Never Judge a Book by Its Cover?

Picturing the Interculturally Challenged Self in the Japanese Journals of European Comics Artists Dirk Schwieger, Inga Steinmetz, and Igort
Barbara Margarethe Eggert

Since the 1990s, Japan, as the birthplace of manga and anime, has been attracting many European comics artists who went there for inspiration and/or work. With Dirk Schwieger’s Moresukine (2006), Igort’s Quaderni giapponesi/Japanese Notebooks (2015/17), and Inga Steinmetz’s Verliebt in Japan (2017), this article analyzes and compares three heterogeneous examples concerning their comic-specific depiction of intercultural experiences in Japan. Focusing on self-representation in panels and pages that deal with phenomena such as culture shock and assimilation processes, this paper discusses if, how, and to what effect these autobiographically inspired comics – in spite or because of their varying degrees of fictionalization and comicification – echo and/or contradict some ›classical‹ intercultural adaptation theories.

PDF: Never Judge a Book by its Cover?

erschienen in: CLOSURE. Kieler e-Journal für Comicforschung #8
Sprache: Englisch
Erscheinungsjahr: 2021