Text - Rhodes University

closeup, then pulls away to explain at length and in great detail; the first frame contains
all the information contained in the comic, but it is condensed. The last page comes back
to the main character: the last frame is the same as the first, but viewed from the
opposite angle, because the question posed at the beginning has been answered.
When I Came Here First [fig 54], a one-pager by Dog, has a blandness that is arresting.
In Proverbs of Hell, Dog explained himself by means of objects and acts, the way a
conventional narrative explains its underlying idea. When I Came Here First is, however,
a very literal extended self-portrait, pushing the non-narrative comic to an extreme. The
text heads to a conclusion, and the drawings mimic it with progressive closeups of the
face. Yet this face does not get clearer; it starts to disintegrate, becoming abstract,
because there is no difference in the amount of detail presented.
It is as if the drawings were a series of enlargements of the first, offering no additional
information, just a different way to look at the same thing. Instead of making more sense
through closer observation, the thing examined makes less sense. This is just the process
the text describes, a progression from surety to the uncertainty of a limited viewpoint.
Bitterkomix's originality lies most obviously in detail, juxtaposition and inventive
plagiarism, but it is their translation of the comic idiom into Afrikaans that is most
important. Instead of simply producing Afrikaans comics, they translate English-language
comics culture into Afrikaans. This is no small thing. The entire content and theme of
their comics is South African, even while their direct influences and inspirations are
foreign: Nag van die Wit Skrik is taken from an American text, and interpreted so
efficiently that no trace remains of its origins. Dog's series Myself and my Heroes lists
some of his sources, revealing just how eclectic these sources are. Although most of the
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