“living in the funnies”: metafiction in american comic strips

“Living in the Funnies”: Metafiction inAmerican Comic Strips

JESUS A . GONZALEZ

ALTHOUGH THE CONCEPT OF METAFICTION HAS BEEN ANALYZED

quite frequently in disciplines like literature and film, fewstudies exist in the field of comics.1 This article reviews the

best theoretical contributions in the field of metafiction and developsa useful taxonomical framework to examine metafictional devices in avery American manifestation of the genre: the newspaper comic strip.

Metafiction has frequently been considered a feature of postmod-ernism, although some scholars like Linda Hutcheon or PatriciaWaugh look back to earlier works such as Don Quixote, TristramShandy or Las Meninas, and prefer to talk about a “self-conscious”(Waugh 2–19) or “narcissistic” mode (Hutcheon 17–35) which hasbeen present in the history of art for a very long time. The key tothese works of art as metafictional is that they refer both to the real-ity outside the text and to the text itself as a process or as an artifact.In the field of comics, such double referentiality is as old as the com-ics genre: In an early panel of The Yellow Kid (September 20, 1896),for example, the kid holds a hand-written letter from the artist apolo-gizing to the reader. Similar metafictional devices can be found inKrazy Kat and Bringing Up Father, as well as in Winsor McCay’sworks, like Midsummer Night Dreams or Little Nemo in Slumberland,such as the page (May 2, 1909) where Nemo’s dream becomes a “car-toony” version of his reality.

However, the recent so-called postmodern decades have seen anincrease in this metafictional mode in comics, as well as in otherforms of art. In the field of comics, this increase is possibly relatednot only to some of the features of postmodernism but also to the

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proliferation of autobiographical comics. Some examples of metafic-tion that can be found in recent graphic novels are Alan Moore andDave Gibbons’ Watchmen or Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan; the theoret-ical books about comics written and drawn by Scott McCloud (Under-standing Comics and Reinventing Comics); and the superb Maus, inwhich Art Spiegelman is able to make metafictional comments bothabout his work as a cartoonist and about the conventions of the form,while telling a personal history of the Holocaust.

Therefore, one could safely say that although metafiction and com-ics have walked hand in hand from the very beginning, the later post-modern decades have seen a proliferation of these metafictionalstrategies. In fact, so many examples of metafictional devices in con-temporary American comic strips exist that being comprehensive isnearly impossible. I will necessarily have to offer a personal selectionof examples to illustrate the different categories I am proposing.

Definition and Degrees

Metafiction as a mode has existed for a long time, but the word meta-fiction itself was not coined until 1970, when American novelist Wil-liam H. Gass discussed it in “Philosophy and the Form of Fiction,”and Robert Scholes in “Metafiction.” Although frequently used, it isnot universally accepted. Some critics prefer to use self-conscious fiction(Robert Alter), narcissistic narrative (Linda Hutcheon), the more gen-eral reflexivity (Robert Stam), or even art of exhaustion (John Barth).Whatever the term, one of the most accepted definitions is RobertAlter’s, according to which a self-conscious novel is “a novel that sys-tematically flaunts its own condition of artifice and that by so doingprobes into the problematic relationship between real-seeming artificeand reality” (x). David Lodge offers a similar definition: “Metafictionis fiction about fiction: novels and stories that call attention to theirfictional status and their own compositional procedures” (206).

Since, to a certain extent, all works of fiction call attention “totheir fictional status” or artificiality and share this double referential-ity to outside reality and to the text (it is difficult to forget com-pletely that what you are reading is fiction, particularly if you arereading comic strips in a newspaper), my proposal is to establish adistinction between different degrees, rather than types of metafiction.

