Towards a Postmodern Poetics of Graphic Novels (draft copy - currently under revision for conference presentation)

by Heather Clitheroe

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The impulse for a poetics of graphic novels is grounded in the desire to work towards a better description of the qualities and characteristics of the form: fluid, challenging one that obeys, at times, structural and contextual norms - though not consistently, and not with any sense of permanence. The lack of adherence to rigid stylistic guides corresponding to realism's commands for accurate representation and the participation of the reader in the interpretation and comprehension of narrative both point towards a postmodern bent in graphic novels. A postmodern poetics, then, proposes to examine the foundational aspects of graphic novels, focusing on the development of their structure, their engagement of the reader as a willing participant, and the use of metafiction and pastiche to create a taxonomy that can be used and applied to the text for analysis. On Structure: Panels, Closure, and Postmodernism The structural syntax of graphic narrative should first be examined. The visual form of comics is such that it consists of "a sequence of forms organized on the page either in a linear or modular fashion" (Legrady 80) and it is this typical form that makes a postmodern analysis both necessary and complementary to the task of developing a poetics. Jameson (2005) has written at length about the implications of postmodernism and architecture, declaring that postmodernism "...went on to abolish something even more fundamental, namely, the distinction between the inside and the outside" (98). The removal of boundaries can reshape visions of physical space and urban architecture, but the model can be expanded to the spatial relationships and architectural aesthetics of comics and graphic novels. The structural and spatial construction of the graphic narrative is very much an architecture. Indeed, it is both artifice and architecture, for it is deliberately constructed through the process of design and storytelling, and this artifice joins and is joined by the architectural supports of the physicality of the text. A primary texts for the architectural analysis of graphic narrative is McCloud's Understanding Comics. Comics, he says, refer to the medium itself, and not the specific subject (McCloud 4), and the better description of comics and graphic narrative is 'sequential art,' or sequences of two or more images. This neutral definition, he says, does not include "matters of style, quality or subject matter" (5), instead leaving the question of aesthetic taste and subjective quality for matters of criticism and comparison. Expanding on his definition, McCloud states that comics are "...juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the reader" (9). These juxtaposed images - the selection made by the comic's creators in laying out panels with images relating to a written narrative - have both a unique relationship to each other and to the reader. Let us consider first the relationship to the reader. McCloud argues that the combination of characters and realistic (or semi-realistic) backgrounds "allows reader to mask themselves in a character and safely enter a sensually stimulating world" (43). Borrowing from psychological theory on perception, McCloud moves on to say that our perception of the world exists in fragments: pieces of the world, and reality, are interpreted as wholes, even though what we perceive is largely made up of sensory and intellectual fragments (62). The mind interprets fragments of data and experience as wholes through something McCloud terms a process of 'closure,' or a "filling of the gaps" (63). This same process of interpretation, he argues, is what allows comics to be interpreted as objects - but more importantly, to be interpreted as whole objects. To do so, though, requires a collaborative effort between the reader and the object. The reader - or audience - is "a willing and conscious collaborator, and closure is the apex of change, time and motion" (65) as the reader's imagination and process of cognitive integration fills in the gaps between action and narrative that is implied in the movement from one panel to another. Comic panels

...fracture both time and space, offering a jagged, staccato rhythm of unconnected moments. But closure allows us to connect these moments and mentally construct a continuous, unified reality (67).

The fracture of time and space further suggests the kind of boundary transgressions that mark a postmodern move away from solid narratives that form totalities. In discussing the breakdown in architecture between 'inside' and 'outside,' Jameson writes that the consequence is that

...as spatially exciting as the new thing may be, it becomes ever more difficult in this urban landscape to order a high-class architectural meal of the older kind,

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even though you might like one (and in that sense the very real accomplishments of the postmodernist architects are comparable to late-night reefer munchies, substitutes rather than the thing itself) (Jameson 98).

