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Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel)
Sigrid Thomsen | Navigating Movement and Uncertainty 161
gutter can serve as a kind of corrective or counterbalance, as it punctures any fixity created and
generates space for doubt and ambiguity. In doing so, it also creates space for humor, one exam-
ple of which is on page 49, where Sarah imagines the Six-Day War of 1967 [cf. Fig. 1].
In the middle row of panels on the page, there is one on the left in which she says she is
too drained to ask the guide Gil about the war; this thought is coupled with the image of a
man punching one of his fellow soldiers. In the panel next to it, a helicopter and a tanker are
bombing one another, while in the panel after that, tiny soldiers ride atop dinosaurs while fir-
ing at one another. While these panels are meant to underline the fact that Sarah struggles to
understand the reality of that war, each scenario is less likely than the one preceding it, with the
dinosaurs being so far off the mark as to both be humorous and to unsettle any notions about
what the war may have been like.
Watercolors
To this breaking up of fixity in comics, Glidden adds watercolors, which remain an unusual
medium within comics; accordingly, not much work has been done on the use of watercolor in
comics. In his study of David Smallâs Stitches, however, Ăyvind VĂ„gnes argues that Smallâs use
of watercolor âeffectively describes a gradual loss of contoursâ (VĂ„gnes 2010: 306) and contrib-
utes to the graphic memoir âinvolv[ing] its reader/spectator in the problematics of inexpressibil-
ityâ (VĂ„gnes 2010: 312). Ironically, in Mariana dos Pintosâ reading, the Portuguese painter Edu-
ardo Batarda used watercolor to approximate the language of comics, since watercolors are âless
prestigiousâ than other techniques (Pinto dos Santos 2016: 45). What ties dos Pintosâ analysis
into mine is that in these paintings, ârigidity ends up being shattered by the interpretative fluidity
that is allowedâ (Pinto dos Santos 2016: 56), a fluidity to which the use of watercolor contributes.
Although the use of watercolor is an understudied aspect of Gliddenâs comic and of comics
more generally, it is a salient feature of Gliddenâs work. The contrast between the precise way
Fig. 1: Sarah imagining the Six-Day War. Glidden 2016: 49
>mcs_lab>
Mobile Culture Studies, Band 2/2020
The Journal
- Titel
- >mcs_lab>
- Untertitel
- Mobile Culture Studies
- Band
- 2/2020
- Herausgeber
- Karl Franzens University Graz
- Ort
- Graz
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- deutsch, englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY 4.0
- Abmessungen
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Seiten
- 270
- Kategorien
- Zeitschriften Mobile Culture Studies The Journal