Drawing from the Archives

This book proposes a new history of the graphic novel by examining how it recirculates older comics in the present.

This book is for any reader interested in the American graphic novel and its longer history. Going after Art Spiegelman's call “the future of comics is in the past”, it studies how contemporary cartoonists redraw from the archives of comics history to envision new modes of transmission.Following Art Spiegelman's declaration that 'the future of comics is in the past,' this book considers comics memory in the contemporary North American graphic novel. Cartoonists such as Chris Ware, Seth, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, and others have not only produced some of the most important graphic novels, they have also turned to the history of comics as a common visual heritage to pass on to new readers. This book is a full-length study of contemporary cartoonists when they are at work as historians: it offers a detailed description of how they draw from the archives of comics history, examining the different gestures of collecting, curating, reprinting, forging, swiping, and undrawing that give shape to their engagement with the past. In recognizing these different acts of transmission, this book argues for a material and vernacular history of how comics are remembered, shared, and recirculated over time.