Where McCloud identifies the fragmented construction and composition of time and space in the architecture of panels, Jameson's comment about postmodern architecture in the physical sense outlines the result of that fragmentation: that there is a lack of distinction between forms, and that the newly created postmodern space moves away from the possibility of accessing the 'high-class' architecture that would be present in modernist form. Though this is, in Jameson's view, a poor substitution for more classical forms, it shows that this is movement between the forms. The older, rigid models of novelistic architecture give way to a more playful space, where barriers are shifted and changed. In the context of graphic novels and the architecture of panels, the same notion transfers to the view that there is a deliberate, playful movement in the narrative that is freely crosses time and space in that jagged, staccato rhythm, but also that these moments are constricted to the confines of the panel, and then elaborated upon by the closure process. The notion that narrative in comics and graphic novels relies largely on a process of integration on the part of the reader suggests a breaking down of one kind of 'inside' and 'outside' - namely, that the reader is relied upon to 'fill in the gaps' in order to make the narrative make sense. Without the process of closure, the narrative could quickly become nonsensical, with huge gaps in the continuity of the story working only to confuse the reader. McCloud provides an example of a example a raised axe, a scream observed from a distance, and the body (McCloud 68). The blow is not depicted, nor the source of the scream. Yet through the process of closure, the reader understands and interprets the images such that the smooth arc of the axe is imagined, the blow - perhaps to the back of the neck, or to the head, or the chest - executed, the screamer imagined to stand and observe in horror - or perhaps the agonized yell is the victim's cry. Consider two panels from City of Glass: first, the image of an old rotary phone is showing with 'RRING' written across the panel (Auster, Karasik, and Mazzucchelli 2). Though phone that we think is ringing turns out to be a picture of a telephone directory, we can reasonably piece together the sound, the image of a phone, and a character's foot to assume that somebody is coming to answer a ringing phone.

By page five, there is the image of Quinn's hand reaching for the phone.

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In the panel immediately to the right, Quinn is shown with the phone in hand, speaking. None of this exists except in the 'inner' space of the reader's mind, and yet the 'outside' space of the narrative and images cannot function without it. And, at the same time, this collapse of the demarcation of distance between text and reader fosters a sense of intimacy that is "a silent, secret contract between creator and audience" (McCloud 69). This, then, leads us to the question of the relationship comics and readers have to the 'architecture' of the form. Its basic unit is, arguably, the panel or frame. The character of the panel - Legrady interchangeably uses the term 'frame' - is that it is a self-enclosed container which "can also potentially function as a branding or connecting node for additional narrative layers that might run parallel to the main sequence in which the frames are ordered" (Legrady 81). Although a similar argument could be made for novels or film - that the sentence is the smallest closed unit, or the individual frame or strip of celluloid - we are specifically interested in what is the configuration of the graphic narrative. It is a unique structure, owing to the specific combination of image and text needed to form narrative. The individual panel in a comic is "the smallest closed syntagmatic unit" and, Legrady argues, the double page - two facing pages - might be seen as the largest, since the double page is typically seen as a single object, and therefore "a complete narrative unit in itself" (85). Although Legrady contends that the page is a closed structure (Legrady 85), McCloud's statement that the reader is a necessary accomplice to the narrative suggests that the closed structure of the page has been breached. The introductory panels in the second volume Tonoharu can be used to demonstrate the free movement of time and space through the architecture of the panels, and also the closure process. The reader is shown different scenes of, we presume, the neighbourhood of Tonoharu - or what might be typical scenes from any Japanese city. The panels can be read in any order, because there is no linear feeling of time:

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(Martinson, Tonoharu: Part Two 9-10)

What brings closure to these scenes is the movement out, away from the older couple, and pulling back to reveal the school. The transition is accomplished by closure; the implied narrative is one that shows both the movement of time - the early morning might be represented by office workers in the subway, and children being taken to school - and the timeless rhythm of neighbourhood life which is characterized by the old couple out for a walk. Though a sense of time begins to be established by the images shown, it achieves closure when viewing Dan in the classroom - for directly overhead, a clock is shown. Using the visual cue provided by the artist, the reader's perception of the page shifts again, assuming that the panels show the progression of the morning across the space of several hours. The space is largely timeless until the last panel is read, but even so, the larger panel used to pull back and away from the old man and woman give a sense of the lengthening of time, and that there has been a transition that takes the reader through at least four or five hours of the morning - owing largely to the closure process which orients the reader to assume that office workers on the train and school children are placed in the context of early morning and the other panels later in the day. The silent narrative is greatly fragmented as its lack of unifying narrative requires the reader's engagement to provide meaning, but it achieves fluidity as the reader sweeps their gaze from one panel to the next. The barrier between narrative and reader is collapsed; the reader is pulled into the text and begins to establish a sense of detail and time. Though not drawn, a reader can imagine the subway arriving, the children led across the street, the whistle or the sigh of an employee cleaning the sidewalk, and the quiet conversation between the old couple. Closure is at work, completing the flow of the narrative, but it is a highly subjective completion. And so we have begun to describe a foundational property of a postmodern poetics of graphic novels: a fragmented sense of narrative, loosely formed on the page but processed by the individual's closure of the space between panels as the graphic novel is read. And in that,

