UW Comics Theory Class Blog: Bleeding Worlds in Man-Eaters

Man-Eaters Issue 1, Front Cover

***NO SPOILERS. NONE.***

Man-Eaters Issue 1, page 15

You guys, Man-Eaters gets me turnt up. Not only is it feminist AF and breaks the comics code on repeat, but its play with thresholds and boundaries between the narrative world and the real world adds so many more layers to the story.

An important thing to note about me is that I don’t understand the world through my eyes very well, a reason I have long-struggled with the comics medium. I tend to process information primarily through sound. When I read, I feel and hear the words before my brain understands what it’s seeing. I read with my ears. If someone like me gets excited about what’s happening with the art in a comic, you know it’s lit.

Man-Eaters Issue 1, Page 1

Throughout the series, there are items from the diegetic world made into paratext of the material floppy itself. The reveal on the very first page in the entire series (seen left) opens with a perfect example of this. I mean, the Ministry of Trouble is clearly an Orwellian-Rowling hybrid of literary silliness and if we, in the real world, see a cat we don't have to seek shelter immediately (I assume). We know this is fictive so it seems its only function is paratextual, to give weight to the comic as a book.

Man-Eaters Issue 1, Page 12

The reappearance, or braiding, of this image on page twelve creates our readerly awareness of the poster as an artifact from the diegetic world, calling "attention to the text as an artificial construct" (Jones, 2) and retroactively resignifying (Postema, 50) the image, giving us more information about the story and the world it exists within, yet avoiding lengthy, boring, wordy explanations.

Genette tells us that "more than a boundary or a sealed border, the paratext is, rather, a threshold" (his emphasis, 260), but what exactly are we crossing here? Worlds, people. We are crossing worlds.

In essence, by breaking the fourth wall, these images peppered throughout the narrative bleed into the real world we live in. A world the comic comments on, making the impact all the more palpable.

By playing with these boundaries, The Ministry of Trouble complicates for readers which world is which, blurring the lines between reality and fiction. This distinction, one that usually helps keep the story distant from our real lives, gets removed and has us considering just how frighteningly similar our world is to the narrative one.

There are probably hundreds of examples in this series to enjoy and, I promise, totally worth your attention. In fact, the fourth issue is entirely comprised of concepts and artifacts from the narrative world in magazine style.