ADAPTING TRISTRAM SHANDY by Adria Young Submitted in ...

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While planning the graphic novel version, Rowson immediately dismissed, nay
“rejected,” the “pointless ‘Classics Illustrated’” type of “straight narrative” style;
“equally, however, Tristram wouldn’t let me do that” (Rowson 65).
49
For a visual history of smut, see Maurice Horn. Sex in the Comics (New York: Chelsea
House, 1985). In the 1960s, franchises like DC Comics re-popularized super-hero stories
(Weiner 8), and the establishment of comic book stores, or “headshops,” in the 1970s
gave comic book sellers and readers a marketplace (Weiner 13). Popular comic books,
plots, and their characters have been remediated into campy and colourful live-action
versions on television and in film since the 1960s.
50
A succession of graphic novels in the 1990s led to the production of film adaptations in
the 2000s, which exploded the market and increased the sales of both mediums and often
enabled reprints of the graphic novels. Dark Horse Comics, in particular, has been very
successful. A few examples of graphic novels (that were adapted to film in the 2000s)
include, but are not limited to Frank Miller. 300 (Portland: Dark Horse Comics, 1998);
Alan Moore, David Gibbons.The Watchmen (New York: DC Comics, 1987); Alan
Moore.From Hell.Illus. Eddie Campbell.(London: Knockabout Comics, 1999); John
Wagner.A History of Violence.Illus. Vince Lock.(New York: Paradox Press, 1997); and
Max Allan Collins.Road to Perdition (New York: Paradox Press, 1998).
51
For instance, Weiner notes that one-fifth of all novels sold in France are graphic novels
(59).
52
Comics that attempt the highest level of reader participation, however, are considered
“experimental” (McCloud 77) because of the cognitive demands that challenge both the
participatory and narratological aspects of visual storytelling. For the most part, then,
comics should provide an easily navigable narrative pattern signified by visual cues.
Sterne’s text, however, does not. This is satirized by the signposts.
53
Goggin (6-7); McCloud (16-17); Duncan and Smith (20).
54
“Between panels, none of our sense are required at all, which is why all of our senses
are engaged” (McCloud 89).
55
By way of comparison, McCloud’s sense of comics as “imitating” an earlier media
form is similar to how Hutcheon views adaptation as an imitation of the original text; she
cites the classical sense of “imitatio” as ‘making new’ (20).
56
In his analysis of the graphic novel, David H. Richter praises Rowson’s “parodic
inventiveness” (np).
57
Because of this, McFarlane would consider Rowson’s adaptation a commentary, or
even “deconstruction,” of the original text (McFarlane 22), and this would be an
interesting thought to pursue if Rowson’s adaptation was not as multimodal as it is, even
within a particular medial format; I hold it is more than commentarial. Leanne Davis
Asplaugh, however, undertakes a ‘deconstructionist’ approach to the graphic novel using
post-modern theory in “Treading upon the Shroud: Martin Rowson’s Graphic Novel
Version of Tristram Shandy,” The Shandean (2009).
58
McCloud notes that when graphic novels that use black and white format, “the ideas
behind the art are communicated more directly” (McCloud 195). Also, it should be noted
that Piranesi was extremely popular in the eighteenth century, and was a “graphic artist of
technical brilliance” (Wilton-Ely 7).
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