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there is the sense of the ephemeral, for the impression formed by a reader through closure almost certainly changes from one reading to the next. The Use of Sound and Space in Graphic Novels and Narrative The postmodern qualities of graphic novels extends well past its architecture and use of physical space. Another key element which can be included in a postmodern poetics is how narrative is constructed, and how architecture is used to support it. With the assumption that the panel forms a discrete unit of narrative in the graphic novel - the smallest unit - and that the page forms another, larger unit, we might begin to build a sense of how these units are used in the construction of narrative. But beyond what amounts to the physical attributes of graphic novels, there needs to be an examination of the use of the diegetic and extra-diegetic spaces in narrative. The diegetic 'world' of the story told in the graphic novel is certainly delineated by that physical architecture, supplemented and rounded out by the reader's process of closure. There is, however, a postmodern aspect to the use of sound and space within that architecture which occurs at the diegetic level (and, as we shall see, in the extra-diegetic space which the reader occupies). Lefèvre (2009) notes that diegetic space is used in comics as particular space "necessary to situate action" (15) - essentially, the use of space in the construction of panel and page is required to construct the larger sense of a fictional world. Space is used to convey moods, to impart suggestions about a character's personality: a character placed in an immaculate room will be viewed differently than one in a messy bedroom, for example:

(Martinson, Tonoharu: Part Two 48)

The feeling of depression in Tonoharu's main character, for example, is displayed in the accumulation of trash in his apartment: food containers and wrappers, bottles and cans, and old papers. The sense of disrepair and the implied mood is enhanced by the clutter that is shown in the panel. Consider another panel, showing the same space with the same perspective:

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(Martinson, Tonoharu: Part Two 48)

The choices made in the depiction of the environment of Dan's apartment in this second drawing give a much different view of the character. Although these two panels appear on the same page - as part of clean-up sequence, as Dan attempts to cheer himself up - they would be interpreted very differently by a reader if they appeared separately, and at different points in the narrative. Diegetic space is more than just the architecture of the panel, though it is intrinsically linked to it; it is also linked to the closure that is required from the reader in order to complete the constructed space. Lefèvre notes that

The reader constructs the diegetic space is various ways: both by elements that appear inside the frame of a panel and by elements that remain unseen (in French called hors champ). This non-visualized space does not only refer to the virtual supposed space outside the form (in French call hors cadre) of a certain panel, but also to the supposed 'hidden' space within the borders of the panel itself (in French called hors champ interne): for instance figures can overlap one another and hide parts from the eye of the viewer (157-158).

Though some events in the diegetic space of the panel are visualized, they can be "suggested by direct and indirect means" (158) - shadows, for example, may be used to indicate the approach or presence of another character. The architecture of the panel and the ongoing process of closure help to allow for the construction of narrative in the diegetic space: what is visualized within the frame is as important as what is not visualized and therefore supplied by the reader's closure. In this way, the narrative begins to be constructed through the visual cues supplied by the creator. Fragments of narrative exist in the unseen, the seen, and the space around the architecture of the panel. Deliberate choices made in the composition of the diegetic space are necessary for the interpretation of narrative. What makes this a postmodern feature is the requirement for participation between creator and audience: though the graphic novel makes use of diegetic space, it remains largely devoid of meaning until the closure process begins. The narrative, which is fragmented by the breaching of the borders that stand between the 'inside' and the 'outside' is constructed largely by the interpretation of the reader - through hors champ, hors cadres, and hors champ interne. There is no one unifying narrative, no totality: the text cannot and does not stand alone. It must merge with the reader; interpretation is the confluence of diegetic space and the reader. Lefèvre ventures a bit further, suggesting that the reader occupies a space within the architectural construct of the graphic novel: the extra-diegetic space, or the "space outside the fictive world of the comic" (160). The material space which surrounds individual panels or a

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space, unused by the author and typically blank, is "the real space in which the reader is located" (160). This, I think, points back again to Jameson's concern that postmodernism in architecture collapses the distinction between inside and outside, for the implied presence of the reader in the page suggests not that they have been drawn into it, but that the reader simultaneously exists outside, in their own reality, and inside the fictional space of the graphic narrative. This boundary transgression is perhaps evidence that the construction of the narrative is occurring in a postmodern fashion - or, perhaps, that a postmodern poetics would work to highlight this activity in a formal analysis or critique. Lefèvre notes:

Each reader is confronted with a particular extradiegetic space of the comic book itself, with a particular organization of the space on each page, and with a particular representation of the fragmented diegetic space in a series of panels (161).

