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Figure 3 Botes, Dog The Tommy Saga: Die Hart van Duisternis p3 In later issues this eclecticism is abandoned in favour of a simpler approach, resisting the excessive borrowing that sometimes makes the earlier comics hard to read because there is so much to read. The drawings become less indulgently sensual: they are diagrams that tell a story, not pictures that illustrate one. 96
The contents of issue 1 are mostly psychedelia, fragmentation, vulnerability, and taboo subjects (drugs and sex). Often the stories do not rely on a clear, concise narrative, but on a structure that is almost stream-of-conciousness, expressing a state of mind rather than an articulated idea. The Astonishing Adventure of Sir Joseph Patrick, by Joe Dog [Fig 4], is a typical example. The artist pushes the limits of intelligibility, while sticking doggedly to the visual structure of a comic. The drawings remain realistic (bearing in mind that realism is a relative concept in comics), and each frame is more or less coherent within itself, but they do not relate to each other in obvious or clear ways. Some non-sensical fragments are particularly troublesome, because they are not nonsensical in a lyrical style, and thus cannot easily be explained as poetic in intent [fig 5]. No mood is conveyed. It is a bold, clear style, even cartoony; the implication of a spare undecorated narrative style is that each element conveys some part of a message. Yet these illustrations illustrate nothing but themselves. It is as if the artist is trying to draw the reader's attention to the page itself, thereby exposing the lack of content of his comic, and undermining the reality of it. Much of Bitterkornix's subtlety and fascination lies here: their stories are mysterious both on the surface and behind it, in appearing to hold so much deeper meaning and turning out to be empty of it. In later issues this leads to more obviously formal experimentation. Comics exist largely in the reader's mind, and particularly in the gaps between frames [McCloud, 1994, p.68]. Bitterkornix narrow this space until it almost ceases to exist, pushing the invisible comic to the brink of visibility, until the reader is almost forced to believe that the comic exists solely on the page itself. The confusion generated by this tension is perhaps the best expression of the bitterness indicated in their title; unlike most of the other artists, Bitterkomix do not only experiment with the connection 97
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A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF SOUTH AFRICA
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dialect differs from the language o
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"Does he paint? He fain would write
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1. INTRODUCTION What I am attemptin
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existence ... until food gets short
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is making comics respectable in the
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Most of these comics are produced a
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2. DEFINITIONS AND TERMINOLOGY The
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In addition, extraverbal sounds, or
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The decision as to whether visual l
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For the first two decades of the tw
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Wertham's book The Seduction of the
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Undergrounds were amoral, sexual, s
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coalesced into comics intended for
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3. ANALYSIS Four different groups o
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incomprehensible passages are incom
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positive shapes, even or especially
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3.2. KOMIKSOC The confessional aspe
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,0 ::l£~) \e B . f"'CM P'!~t .....
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Figure 2 Franklin After the Plagues
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Sididis's Tripping uses comic conve
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example of how the appearance of a
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M\..I.A i H !lVIE ou~ rut", """" ""
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The artist only solves this problem
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text. Yet the frames function in su
Page 52 and 53: of the text, which is the reason fo
Page 54 and 55: omb) are lost in an attempt at pers
Page 56 and 57: a single emotion, depicting various
Page 58 and 59: Figure 19 Breytenbach Eddie Jumped
Page 60 and 61: Content is sometimes allowed to esc
Page 62 and 63: Sorfa's technique saves, lives up t
Page 64 and 65: Figure 23 Casey Showcase: Item 1 pI
Page 66 and 67: Two people, a scriptwriter and an a
Page 68 and 69: Sorfa's collaboration with scriptwr
Page 70 and 71: Casey's understanding of blacks and
Page 72 and 73: From the whimsical, poetic scripts
Page 74 and 75: This same regularity forces pace to
Page 76 and 77: In previous comics, my 'visual writ
Page 78 and 79: The comic was drawn full-size on A4
Page 80 and 81: Text shifts between narrative, spee
Page 82 and 83: Teo iNTE.N5E · Figure 38 Sorfa Spi
Page 84 and 85: ' .. Figure 1 T. Begg The Battle of
Page 86 and 87: The text of Bone Staircase, by Freu
Page 88 and 89: of solid blacks and a subjective vi
Page 90 and 91: Rue, by Sididis, begins well. The f
Page 92 and 93: completely resolved. Possibly his p
Page 94 and 95: seems to pick out elements, without
Page 96 and 97: The awkwardness of this comic is a
Page 98 and 99: 3.4. BI'ITERKOMIX Bitterkomix start
Page 100 and 101: From Case No. 308, the story of Tom
Page 104 and 105: 'Tj ~. (1) ..,. tj o OQ ;l ,(1) VEI
Page 106 and 107: etween form and content, but also p
Page 108 and 109: Another example is figure 8, from A
Page 110 and 111: structured. Familiar sources, conte
Page 112 and 113: Some verbal comic conventions are m
Page 114 and 115: Both artists make use of a great va
Page 116 and 117: character, Chico D, into a martyr a
Page 118 and 119: Figure 17 Van Zyl Die Besoek p5 112
Page 120 and 121: The transitions between panels are
Page 122 and 123: simply by its silence and inexplica
Page 124 and 125: Figure 22 Botes Die Mens 118
Page 126 and 127: Verdwaalde Harte [fig 23J, also by
Page 128 and 129: Figure 27 Dog, Winterbach Rewerie p
Page 130 and 131: In Die Hero van die Bitch [fig 29],
Page 132 and 133: draws the reader's attention to the
Page 134 and 135: Figure 32 Bates Siembamba 128
Page 136 and 137: The Proverbs are selected and reint
Page 138 and 139: In Klapmuts Polisie Slaan Toe, Bote
Page 140 and 141: Ina van Zyl is more concerned with
Page 142 and 143: I ROSIE is NUUT deur Ina van ;Zyl I
Page 144 and 145: M y DEliO !r1OTHER H I..4NG UP I LE
Page 146 and 147: Botes is very good at acidic social
Page 148 and 149: The second episode of Missileman, b
Page 150 and 151: In Kanker Botes' subject is again t
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coincides with the appearance of th
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closeup, then pulls away to explain
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stories in issue 1 are in English,
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4. CONCLUSION The comics are all pr
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The most common genres (my definiti
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the first generation whose world is
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ways of creating this entrance poin
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S. BIBLIOGRAPHY BARKER, M. 1989. Co
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Thames and Hudson. NEAL, C. 1987. T
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