Comics and Narration by Groensteen Thierry; Miller Ann;

Author:Groensteen, Thierry; Miller, Ann;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2011-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

5.2.2. A Few Other Special Cases

Outside the field of autobiography, there exist numerous types of actorialized narrators, among which we need to distinguish. We will cite a few cases:

A) The actorialized narrator whose function is simply to set the story in motion. This was the case of Uncle Paul whose “belles histories” [ripping yarns] were one of the cornerstones of the weekly comic Spirou. The reassuring sage figure of the famous pipe-smoking uncle, telling the story of historic deeds or personalities to his nephews,55 and, through them, his readers, only appeared in the opening and closing images of the story. This was sufficient to personalize the voice that recounted it, that of the uncle-reciter.

Others similarly famous for framing the narrative included, in the horror comics published by E.C. in the 1950s, the Crypt Keeper, the Vault Keeper, and the Old Witch.

B) The actorialized narrator who nonetheless remains extradiegetic. In the cycle of “Les Aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec” [The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-sec], Tardi used, up to and including Momies en folie [Mummy Madness],56 a non-actorialized narrative voice, that of the reciter. But in the following album, Le Secret de la Salamandre [The Secret of the Salamander],57 responsibility for telling the story is laid at the door of a delegated narrator, an old man in a book-lined room, physically represented in about half of the story (often in a medallion next to the recitative). This old man remains anonymous, he is not personally involved in Adèle’s adventures, nor does he interact with any of the characters in the story or tell us the source of the information that he discloses to us.58 He disappears from the following albums, Tardi having presumably decided that this personification of the narrator weighed the narrative down pointlessly, with no significant gain in dramatic effect.

The religious comic Xavier raconté par le ménéstrel [Xavier as Told by the Minstrel], by Pierre Defoux, a young Jesuit, for Spirou magazine in 1953 (numbers 774 to 815), offers an interesting case. In it, the life of Saint Francis Xavier is recounted by the narrator mentioned in the title, a very young man wearing a red and black Renaissance costume who introduces the work: “Hello, my friends! I’m the minstrel! My profession is story-telling!” This “minstrel” behaves, in general, like an extradiegetic narrator—he most often appears alone, in transitional panels summing up a plot event, signaling a change of location, or an ellipsis. He can also be seen lifting the corner of heavy tapestries giving symbolic access to the next scene. But, on occasion, the young minstrel crosses the statutory boundary that is supposed to cut him off from the world of his missionary hero: he lands as if by teleportation in a new location, where he questions secondary characters and, if necessary, translates their words into French. In short, the author makes very free use of him, and, for the duration of one whole sequence (corresponding to Xavier’s stay in Japan), gives him lengthy and tedious recitatives to deliver.59

C)

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