And it is evident that the architecture of a graphic novel works in various ways to lay the foundations of the narrative. But how does this use of diegetic space contribute to the overall construction of narrative? For although the use of visual cues and the furnishing of diegetic and extra-diegetic space with objects are key components to the development of narrative in the graphic novel, they are not the only components of narrative. We turn, then, to the written word as it is presented in graphic narrative. For as much as the visual elements in graphic novels contribute to the overall development of story and plot, there is still the element of textual narrative that should be examined. Diegetic space can be utilized by images and landscape, and the architecture of panels can be used to induce closure and to communicate concepts such as the passage of time or elements of mood. But despite this, graphic novels remain both a visual and textual narrative. Textual references are used largely as components of diegetic space between characters. Captioning that occurs in panels is used to suggest either a personal narrative - an aside from the main character, perhaps, or an implied omniscient narrator - but it seems firmly rooted in its presence as an element of dialog or as spoken narrative. It is meant to be interpreted by the reader as speech. In Maus, for example, captioning is easily connected to the voice of Vladek Spiegelman, recounting the story of his experiences during the Holocaust. There is a similar use of captioning in Persepolis, where captions are placed in the text as part of Marjane's narrative:

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(Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood 86)

Is this necessarily a postmodern practice? To a large extent, yes. Though postmodern fiction "tends to be marked by an ambivalence towards realism rather than a desire to reject it outright" (Nicol 23), it is also marked by a "move away from literary realism" and "increasing self-reflexive statements" (21-22). Descriptive captions are more about constructing a representation

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of reality in narrative, rather than transcribing it, which ensures "that a separate aesthetic version of it is created in the pages of the novel" (23). This is the self-reflexive aspect of postmodern fiction - an aspect which examines the manner in which reality in the narrative is constructed and how the fictional world is created. The postmodern ambivalence to realism also suggests that the constructed fictional world is not meant to exactly mirror or accurately represent the so-called 'real' world. Postmodern fiction objects to the idea that the fictional world is created to exist in a manner that is entirely analogous to the 'real' world and therefore referential, and that the story that is created by the author is simply a question of a writer mediating an existing story (24). The suggestion that the fictional world is a construction and not a straight copy or transcription works well with the idea that a postmodern sense of diegetic space and closure are necessary to the overall success of the graphic novel. Captioning in the panel further builds on the sense of construction. The captioned panel is not a simple transcription of the activity and setting that appears in the drawing - it is a self-reflexive statement meant to be seen as an address made to the reader. It is typically an opinion, a suggestion made by the narrator, personal or omniscient, and not necessarily representative of the panel as a simple description, as description would be redundant - and entirely unnecessary, as the reader is already engaged in their own interpretation of what is happening. The construction of reality, rather than transcription, avoids approaching totality by allowing the interpretive influence of the reader to complete it, which also ensures that it is separated from the 'real world' assemblage of reality. There is also the question of dialog between characters and the textual representation of sound. Graphic narratives utilize both pictures and words to communicate the story, and "the way something is written visually informs sound qualities in narrative action" (Petersen 163). Though graphic narrative is real, Petersen argues, there is "an important shift in the nature of the medium...that draws the reader into the sound of the action" (163). Visual cues are used to denote both dialog and sounds created in the panel's action. The scale of the volume of a character's spoken words, for example, can be represented by small or large letters, faint or bold, to respectively denote a hushed or loud utterance:

Comics are read as if aloud; where the speech of the character and the noise of the action is an essential component of the aesthetic experience; more so than most literature and perhaps even more so than the written dialogue of a play, where the indications of sound remain, like other written works, in the abstract realm of words and line breaks (163-164).