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First Degree: Intertextuality/Transtextuality

The first degree is self-referential comics that provide general inter-textual references to other comics or to other forms of art and thuscall attention to their own condition as artifice. In considering inter-textuality within the realm of metafiction, I am following P�erezBowie, as well as Ricoeur, Hornby and Schmeling, who have studiedit in the fields of films and drama. The term intertextuality was firstcoined by Julia Kristeva in the 1970s (based on Mikhail Bakhtin’sdialogism and heteroglossia) to refer to the “mosaic of citations” thatconstitute a text, and its use has become increasingly extensive. Brit-ish media scholar John Fiske talks about “horizontal” references (toother comics, which we could call intercomics) and “vertical” referencesto other creative forms like painting or literature (intermedial refer-ences). Horizontal references are extremely frequent in comic strips,as we will see, but we can also find quite interesting examples of ver-tical, intermedial references like Mutts’ title panel tributes. Consid-ered by many cartoonists as a “throw-away panel” for its optionalremoval by newspapers, Patrick McDonnell has transformed the titlepanel of his Sunday strips into an artistic playground, filled withhomages to some of the most influential artists, designers or writers.For example, we can see a variation in Edward Hopper’s Nighthawkswith characters Earl and Mooch looking into the diner from the out-side, and a reference to Alice in Wonderland with Mooch (rather thanthe Cheshire cat) perched on a tree branch, and Mooch’s owner Millie(rather than Alice) looking at the cat from the bottom of the tree.Mutts’ Web site (http://muttscomics.com) offers readers the chance tocompare originals and McDonnell’s versions, like the horizontal refer-ences (intercomics) to Popeye or Dick Tracy, where the original char-acters are replaced by characters from Mutts.

Building on Bakhtin and Kristeva, G�erard Genette proposed amore inclusive term: transtextuality, to refer to “all that which putsone text in relation, whether obvious or concealed, with other texts,”and posited five types of textual relations (1):

• Intertextuality: “the effective co-presence of two texts” in the formof quotation (explicit), plagiarism, or allusion (implicit).

• Hypertextuality is defined by Genette as the relationship betweenone text (the hypertext) to an anterior text (hypotext), which the

840 Jesus A. Gonzalez

former transforms or modifies.2 Genette uses Ulysses and the Odys-sey as an example.

• Metatextuality: this category refers to works where a text “makescomments” about another one. “This is the critical relationship parexcellence,” according to Genette (3). Reviews or literary analysescould be included here, but, as Robert Stam says, “it is not alwayseasy to distinguish Genette’s metatextuality from [. . .] hypertex-tuality” (New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics 208).

• Paratextuality: the relation between the text and its “paratext”(titles, prefaces, dedications, etc.). As an example, Genette offersthe chapter headings in Ulysses, which appeared in its prepublica-tion in installment form and made explicit their relationship withdifferent episodes from the Odyssey. When the book appeared as avolume, they were removed, but never completely forgotten bycritics or readers.

• Architextuality refers to the generic taxonomies suggested orevoked by a text. In a general sense, Genette defines it as “theentire set of general or transcendent categories—types of dis-course, modes of enunciation, literary genres—from whichemerges each singular text” (1). However, he later restricts it to a“purely taxonomic” relationship, “completely silent, articulated atmost only by a paratextual mention,” in the way of titles or subti-tles that relate explicitly a work with a genre, such as the wordromance in the title The Romance of the Rose (4).

In the field of comic strips, we can easily find examples of all ofthese categories. The aforementioned Mutts tributes are adequateexamples of intertextuality, as defined by Genette, since the “effectiveco-presence of two texts” is readily visible. On the other hand, comicadaptations of novels (like Paul Auster’s City of Glass by Karasik andMazzucchelli) are a fairly common instance of hypertextuality, but soare hypertextual references to other works of art where the reference tothe hypotext is worked into the plot (or the gag) of the hypertext. Asan example, we can compare the Mutts tribute to Alice in Wonderland(a simple substitution of characters) with a strip from Calvin andHobbes (November 23, 1989), which, as a result of Calvin’s experi-ments, shows a supersized Calvin in his own room, ending up withthe words, “This has been a most peculiar afternoon.” Whereas inMutts, the two texts coexist but do not create something new, the


Calvin and Hobbes strip interacts with the hypotext in a more complexmanner: not only is a gag created using a model that only some readerswill recognize, but the reference to Alice may help the reader to see thestrip’s connections with an obvious literary antecedent. After all, theyare both examples of works written for children and adults, where achild lives in a parallel world that adults cannot see.

