’s creator and writer, which basically expounds why this story ought to be told, in lieu of the shortcomings of its genre.

 

Williamson first warmly reminisces about his childhood emersion in stories like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, stories that “took kids like [him] and sent them to faraway lands full of more than just adventure”. But there is something that “always bugged” Williamson about this genre: “These kids would get to go on these great adventures… but they never had to deal with the consequences… That is how the idea of BIRTHRIGHT started. What happened after the adventure was over? What do you do next? This is that story.”

Not only does the paratextual note have a reflexive effect on the reader in terms of their much deeper understanding of the story’s stakes (in regards to its treatment of its own genre), but they now also have a sense of the authorial awareness present in the piece. Mathew Jones observes that “as a technique and a strategy of both creation and consumption, reflexivity closes the distance between the author and the audience… [and] promotes intimacy between the creator and the consumer”. This closing of distance is exactly what Williamson achieves with his note. The reader now treats the protagonist Mikey as an extension of Williamson; Mikey can be seen as what Jones calls the “masked author”. But the reader is now also invested in the concern that underlies the telling of this story, and so understands that their focus should be on Mikey’s re-appropriation to the real world, and not on his fantastical adventure in another land, as would normally be the case in this genre.

The intimacy between Williamson and his reader is further encouraged with Williamson’s acknowledgement that “this is the most work [he has] ever put into a book”, and his expressed wish that he hopes his reader agrees “that it’s all been worth it”. I personally leant the issue much more consideration, invested more of myself into a re-reading of the story, once I realized that “to say that BIRTHRIGHT is a labor of love is an understatement”.

In addition to the author’s note, there is another piece of paratext which has an interesting reflexive effect on the story:

This map is reminiscent of the author-drawn maps found at the start of novels like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and so this bit of paratext accomplishes what Jones thinks is main role of reflexivity, which is the text’s calling “attention to its own status as a fabrication” of the creator. The presence of this map in the issue’s paratext, and the fact that it is depicted as though a child has drawn it, has an interesting but illusive effect on the reader, since all other characters in the story are in serious doubt about the existence of “Terrenos”, and the map itself is labelled as “gibberish” when it is diegetically handled by a detective:

 

The map seems to agitate the dichotomy between how the reader makes meaning from such fabrication, and how the diegetic characters make sense of the same fabrication. The reader knows the comic they are reading is a fabrication, and that the map is a fabrication, but they also understand that within the comic’s diegetic world, the map is NOT a fabrication: Terrenos exists. For the characters in the story however, the map has the opposite effect. The characters “know” that their own world is real, and so this map can ONLY be a fabrication. However, we as readers know that their certainty must inevitably falter for the sake of plot development. And so the dichotomy between the reader’s knowledge and the characters’ creates tension that develops and participates in the issue’s main concern of whether Mikey is indeed an impostor or not.