Nicol has argued that postmodern fiction engages in manipulation, where the reader is left to interpret plot and details of narrative in order to develop a sense of the overall 'picture' (Nicol 27). Certainly, then, the use of textually-represented dialog and visual cues for sound and to suggest the timbre and quality of speech is something that, although presented to the reader, is formulated more as a suggestion rather than a command. This, in turn, corresponds to the constructed nature of reality in the text: rather than a transcribed account, the graphic narrative provides cues rather than explicit instructions to describe the aural qualities of the fictional world. Ultimately, the reader must interpret and decide how to integrate dialog and cues - to imagine and add this to the overall act of closure that must be completed in order to understand and determine what the story is, and how it is being enacted. Simply put: the reader is manipulated by the textual representation of sound into 'hearing' that sound as part of the construction of the fictional work, creating an experience of sound that reverberates through the panel and forms an important part of the reader's process of closure that results in a fluid and changing interpretation of narrative. We see, then, that the manipulation of the text through cues for sound and reflexive statements ensure that the graphic novel is engaged in a postmodern discourse. The interpretation of the text is influenced largely by its construction but is effectively the responsibility of the author. But this only the initial interpretation: the reader further interfaces with the text, and in the case of reflexivity and sound, builds their own conception of the quality of the constructed, diegetic space. The reality of the text is not a faithful transcription of reality, then: it is constructed, and the construction is flexible and fluid. From Narrative to Metafiction: Reality and Representation In the development of narrative, we see that the use of sound and space are integral parts of the creation of the constructed reality that is expressed in the fictional world, rather than a transcribed version of the 'real' world. This is, I think, a hallmark of postmodern narrative, and

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certainly a feature of graphic narrative to be described in a postmodern poetics. There is another aspect to narrative, though, that should be examined: the postmodern practice of metafiction. Metafiction is the "most characteristic practice in postmodern fiction," and is described as "a technique by which a text highlights its own status as a fictional construct by referring to itself" (Nicol 16). To some extent, this self-reflexive practice is presented in the use of caption and sound clues and the graphic novel's reliance on closure and the reader's engagement to accomplish narrative interpretation, but it extends beyond this. Metafiction provides yet another node for analysis for a postmodern poetics of graphic novels. Nicol's notion that metafiction reminds the reader of the fictionality of a text (16) does not necessarily provide the justification for its inclusion in a postmodern poetics. Rather, it opens the discussion:

Metafiction reminds us that the work of fiction we read is fiction; it is not a mirror reflection of the world but a combination of words on a page that we must make sense of by relating them to other texts, not the real world (16)

The graphic novel does this through the presence of drawn images, the architecture of the panels, the use of diegetic space, and the development of a sound-based narrative through textual means. All of these aspects of the postmodern poetics work to create the sense that the fictional work is entirely fictional, and to illustrate the construction of an alternate reality rather than a transcription of another reality. Hutcheon (1988) notes that metafiction does not refuse to mirror reality outright, though. Rather, postmodern fiction works to "problematize narrative representation" (Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism 40). Fiction, she says, cannot mirror reality, and it cannot reproduce it - owing, perhaps, to the irreducibility of reality. However,

...fiction is offered as another of the discourses by which we construction our versions of reality, and both the construction and the need for it are what is foregrounded in the postmodernist novel (40).

The foregrounding is accomplished by "stressing the contexts in which fiction is being produced - by both writer and reader" (40). Hutcheon suggests that postmodernism does not simply move the emphasis from text to the reader, but instead:

Re-contextualizes both the production and reception processes and the text itself within an entire communication situation which includes the social, ideological, historical, and aesthetic contexts in which these processes and that product exist (40).