As in intertextuality, hypertextual references are frequently verti-cal, to television, music, literature, painting or cinema. Calvin andHobbes offers a complete catalogue of vertical references (see, for exam-ple, Oliver and Cap�o), like the two disposable panels from the Febru-ary 9, 1986, Sunday strip, which show Calvin’s imagined version ofhimself as Captain Ahab in front of the whale shouting, “Man theharpoons!, thar she blows!!” only for readers to discover him taking abath and imitating the whale’s upward spout in the second panel.There are also two references to Marcel Duchamp’s painting, “Nudedescending a staircase.” The first (November 3, 1993) shows Calvinwalking down his own staircase (only to end up in the bath and com-plain that, “Nobody understands art”), whereas the second (January24, 1995) has Calvin and Hobbes in front of a snowman about todescend a snow-staircase. As far as cinema is concerned, there are sev-eral strips where Calvin turns into detective Tracer Bullet, whichgives Watterson the chance to make juicy references to hard-boileddetective, noir films. These strips include references both to the visualdimension of these films (like the low-angle shots and the imitationof low-key photography in the February 6, 1990, strip) and to theirhard-boiled verbal content:

I had planned to take the day off and spend time with a couple ofbuddies. My buddies travel light and they are fun to have around.One travels in a holster, and the other in a hip flask. My name isBullet, Tracer Bullet. What people call me is something elseagain. I am a private eye. It says so on my door.

Peter Szczepanik calls these references, “intermedia reflexivity,” astrategy that attracts the reader’s attention to the different featuresof each medium: “As one media takes over and transforms the struc-tural components of another, the hidden or automatized structuralcomponents of both media become defamiliarized. Thus, a newhybrid form emerges that reflects the structural features of each col-


liding media” (29). In the case we have just mentioned, the adapta-tion of cinematic conventions to the comic strip makes the readermore aware of the similarities and differences between both verbaland iconic media. There are also many horizontal hypertextual refer-ences to comics in Calvin and Hobbes, such as the “Stupendous Man”strips (with Batman as hypotext), or the “Captain Spiff” strips (withFlash Gordon as hypotext). We could also use this category for thefrequent cross-overs or comic characters showing up in other strips.These cross-overs are extremely common, particularly in strips likePearls Before Swine or Sam’s Strip, and on certain dates, like AprilFools’ Day. In fact, on April 1, 1997 (the so-called “Great AprilFools’ Day Comics Switcheroonie”), forty-six artists decided toexchange their strips and have characters from one strip walk intothe others. For example, Garfield and Jon moved into Blondie’s strip(and house), and Dagwood (from Blondie) had his sandwich eaten bythe notorious cat in Garfield.

As to metatextuality, and the problems in distinguishing it fromhypertextuality mentioned by Stam, my proposal is to adapt Gen-ette’s terms and use metatextuality for direct, explicit theoreticalcomments about art or the medium and hypertextuality for indirectreferences to specific works. Possible examples of metatextuality couldbe Calvin’s reflections or “comments” about comics, such as the stripfrom November 11, 1987, where Calvin says: “Grandpa says the com-ics were a lot better years ago when newspapers printed them bigger. . . He says comics now are just a bunch of Xeroxed talking headsbecause there’s no space to tell a decent story or to show any action. . . He thinks people should write to their newspapers and com-plain.” When Hobbes tells him that, “Your grandpa takes the funniespretty seriously,” Calvin replies, “Yeah, Mom’s looking into nursinghomes.”3 Watterson created a number of metatextual strips aboutpopular culture (as opposed to high art) or the status (and size) ofcomics in the newspaper business, but we can also find similar exam-ples in Pearls before Swine about the problems of working inside thecomics industry (Figure 1):

