Nick Sousanis is currently a postdoctoral Fellow in Comics Studies at the University of Calgary. In 2014, he completed his doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University where he wrote and drew his dissertation entirely in comics form. Titled
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A behind the scenes look at the process and practice of the author's dissertation written and drawn entirely in comics form. Specifically, the commentary explores the thinking and sketches behind the opening part of the third chapter titled
Reflections on a dissertation written and drawn entirely in comics form
This serves as a behind-the-scenes look at the opening six pages from the third chapter of my dissertation, which I wrote and drew entirely in comics form. Some background: I completed the dissertation in May 2014 for a doctorate in education from Teachers College at Columbia University. The work consists of 132 comics pages along with references and such. Titled
Let me open with a brief overview of what has come prior to contextualize these
pages. In the opening chapters, I develop the notion of flatness as a narrowing of
sight and a contraction of possibilities in which inhabitants lack the critical
dimension to see beyond the borders of the systems they’re born into and are
ultimately complicit in perpetuating. Given the setting I’m theorizing within, I am addressing issues in
education and schooling, but neither term is ever used. This conscious avoidance of
specific terms and instead relying on verbal and visual metaphors is something I
employ throughout the entire dissertation, with the intention of creating a work
that doesn’t turn the reader away with specialized or politicized language, but can
invite them to find their own way of connecting to the material. Having set up the problem, I suggest ways to move beyond flatness by
engaging in a discussion of interdisciplinarity through the metaphor of perspective
– a seeing through two (or more) eyes – as a means for stepping out of imposed
boundaries (and again, I never use such terms as
With this third chapter,
A little overview of my process: I’m frequently asked whether the words or pictures
come first. To which I answer each time, truthfully but not particularly helpfully,
yes.
From an initial notion, I begin
jotting down notes and images to start to give it substance. It is then, in that
spatial interplay between my visual system and what I’ve sketched that the piece
starts to take shape. The sketches shown throughout this commentary are
representative of that process. Let me also here offer a few general thoughts about
making comics, at least from my perspective. Unlike storyboarding, to which comics
are often compared, working in comics requires a concern not just for what goes in
the panels, but also attention to the size, shape, and location of the panels on the
page – where they are and what they’re next to – really a consideration of the
entire composition as a whole experience. Art Spiegelman refers to this as
Okay, on to the specifics: the initial image I sketched for this sequence was the
man’s head partially submerged on what has now become the third page. That partially
submerged image just kept asserting itself and so I moved outward from it as an
anchor from which to build the rest of the sequence. For some time, I’d been toying
with hybridity – specifically amphibiousness – as a metaphor for comics’ capacity
for holding both visual and verbal modes in a single form. The notion that language
is a sea we swim in was also a recurrent image and they complemented one another
nicely. On this opening page, I wanted to draw the focus on this central figure,
impossibly deep, isolated and alone and immersed in his thoughts – this sea is his
entire world. Had this been an essay in text, I would likely have opened with
something about words are a tool, words are a
trap
– but since the trap aspect is not evident in the imagery, I
shifted that language to another page, and that choice in turn shaped how the
following page came together.
For the second page, I now could show this trap, conceived as a bubble of sorts that would become evident as we pulled back further. This progression called explicitly for a sequential series of images. I think my first attempt was to have him revealed to be in a snow globe. This was ok, but it felt a little forced, and I knew, because I had this amphibious figure to work towards, that somehow I needed him to emerge from it, which didn’t work in a globe! Seeking inspiration, I happened to look at the flowing vine-like glass sculptures my wife created, and saw that that world inside the solid glass, with air bubbles trapped and frozen within, was a world much like the one in which I envisioned this figure swimming. This idea was closer – it had the right feel, if not the right form. As I laid out the three pages in thumbnail form, I saw the connection between this scene and the close up on the figure’s eyes in the next page. Of course, it was like a pupil enclosed by the iris! Essentially, it matched my earlier sketches of the bubble but now I had a specific reason for its presence that held the page together. It seems strangely obvious after the fact – this is all about seeing, how could it not be exactly this image?! (This revelation reminds me of one of my favorite essays on the creative process – a short piece by Alan Moore at the back of the collected edition of
S.I. Hayakawa’s passage that opens the third page is from his introduction to Gyorgy Kepes’s
to breach the surface…is the first mention specifically of the medium I’m working in. Comics as hybrid form. Its denizens must be amphibious in terms of being at home and able to breathe in either text or image. Our man remains submerged, not gasping for air. His eye is posed just as the final panel of the previous page. Has that figure emerged or is he residing still within himself – creating a loop of sorts. Looking to the text above him – we’re
seeing from other sides.Again, thinking about the page as a spatial experience, it is both a sequential reading experience as well as a simultaneous viewing experience. Here the text is a visual element in terms of moving our eye through the page.