In other words, Hutcheon concludes, "postmodernism goes beyond self-reflexivity to situate discourse in a broader context' (41). So here we have something that suddenly becomes very significant in our search for a postmodern poetics: first, the sense that a postmodern work of fiction works to describe a problematics for the representation of reality, which, in turn, allows for the examination of how the fictional work attempts to construct a reality. In the context of graphic novels, this metafictional construction of reality is already active in the text. The artist makes deliberate choices in how they draw a character, and also how to show the background. The use of the panel to delineate scenes of activity in the story and the resulting use of diegetic and extra-diegetic space might function as texts within the text, which would tend to agree with Nicol's assessment that metafiction works to ensure that the reader is willingly immersed in a fictional world. What becomes critical, though, is the idea that metafiction and postmodernism work to problematize the representation evident in narrative in order to call into question the assumptions that might exist in a master narrative. Metafiction works to question how construction takes place: why, and for what purpose. The foregrounded, problematized construction of reality forces that re-contextualized view of the text in such a way that the graphic novel becomes more than just a series of sequential panels of words and images. The graphic novel speaks clearly of the question of perspective and narrative as the products of a multiplicity of experiences and interpretations. We have seen how the process of closure, for example, changes the reality of the graphic novel because it relies on a collaborative effort between creator and reader. This, I think, is the communication situation that Hutcheon refers to. For what is being communicated in the narrative of a postmodern text is more than simply the representation of a constructed reality as conceived by the author. In a postmodern poetics of graphic novels, there is an ongoing dialog about Hutcheon's 'social, ideological, and aesthetic contexts' taking place within the text, and outside of it:

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The metafictional staging of a clash between real and represented worlds encourages us to pursue the implication to their logical conclusion: fiction is fictional, but no more so than reality. When it collapses the distinction between fiction and reality by causing the 'outside world' to seep into the world of the novel, metafiction is more subtly demonstrating that the obverse also happens, the fictional world intrudes into the real world (Nicol 39).

The graphic novel engages the 'outside' world by re-contextualizing the reader's relationship to text. By depending on the reader to 'tell' some part of the story through the use of diegetic space, closure, and visual cues to sound, the graphic novels begins to problematize narrative representation. The problematics extends to the idea that the narrative is subject to discovery and interpretation by the reader, and that in opening itself to this, the text is also subject to constant and shifting re-contextualization of the processes of production and reception. The 'communication situation' that Hutcheon refers to is itself in flux, since the interpreted product of the graphic novel can and does differ drastically because its reception can be so varied. The work of metafiction can also be seen to play a role in the postmodern dissolution of linear narrative (Jameson 1984, 54). The 'normal' linear narrative is disrupted by the re-contextualized narrative of the graphic novel. The constructed reality of the metafictional narrative is such that the reader is presented with choices when beginning the reception process:

The eye must move back and forth, up and down to sort through the conflicting streams of information to assemble the visual verbal code. the combination of visual and written clues accentuates the sound experience by requiring the reader to slow down to get the full effect. Thus, comics are ideally read at the speed of sound, whereas books are read at the speed of sight (Petersen 164).

The pace of comprehension suggests that the 'outside' world seeps in, so that the graphic novel is experienced as a postmodern text. Words can be "visually inflected, reading as pictures, while pictures can become as abstract and symbolic as words (Hatfield 133), which also suggests that the metafiction which exists in graphic novels works to remind readers that reality is constructed, that the work is fiction, and also that the 'outside' world seeps into it as the reader is left to determine the way in which the text is received and processed. This sensory multiplicity of comprehension seems to approach the kind of integrative process which we use when encountering the 'outside' or 'real' world - more so in the graphic novel than the conventional novel, which relies solely on the written word and can be experienced only at the 'speed of sight,' rather than the 'speed of sound.' What seems key in this experience of the text is that in reading at the so-called 'speed of sound' - a slowed-down, more absorbed process of integrating the various aspects of the graphic narrative into a multi-sensory reading - is that the reader's relationship to the text is re-contextualized, demonstrating that the movement away from a linear narrative which is seen as a hallmark of a postmodern novel is active in the reception of the graphic novel. Narrative spread across facing pages might be organized in a traditionally western left to right sweep, as a page of written text might be, but is frequently laid out in a manner that requires the reader to move their gaze up and down, and back and forth. Readers might yet find themselves moving in a non-linear fashion even if a creator has laid out panels in that pattern. The reading and reception of the graphic novel is such that readers will move their gaze across and around a page, peering at panels, skipping ahead, and looking back: all because of the metafictional qualities of the text, which actively reminds the reader that they are encountering a fictional construct which refers to itself, over and over again, and which invites a reading that allows the consideration of the text to move beyond simple plot and narrative and into the kind of mimicry of the so-called 'real' world. Pastiche and the Graphic Novel Elements of pastiche also form elements of a postmodern poetics of graphic novels. Jameson (2005) sees pastiche as a practice that arises from the "disappearance of the individual subject" and the "unavailability of the personal style" (Jameson, 16). Lacking the historical depth to narrative, postmodern practice can and does engage in a kind of pastiche or blind parody that occurs because of the rampant fragmentation of social life, where a collective, unified narrative no longer holds court (17). Pastiche is found to be a mimicry of style that lacks the cultural narrative of unified history - a normative view of the context - that would so inform parody. In pastiche is that "bravura imitation so exact as to include the well-nigh undetectable reproduction of stylistic

