Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Nineteen Eighty-Four
- The Cambridge Companion to Nineteen Eighty-Four
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Contexts
- Part II Histories
- Part III Questions
- Part IV Media
- 13 Nineteen Eighty-Four on Radio, Stage, and Screen
- 14 Making Nineteen Eighty-Four Musical
- 15 Nineteen Eighty-Four and Comics
- 16 ‘In this game that we’re playing’
- 17 Coda
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to …
15 - Nineteen Eighty-Four and Comics
from Part IV - Media
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2020
- The Cambridge Companion to Nineteen Eighty-Four
- The Cambridge Companion to Nineteen Eighty-Four
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Contexts
- Part II Histories
- Part III Questions
- Part IV Media
- 13 Nineteen Eighty-Four on Radio, Stage, and Screen
- 14 Making Nineteen Eighty-Four Musical
- 15 Nineteen Eighty-Four and Comics
- 16 ‘In this game that we’re playing’
- 17 Coda
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to …
Summary
This chapter examines the posterity of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four in the comics medium. Drawing from adaptation theory, it examines a broad range of mainstream and alternative comic books, showing how they use, adapt, update, and sometimes reinvent Orwellian material, with strategies ranging from close rewriting (Ted Rall’s 2024) to intertextual reference (Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta with David Lloyd and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with Kevin O’Neil) and sometimes irreverential allusion (Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, Warren Ellis’s Transmetropolitan). In so doing, comics writers and artists interrogate the cultural standing of comics and its ties to the literary canon, pointing to their own status as authors. They underline the pleasures of reading, viewing, and rewriting texts, and reflect upon the nature of fiction. They also use Orwellian themes of authoritarianism and control in order to reflect upon the history of the medium, looking at the superhero genre in particular. Finally, they address the specific issue of visibility and surveillance, which is of paramount importance in visual storytelling, and allows them to physically engage the reader in specific ways. Thus, these authors use their Orwellian intertext as the site of a politics of resistance to cultural hierarchies and political oppression.
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- The Cambridge Companion to Nineteen Eighty-Four , pp. 232 - 246Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020