As to paratextuality in comic strips, an interesting case may befound in annotated editions in book format of previously publishedstrips. Some of these books include notes, prefaces (such as BillWatterson’s well-known texts about the comics business) or eventhe original versions of strips that were later edited, censored by


syndicates or self-censored by authors. Pearls Before Swine books typ-ically include several pages of such strips (called “The Good, theBanned, and the Ugly”). For example, on page 257 of Lions andTigers and Crocs, Oh My! a series of censored strips shows characterPig digging a hole to China that ends up with a Chinese personturning up in the hole. Author Stephan Pastis explains in a foot-note that the editors “thought that some people might find the ser-ies offensive” (257). Therefore, China became “Kukistan,” and Pastishad to change the gags. Pig explains in the published strip, “WhenStephan originally drew this week’s strips, he named an actualcountry, but his editors told him that if he did that, the peoplefrom that country would get mad and complain, so he had to alter

FIGURE 1. Metatexuality in Pearls Before Swine (PEARLS BEFORE SWINE© (2004) Stephan Pastis. Reprinted by permission of Universal Uclick forUFS. All rights reserved.)


all the strips on the computer. On a positive note, the originalsshould be worth a bundle” (141). Another interesting paratextualcase has to do with the two disposable panels of Sunday strips thatare not published in some newspapers but are published in othersand later on in the book editions, and which become, in the handsof good cartoonists like Watterson or McDonnell, small works of art.

Finally, the category of architextuality may be used not only totalk about more or less obscure references in titles such as Calvin andHobbes (to the religious reformer and the philosopher, and thus to themore serious implications of some of the strips and of the comicsmedium as a whole), but also to extend the definition to comic stripsthat make a statement that they belong to a certain genre, as if theywere saying: “This is a comic strip.” In this sense of the word, somecross-overs seem to go a little further than others. For example, inPearls Before Swine, a character (Rat) is sent by the “comics police” toa “comics reeducation camp,” where he is taught by other characters(from Mutts) to act as a “cute” anthropomorphic animal in a properanimal strip (Lions and Tigers and Crocs 135). As we can see, this isnot just a simple combination of characters from different strips (hy-pertextuality), since it is actually referring to the types and conven-tions of a subgenre (animal strips) and therefore evoking a generictaxonomy, making it a case of architextuality in Genette’s sense ofthe word.

Second Degree: Metacomics

A second, deeper degree of metafiction can be found in self-consciouscomics that clearly break the “realistic contract” established betweenthe author and the reader and call the reader’s attention to the artifi-ciality of the text. I am using the term metacomics for this type ofcomics, following M. Thomas Inge, who coined this term for self-reflexive comic strips in 1991. These more transgressive comics canfurther be classified following Linda Hutcheon’s distinction between“diegetic narcissism” and “linguistic narcissism”: “There are textswhich are, as has been mentioned, diegetically self-aware, that is, con-scious of their own narrative processes. Others are linguistically self-reflective, demonstrating their awareness of both the limits and thepowers of their own language” (22–23).


Narrative Metacomics

The diegetic narcissism category can be used for comics that are “die-getically self-aware,” that is to say, comics whose metafictional refer-ences remain in the realm of the diegesis, the story being told by theauthor (what Russian formalists called fabula, or Genette called his-toire). This type of metafiction could be termed narrative metacomics forour taxonomical purposes and has become fairly common in graphicnovels (frequently autobiographical), which tell the story of comicartists and their creations. Well-known cases are Will Eisner’s TheDreamer, Daniel Clowes’ Pussey, or the autobiographical books writtenby Robert Crumb, Harvey Pekar, Alison Bechdel or Joe Sacco.

