Page - 156 - in >mcs_lab> - Mobile Culture Studies, Volume 2/2020

156 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel) Sigrid Thomsen | Navigating Movement and Uncertainty Introduction In her 2010 autobiographical comic How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, which is “part of a tradition involving accounts of journeys to the Holy Land” (Fischer 2013: 235), Sarah Glidden depicts her travels around Israel, which she undertook as part of a Birthright Israel trip organized for young Jews in the diaspora. Using watercolors to paint her comic, she draws her own body, and the bodies of others, traveling to and then within Israel.1 She paints them as part of large mobile hubs such as airports, on mobility-enabling vehicles such as buses, and as mobile agents walking around and exploring Israel. In the comic, the bodies are in motion because they move, are moved, and are placed in different contexts. The people depicted are, however, also mobile in a different way: Glidden’s avatar Sarah2 starts the journey certain in her opposition to both Israel and Birthright trips, saying that she is “prepared for whatever propa- ganda they try and throw at [her]” on the trip (Glidden 2016: 6). Over the course of the comic, however, she “move[s] from a position of certainty to one of uncertainty” (Reingold 2019: 536), ambiguity, and doubt. Her successively more complicated feelings about the situation in Israel manifest themselves in her facial expressions, in the movements of her body, and in the text accompanying these visual elements. In my paper, I will focus on the way the images and the text come together to show this doubled mobility — the mobility of travel through Israel, and the mentally mobile process of grappling with a complex political conflict and one’s own place within it. To do so, I will focus on three essential visual aspects of Glidden’s work. Glidden’s memoir is usually classified as a “graphic novel”; on the website of her publisher, Drawn & Quarterly, it is listed as a “graphic memoir”. However, I prefer the term “comic” for several reasons: Firstly, though it was pioneered by some comics artists, such as Will Eisner in relation to his book A Contract with God, the term “graphic novel” often has the ring of a marketing ploy to it. Where comics are often looked down upon or seen to only be funny, “graphic novels” are seen to elevate the art form. By using the term “comic”, I wish to counter such a reading. In fact, comics have been serious from early on; and humor does not preclude art from seriousness. The term “comics” not only “applies to the medium as a whole, regard- less of the form it takes” (Parker Royal 2011: 1), but also insists that the art form has always been worthwhile, long preceding its rebranding as “graphic novels” in recent decades. Glidden’s memoir can thus be read as one instant in a long line of comics history; more specifically, it can be read as part of a history of comics depicting Israel and Palestine, such as Joe Sacco’s comic Palestine (originally published between 1993 and 1995) and Guy Delisle’s 2011 comic Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City. Comics and Travel Writing Despite a plethora of comics depicting different kinds of travel, they are not typically studied as, or alongside, travel literature. While there are many comics about various kinds of experi- ences abroad, ranging from life as an “expat” (Guy Delisle) to travel to war zones (Joe Sacco), to 1 Although Sarah originally plans to go to Ramallah in the West Bank after the Birthright trip is over, she decides against leaving Israel. I thus use the term “Israel,” rather than phrasings like “Israel/Palestine,” throughout this paper. 2 Throughout this article, I will be referring to the comic’s protagonist as “Sarah” and to its writer as “Glidden.” I occasionally refer to Sarah as Glidden’s “avatar” in accordance with Sidonie Smith’s use of the term (2011).