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authenticity itself" (133) and to suggest that it does not belong in a postmodern poetics is to discount its significance. But where do pastiche and nostalgia fit in a postmodern poetics of graphic novels? Pastiche is something that would seem to result from the depthless character of postmodernism - the movement away from a unified narrative of culture, for example, would seem to suggest postmodern pastiche would lack the ability to 'pull' from a shared and commonly understood interpretation and so present a fairly neutral parody of the past. Postmodernism seeks to avoid the self-legitimizing narrative because of "its deep complicity with our culture's social construction of reality" (McHale 20). Narrative is a construction (Hutcheon 2001, 62), and so a postmodern poetics of graphic novels must also address the constructed nature of the reality which it presents. Graphic novels and graphic narratives can be self-reflexive in their appearance, which is often

...highlighted through embedded visual references to books, other comics, and picture-making in general - things and activities inevitably fraught with special significance for cartoonists and their readers (Hatfield 147).

Though the relationship of one graphic text to another is not necessarily evidence of pastiche, it does suggest that there is mimicry being enacted upon the text. Whether it is truly neutral or not lies in the analysis of the text, and the reader's reception of that analysis: the speculation for the reason for imitation in the form of pastiche can help to provide a locus for tangential analysis and discussions of dominant and non-dominant discourse. The liberal borrowing and 'mash-up' culture that exists in graphic novels through such embedded references is, perhaps, a sign that pastiche works to continue to remind the reader that they are engaged in a constructed reality, and that a reading of the one text may be informed by a multiplicity of other graphic novels and pieces of conventional literature. More importantly, the sense of pastiche may help to highlight an ironic look at styles and periods, as occurs in the re-written history of the United States that takes place in Watchmen. The mimicry itself is neutral: the oversized cell phones, the exaggerated costumes and the cigarette holders that are somewhat reminiscent of opium. But because it takes place in a metafictional text, it works to ultimately re-contextualize the narrative and becomes part of a discourse that is highly ideological, meant to show what 'might have been.' If pastiche is a reflection of an ahistorical state, it can be used as a point of analysis when approaching the graphic novel as a text: the neutral act of mimicry that Jameson has identified may be at use in the text as a means to highlight or decry a narrative that is itself constructed. The presence of pastiche can create an environment in the text that is both eerily familiar and yet strangely alien, and its presence, when identified, provides a window on the kind of fragmentation that is at work in a postmodern text. Putting Theory to Practice The identification of a foundational set of features in a postmodern poetics of graphic novels is incomplete if theory is not put to practice - that is, examining texts through the gaze of the poetics. It would be untenable to suggest that all graphic novels are postmodern. They are not all postmodern texts. But there are elements of graphic novels that clearly correspond and respond to postmodernism, and a poetics provides the opportunity to examine these elements. The poetics should not be seen as exhaustive - for to suggest so approaches totality. The poetics are more effectively applied to aspects of a text, rather than to the text as a whole, since to do so would be in agreement with postmodernism's cautions of totalized, unified narratives. As an example, consider Watchmen. A postmodern poetics allows for critical analysis with an eye for metafiction. The metafictional aspects of the text can be seen throughout the novel: the insertion of extra texts suggest that active, self-referential activity that is evident in postmodern texts. If the goal of metafiction is to remind the reader that the text is, itself, a fictional construct and to re-contextualize the production and reception process, the insertion of an element such as Walter Kovacs' (Rorschach) police report and psychiatric assessment forms is very much a postmodern act. It is extraneous to the narrative: an inserted, fragment that is used in a expository manner. That the file is drawn in such a way as to suggest a realistic representation is still metafictional - the edges of the folder are somewhat indistinct. It may be due to the inking of the drawing, but it is also a reminder that it is artifice, a construction. This is highlighted on the next page: a typewritten report ostensibly from the West Branch of the New York State Psychiatric

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Hospital. Thought there is little that stands out about the quality of the insertion, it should be noticed that the typewritten text, seen partially covered by a photograph of Kovacs as a young man and paper-clipped to the page is not obscured. Rather, the text flows around the photograph - particularly evident in the last paragraph: "...the cause of death being the forced ing estion [sic] of Drano cleaning fluid" (30).