Narrative metacomics are not as frequent in newspaper comicstrips, but we can find an early example of cartoonists as characters inWinsor McCay’s Midsummer Day Dreams (July 6, 1911), where wewitness an argument between two comic artists fighting for an idea.Cartoonists also turn up as characters in Captain Easy (providingexamples of writer’s block when Captain Easy meets a comic artist, asin the April 5, 1950, strip reproduced by Brian Walker on page 89),and in contemporary strips like FoxTrot (with Jason as comic artist),Pearls Before Swine (Rat) and Dilbert (Dogbert). We can also see com-ics characters reading the comics section of newspapers and thereforemaking reference to their problematic fictional-real status (as in theFamily Circus June 1, 1980, strip), and appearing as newspaper edi-tors who need to choose the right strips (like Opus the penguin inBloom County). Finally, in Sam’s Strip, probably the most self-referen-tial strip in the history of comics, we meet Sam, the apparent ownerof the strip in need of a writer, who asks John Steinbeck to contrib-ute to the strip, but gets only an autographed, $500-worth note say-ing “No” (October 18, 1962).

In all sorts of fiction, stories about writers frequently lead to char-acters telling a story-within-the-story, or play-within-the-play. Theseoften reproduce, or play out in miniature, the process of the text as awhole (a device often called mise-en-abyme and with antecedents asclassic as “El retablo de Maese Pedro” in Don Quixote and “TheMousetrap” in Hamlet). In the field of graphic novels, we can findexamples in Maus (Art’s comic strip about his mother’s suicide, titled“Prisoner on the Hell Planet”) and in Watchmen, which shows a


comic-within-the-comic called The Black Freighter. Another interest-ing reference is The Escapist, a fictional comic appearing in MichaelChabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay (2000), whichChabon developed as a separate comic book in 2004.

In the field of comic strips, a well-known early example of thestrip-within-a-strip is Al Capp’s Fearless Fosdick, a 1942 strip thatburlesqued Dick Tracy and was read by Li’l Abner. Other recentexamples can be found in Pearls Before Swine (Rat’s “Dicki the Cock-roach”) and FoxTrot (Jason’s strips, where he usually makes fun of hissister Paige). All of them are instances of narrative metacomics.

Discursive Metacomics

Linguistic narcissism, according to Hutcheon, shows a deeper degreeof self-referentiality and refers to fictions that “demonstrate primarilyan awareness of their linguistic constitution” to show the “buildingblocks—the very language whose referents serve to construct thatimaginary world” (29). In this second type, the metafictional break or“short-circuit” happens in the realm of the discourse, the way the storyis told (the sjuzhet of the formalists, or Genette’s narration) when, forexample, the author appears as a character, or the conventions are bro-ken to show the “building blocks” from which the medium is made.I call this second type, discursive metacomics, rather than use Hut-cheon’s term linguistic narcissism, since both discourse and narrationinvolve the use of language.

Discourse levels may be broken up in different ways. We can findcharacters who are conscious of their fictional nature, as in Krazy Kat,when Krazy and Ignatz see their adventures in a newspaper like acontemporary version of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (April 16,1922). Other examples of characters conscious of their fictional statusoccur in classic strips like Mutt and Jeff or contemporary strips likeZiggy or Pearls Before Swine, where anthropomorphic, talking animalsbecome particularly aware of their nature when they confront “real”animals and interact with them, creating all sorts of humorous situa-tions. For example, Guard Duck meets a real female duck and falls inlove with her without realizing that she, being a real duck, is boundto migrate. Pearls Before Swine is probably the most recent strip tomake a more consistent and extensive use of metafictional devices,


such as what Javier Pardo has called “metafictional anagnorisis.”Pardo draws from the Aristotelian term for the discovery of one’sown identity or true personality; that is to say, situations where char-acters become aware of their fictional status. In the strip, Rat realizesthat he cannot have a Facebook account because he is a fictional charac-ter; when Rat strikes the author with a stick, he tells him, “In theory,that didn‘t hurt.” (Pastis, Pearls Blow Up 243)