Text immersed in image,came to me early on, but its partner for how to describe what happens to pictures was more difficult. In an earlier piece, I’d played with the idea of suggesting pictures in comics as being anchored by words, but I’d left it out in not wanting to suggest text is more concrete than images are. But here it came back to me, and the idea that the box would be below the other made it function a bit like an anchor as well. This led me to recall Roland Barthes and his description of image-text relations as
anchorand
relay.And then the pieces all came together and I could use
relayto come back to referring to the boundaries and give a text reference to
fluidto accompany the imagery. It’s both discussion and demonstration at once. The final line is a joke that sets up the most self-reflexive page of the piece.
I knew from the very beginning that at some point in the dissertation, that there had
to be a single page completely in text that looked exactly like a dissertation was
supposed to look. I thought it would be the first page of this chapter, but I think
it worked out more effectively here – the contrast is particularly jarring in the
midst of the narrative. In part this was inspired by conversations in my
dissertation proposal seminar, where colleagues suggested – out of expressed concern
for my behalf – that maybe I should do half in text to explain what I’m doing and
why I’m doing it in comics. As the political implications of this piece became
increasingly apparent, I realized there could be no hedging. In order to truly
demonstrate the form’s legitimacy, I found it essential to go all in. And that was
that moving forward. By including the image of the bent pencil, I really wanted
something that looks like and was set apart in just the way an illustration would be
in an academic text. (Though note, the juxtaposition of the text talking about
One more note on this page – when I submitted the dissertation to the office of
doctoral studies for corrections, it came back to me with almost no comments –
except that because this page had a figure
on it (that bent pencil image), I
needed to have a list of figures denoting it at the beginning of the whole document.
Now, in a document completely made of images, I would have a list of images pointing
to exactly one page – the one with the most text on it of the entire piece and where
I most directly turned to the reader to point out the convention I’m challenging. A
rather delightful irony – and one I think only made my point stronger.
The page on Descartes and dissection is part of my broader argument addressing the
reduction of the human to the thinking machine – and a removal of the role of the
senses in constituting thought. This had been all combined on a single page with the
page following, but that just kept not working – it was much too tight, so I pulled
it out and gave the idea of dissection and duality their own space. Often breaking
things apart like this has let me look at the images and ideas from a fresh
perspective, and figure out what it is I’m exploring with much greater understanding
than I had before. Even with this clarity, this page still posed some particular challenges.
I wanted to show this incision as unfolding in time and opening up an interior
space. But, a knife moving down creates a cut moving upwards – which works
against the way we read it top to bottom – the reveal happens in time rather than in
space as it does in comics.) While I was mulling this over, one of my students in my
class made a sketch of a pattern of upside down V
s. This random image triggered a better solution for how to arrange the
composition. The brain in the vat – half-submerged – is also intended to return us
to the idea of being immersed in the sea that is language, while the dissection
imagery was in part triggered by thinking about dissecting frogs, which in turn
takes me back to thinking about amphibiousness.
The concept behind this final page came together as I was figuring out the entire
sequence, and really served as the glue that kept it all from reading as a series of
separate ideas. Reflecting briefly once more on my process, one of the guiding
principles was gleaned from my advisor Ruth Vinz, who places an emphasis on the
search
in research, and sees it as a journey to follow where one’s
curiosity leads. In this case, I was exploring Descartes’ writings – unaware at the
outset of his role in explaining the phenomenon of refraction. But in coming upon
that, I had my eureka moment tying everything together. This is two-fold. First, there’s the James Burke-like aspect of it in terms of a series of
historical Connections
linking Descartes and refraction as a means of
returning to and responding to Plato’s bent reed example. But still more exciting –
as I’d been referencing air and water throughout the chapter, in injecting the
concept of refraction that occurs between these two mediums, I could also use it as
a metaphor for the interaction of visual and verbal mediums (which continued to be
an important thread running through the rest of the chapter). Breaking into
scientific explanations might seem a bit extraneous, but throughout this work – as
with the concept of seeing perspective or being amphibious – I’m always seeking to
address two things at once. Here, refraction as phenomenon but also the way image
and text bend meaning in their respective ways. Perhaps the most important thing
that has emerged for me in working in the manner that I do, and is strongly evident
in this example, is that in trying to address aesthetic concerns, I’m prompted to do
more research, and delving into the reading pushes me to pursue new images. It’s a
generative cycle and I find it takes me places that absolutely wouldn’t occur to me
were I working only in text. In this regard, I find that comics are not only more
than up to the challenge of presenting serious inquiry, but also they serve as a
powerful thought-space to help expand our research process from the ground up.
– Nick Sousanis
April 24, 2013 / July 29, 2014 /April 4 2015