The metafictional properties of the text give the illusion of realism and then quickly pulls it back to demonstrate the fictional qualities of the constructed page. It is unlikely that a file would have been typewritten without moving the photograph. At the same time, small typos - 'hte, Sicne,' 'edsuation' - are present to heighten the illusion of typewritten text. What has been carefully constructed is the simulacrum of a confidential file, complete with a handwritten note from Dr. Malcolm, apparently tucked into the file.

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(Alan, Gibbons, and Higgins Ch. XI, 32) Though the text of the note is partially obscured, there is enough in evidence that allow the reader to apply closure to complete the note's contents. The self-reflexive quality of the insertion continues with a note slipped into the file. "In any event," writes Dr. Malcolm, "keep notes with an eye to possible future publication" (32). These constructed pieces of narrative serve as a fiction within the fiction, and the feel of the open file provides the reader with the suggestion of something privileged: viewing the very private evaluations Rorschach. Hutcheon has written that metafiction works to re-contextualize the text and the production and reception process into a communication situation that includes, among other things, ideological and historical contexts. A reading of this section of Watchmen that gives consideration to a postmodern poetics can examine the discourses which it is located in and with: the idea of a hero - such as he is - and mental illness. The criminality of Rorschach is seen as the product of a childhood where he was "regularly beaten and exposed to the worst excesses of a prostitutes [sic] lifestyle" (30). Yet Rorschach can also be seen as heroic, in the sense of his unwavering commitment to truth and justice - though he is portrayed as a violent man, he offers glimpses of a nature that is curiously gentle: an exchange with Daniel, in which he confesses that he is aware of how difficulty it can be to befriend him helps to highlight his character:

(Ch X, p. 10)

The broader context in which the metafictional text is located is one which examines Rorschach's life; first as the child, then as the damaged man, and then the vigilante who seeks, above all else, truth and justice. Refusing to be complicit to Veidt's plot to bring peace to the world through the threat of its destruction and the framing of Dr. Manhattan, Rorschach says that there must never be compromise. "Not even in the face of Armageddon" (Ch. XII, p. 20). And yet, Rorschach sacrifices himself, knowing that Dr. Manhattan must kill him to stop him; he knows that he must die to preserve Veidt's lie because it is the only way that peace will be sustained. Though he is

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gone, his journal surfaces in the offices of Pioneer Publishing - perhaps to finally give voice to Veidt's actions - or simply to tell Rorschach's story. The problematics of the representation of reality go deeper than the image of the file folder and its self-reflexive character. But its inclusion is key to the wider ideological discourse to which Rorschach belongs: the idea of truth, and of lies to preserve peace. The portrayal of the flawed man as both hero and villain is important, too: the depiction of a reality which, as a metafictional construct, works to question assumptions of what can be considered noble, and what is not. The master narrative of the hero is disrupted by a character such as Rorschach, and this is a deliberate postmodern act. It is very much intended to re-contextualize the discourse of heroics and ideology. The narrative of Rorschach is not a linear Bildungsroman - rather, features of his life are revealed and interwoven with the text: through reflexivity, the metafiction is revealed; the reader's relationship with Rorschach and the text is re-contextualized to reformat and revisit the discourse of heroics and the problems of truth. Closing Remarks: Why A Postmodern Poetics? As a tool for analysis, a postmodern poetics provides the reader with the opportunity to articulate the experience of reading and interfacing with the text, giving voice to the experience of moving across boundaries that would block and distinguish between the 'outside' and the 'inside,' the outward reality of the reader and the inner, closed world of the narrative. Postmodern poetics exists in the transgression of those borders, and the breaking down of any unified narrative by the continued and persistent engagement of the reader's interpreted vision and understanding of the text. In Watchmen, Maus, Tonoharu, and Persepolis, we find ways to apply aspects of postmodern poetics, and how views of the text and the discourses in which they are situated can change as a result. It is not necessary to subject a text to an analysis based on the poetics, but when this analysis is conducted, it helps to give a better sense of the postmodern qualities of the narrative, and to better identify the ways in which the reading experience is shaped by those qualities.

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