Another relatively common case of rupture of discourse levels isthe intrusion of the author into the diegesis. Once again Pearls pro-vides us with plenty of examples, from author’s typed notes for thereader to actual appearances of the author as a character (Figure 1). Infact, a very common gag in that strip is the characters punishing theauthor in the last panel when he makes up really bad jokes. Some-times the characters address the author, but he remains outside thestrip, without a pictorial representation, as in the Krazy Kat stripfrom January 25, 1939, when Offisa Pup complains to the author,who has not finished drawing the prison where he intends to send Ig-natz. Finally, a 1952 strip of Bringing Up Father provides us with avery Pirandellian case of a character in search of his author: Jiggs saysin the first strip, “I wonder what’s gonna happen today. Well—I’llhave to go to McManus’s studio and find out,” but when he goes tothe studio he only finds another cartoonist (Zeke Zekley), after whichhe decides he can take his day off (October 27, 1952, reproduced inBrian Walker 60).

Characters may also address the reader directly, a strategy oftenused in drama, film and television and usually referred to as “break-ing the fourth wall.” There is an interesting example in Sam’s Strip(October 16, 1962) where the first panel shows a sign reading, “3PANELS TO SAM’S STRIP”; in the second panel, the sign reads, “2PANELS TO SAM’S STRIP”; the third panel says “1 PANEL TOSAM’S STRIP,” and in the last panel, we can see Sam being drawnby a comic artist and complaining to the reader, “Just a minute! I’mnot ready yet!” Characters can also be empowered and become authorsin different ways: by becoming surrogate authors when they pick andread a joke from their author (sick in bed) in Pearls; by erasing andcreating the fictional world they inhabit (as in Krazy Kat, Jan 15,1944, when Ignatz draws a jail to “arrest himself” and Offisa Puperases it in revenge), or even by drawing themselves with authorialtools: in Sam’s Strip (Nov 9, 1961), Sam looks at himself in the


mirror and says “I could draw me better than this.” Therefore, in thesecond panel, he confronts the artist (self-portrait by Jerry Dumas),takes away the pen from him, and ends up self-drawn in a sketchystyle proclaiming: “if you want anything done right, you gotta do ityourself.”

Finally, authors like Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine) or MortWalker and Jerry Dumas (Sam’s Strip), who seem to be particularlykeen on metafictional strategies, provide a combination of devicesthat I suggest to call Radical Metafiction or Metafictional Overkill,adapting Patricia Waugh’s terms. As a matter of fact, she uses theterm, “overkill,” in her category, “Intertextual Overkill” (145) forslightly different purposes, but I think it may be appropriate for theaccumulation of metafictional devices, as shown in the followingexamples. In a Pearls strip, Rat addresses a reader to inform himabout his own fictional nature (“Well, Steve, perhaps you don’tunderstand that I’m only a drawing. With just a couple swipes of theeraser, I cease to exist”), and Pig takes advantage of the situation tobecome author and erase Rat from the strip (Pearls Blows Up 206). Inthe October 24, 1962, Sam’s Strip, Sam addresses the reader, becomesthe author, and turns the reader into a character. In the first panel, hesays, “It’s tough getting a comic strip started”; in the second one, hekeeps on complaining, “First you gotta have funny characters. . . Theyare hard to think up”; but in the third he does not talk but looksstraight at the reader, just thinking. The last panel shows him draw-ing the reader in his notebook and saying, “Hold that pose a minute,willya?” Finally, Stephan Pastis also gives us a humorous rendering ofBarthes’s “Death of the author,” combining hypertextuality with dis-cursive metafiction when he sends his characters into a parallel worldin a series of strips called Larry in Wonderland: Pastis ends up beingeaten by the “Raterpillar” creature and becoming “cartoonist sushi”(Larry in Wonderland 35).

Aside from the rupture of discourse levels between author, readerand characters, another typical case of discursive metacomics involvesshowing or playing with the building blocks of the medium, such aspanels, panel borders and balloons. These metafictional games goback to very early strips, like Little Nemo, Bringing Up Father or Nancy(see Brian Walker 58) and have been continued in contemporaryworks: in Pearls, there is a series of strips that show characters fromthe strip Family Circus (Family Circus does not use balloons; characters


“talk” under the panel instead). The combination of these two contra-dictory conventions helps to create all sorts of funny situations, suchas the strip where Rat steals the space below the panels (Pearls SellsOut 179). In a Zits Sunday strip, Jeremy makes an inappropriate com-ment to his girlfriend (“Your freckles help camouflage your zits”): theballoon where that comment appears stays in black in all the follow-ing panels, with characters signaling the balloon and making refer-ences to it, as an obvious visual reference to the fact that nobody canforget that awkward comment. These metafictional games alsoinvolve other conventions of the language of comics, like the presenceof onomatopoeia (in Sam’s Strip, Sam keeps them in a closet to beused when needed) and icons to show movement (Sam needs to sweepthe floor to clean the clouds of dust made by characters to show theyare running), or the reading order from left to right. In Pearls BeforeSwine, we can see a very interesting strip that Pastis says he almost“didn’t run” because he thought it “would confuse too many people”(Pearls Blows Up 206). In the first panel, Rat says to Pig, “That wouldbe very confusing”; in the second panel, Pig answers, “Wow. Can youimagine if comic strips did that?” and Rat says, “No, you idiot. Theyput the beginning of a book at what we’d call the end and read inthe reverse order we would”; the last panel shows Pig saying, “Oh,my goodness. So they read the end of a book first?” and Rat asking,“Did you know that Chinese is traditionally read from right to left,instead of left to right?” Of course, the strip only makes sense readingit from right to left and therefore changing the order of all the sen-tences uttered by the characters. To avoid confusion, the author getsto the point of writing in extremely small print between the secondand third panel the following sentence: “HINT: Read strip fromright to left.”

Sometimes, strips show the “building blocks” of subgenres, likesoap-opera strips (Figure 2). This example could show us that theboundaries between metatextuality and hypertextuality on the onehand, and between transtextuality and discursive metacomics on theother, are sometimes not so easy to define, since this Sunday strip isat the same time making comments about the genre, including thehypertextual reference in the gag, and showing us the building blocks(close-ups, rhythm, narrative conventions) of the subgenre.

Finally, Stephan Pastis has created a number of self-referentialstrips that explore the building blocks involved in the production


and postproduction process of newspaper comics: characters “know”that they inhabit this fictional world and act accordingly. They climbout of their panels to look at the date written between the panels, orjust to look thinner, because appearing on comic strips (and TV)

FIGURE 2. Discursive Metacomics in Pearls (PEARLS BEFORE SWINE ©(2007) Stephan Pastis. Reprinted by permission of Universal Uclick forUFS. All rights reserved.)


“makes you look ten pounds heavier” (Pearls Blows Up 121); theycomplain about “living in the newspaper” when they suffer a mini-earthquake created by the paperboy tossing the papers on the porch(Lions and Tigers and Crocs 114); they experience problems with com-ics layout, the printing process or ink shortage; they even find thestrip blurred by newsprint from the page directly across from them,after which Rat exclaims, “Man, I hate living in the funnies” (Lionsand Tigers and Crocs 114). Of course, all these building blocks havebeen explained in detail in theoretical books like Will Eisner’s Comicsand Sequential Art and Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, but theyare also explicitly exposed in comic strips like Bloom County. In a Sun-day strip reproduced by Brian Walker, titled “Handbook for BetterComix Comprehension” (237), Opus and Milo Bloom discuss the“graphic idiosyncrasies of the modern comic page,” including graphicsymbols such as “bulbles” (bulbs for “sudden inspiration”), “surpri-sles” (kinetic lines to describe “sudden mental excitement”) or “boo-zles” (circles and stars to describe “intoxication”).

The examples provided so far should be enough to demonstratethat metafictional strategies are certainly not exclusive of high art orLiterature with a capital L, but are a fundamental component of apopular medium like comic strips. As to the purpose of these meta-fictional devices, Rub�en Varillas has written that the main functionsof metafiction in comics (and possibly in art in general) are reflec-tion, self-parody and experimentation. Cartoons reveal reflectionabout the process of creation (Figure 1) or the language itself (“TheOfficial Handbook for Better Comix Comprehension”), self-parody(Figure 2) or experimentation (Krazy Kat, Sam’s Strip). Reflectionoften involves a process of demystification, defined by Matthew Jonesas “the act of revealing the mechanisms of production responsible forcreating the particular text” (277). Eisner’s and McCloud’s theoreti-cal books are excellent examples of demystification of comic art ingeneral, but so are strips like Figure 1 and the annotated editions inbook format where authors explain the process of production andpostproduction. However, the primary function of metafictionaldevices in American comic strips seems to be parodical. In the “fun-nies,” a gag is obviously almost always the primary objective of mostof the examples shown.

Robert Alter has said that self-conscious novels “[probe] into theproblematic relationship between real-seeming artifice and reality,”


and that certainly seems to be the primary function of metafictionaldevices in general. Although metafictional strategies apparently breakthe “realistic contract” and undermine the realism of the story beingtold, paradoxically they often have a realistic effect by establishing amore intimate connection between the reader and the real author whobreaks the conventions and barriers to whisper to the reader and offerhis true self. (An excellent example is the well-known panel in Mauswhere we can see a depressed Art sitting on a pile of corpses from theHolocaust.) Jones has written that,

reflexivity closes the distance between the author and the audience.By laying bare the mechanisms of the production process, theauthor provides an avenue for the audience to make sense of whatthey are consuming within the context of authorship. By readinginto the mechanisms of the production process, the audience cre-ates their own avenue. (270)

Don Quixote, Maus, or the recent Logicomix could be excellentexamples of this effect, which could be called metafictional realism. Infact, one could even talk (following Javier Pardo’s example) of extro-verted metafiction, when metafictional devices not only show the artifi-ciality of fiction but also make comments about the artificiality oflife, about how “in real life we are all comic strip characters” (ConchySunday page, June 8, 1975, reproduced in Walker 169) or how “allthe world is a stage,” as both Shakespeare and Calvin state(Figure 3).

FIGURE 3. Extroverted Metafiction in Calvin and Hobbes (CALVIN ANDHOBBES ©1993 Watterson. Dist. By UNIVERSAL UCLICK. Reprintedwith permission. All rights reserved.)


Notes

1. With the notable exceptions of M. Thomas Inge’s “Form and Function in Metacomics,” Mat-

thew T. Jones’ “Reflexivity in Comic Art,” and Rub�en Varillas’ “Un acercamiento al me-

tac�omic.”

2. Daniel Chandler (Semiotics for Beginners) has proposed the term hypotextuality for Genette’s hy-pertextuality and leave the term hypertextuality for computer- or internet-based relation-

ships. A very interesting example (probably relating intertextuality and discursive

metafiction) is the proliferation of webs based on variations on Garfield, like “Garfield Ran-

domizer,” “Silent Garfield” or “Garfield minus Garfield.” In the Comic Strip Doctor Website

Wondermark (http://wondermark.com/the-comic-strip-doctor-recontextualization/), we can

also find examples of “The Dilbert Hole,” “Dysfunctional Family Circus” (which keep the

drawings but change the words) and “Garfield Randomizer” (which uses original panels and

changes the order and thus the meaning) and other webcomics that edit the originals on the

web, like “Digital Calvin and Hobbes.”

3. All the quotations from Calvin and Hobbes come from the syndicate’s official Web site

(http://www.amureprints.com).

Works Cited

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Jesus A. Gonzalez is Professor of English at the University of Cantabria,Spain. He has published La narrativa popular de Dashiell Hammett: Pulps, Ciney C�omics (Valencia University Press, 2002) and coedited The Invention of Illu-sions: International Perspectives on Paul Auster (Cambridge Scholars, 2011) aswell as a number of articles on Applied Linguistics, Comics, the DetectiveNovel and the West in American Literature.


“living in the funnies”: metafiction in american comic strips

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