Cultural Diversity and Australian Comics by Dr. Golnar Nabizadeh, University of Dundee
As a young girl growing up in Perth, I loved reading Archie comics and would buy them from my local stationery store as often as I could. The bright colours and clean lines of the artwork, along with the improbably vast number of outfits worn by Betty and Veronica, along with the episodic impulse of the comic delighted me. I was able to lose myself in this pop world which maintained a light touch on the trials and tribulations of ‘growing up’. I was born in Iran and migrated to Australia with my parents at the age of three and growing up in Australia, first in Melbourne and then in Perth, was not always easy. Like most children, I early on developed a keen sense of the myriad ways in which ‘difference’ could be constituted, and literature became the perfect outlet to explore these questions and frustrations about what my differences meant. Somewhere in my adolescence, I stopped reading comics generally, having turned a sharp corner to become steeped in Dostoevsky in particular, along with other Russian authors. But I was also interested in aspects of the migrant experience and so it was all the more serendipitous that during the first year of my Ph.D. in 2007 I happened on a copy of Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (2006) in a bookstore. Drawn to the quiet mystery of its cover, I bought the copy and remember well my wonderment as page after page of this beautiful, burnished work brought to life the intertwined stories of the book’s travellers and migrants. It took me what felt like a long time to settle on a topic for my doctoral thesis, beset by doubts about what might be the ‘right’ theme. After reading lots of novels, there were two that left their mark: The Shadow Lines (1988) by Amitav Ghosh, and Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid (1990). Different in just about every way, Ghosh’s novel reminded me of a web filigree glistening with melancholic dew yet energised by a sense of adventure and curiosity, while Lucy is blunt and powerful in its contours, underpinned by a keen sense of outrage. What they do share, though, is an abiding care for the dispossessed, and the ignored, and a fervent dedication to those individuals and communities. In retrospect, it’s not difficult to see how these elements connect to the themes in The Arrival, but at the time, my thesis topic took shape at a snail’s pace. I ended up writing on loss and mourning in literary migrant narratives, a theme that generated an intimate interface between my research and personal experience, and one that continues to inform my research today.
Once I came up with a topic for my doctoral dissertation, I still needed more works to analyse, and decided that half of the thesis would focus on novels, and the other half on comics. By this time, I was familiar with Persepolis (2003/2004) by Marjane Satrapi; a friend had bought me the first volume of the English translation, with the statement, ‘she’s from Iran, you’re from Iran, you might like it’. Like it I did – I loved the monochromatic images that reminded me of woodcut novels, and the way that Satrapi’s sophisticated approach to storytelling conveyed the terrifying aspects of growing up in post-Revolutionary Iran, as well as the humour and fortitude that shaped her experiences – and decided that it would form the other focus of my thesis. Now it was time to research the hell out of Persepolis and The Arrival and learn how to write about comics.
It’s hard to believe now, but in 2007, I could only find one or two articles on The Arrival, and only a few more on Persepolis. I was so excited about both works that this dearth only made me more energised to write about them. I’m not sure whether it’s clear from this opening anecdote, but I was pretty isolated in my fledgling comics journey – my supervisor supported my decision to write on comics, but I didn’t know anyone who read comics or anyone who wrote about them. Most of my peers at the University of Western Australia where I completed my thesis were working on novels and film, so I had a lot of work to do as I became more familiar with the world of comics.
Over time, I delighted in reading more (all!) of Tan’s work and remember my excitement on learning that he had also studied at UWA. As they did for so many other readers, the themes of alienation, dis/connection, and the captivating, provocative, and slightly disconcerting images in his picture books invited repeated readings, and slowly revealed many different paths ‘through’ them. I could see how they interacted with the lexica of other visual realms such as cinema, photography, and fine art and relished allowing my own impressions to fall back on the page. There was one image among many that spoke to my general sense of unease growing up in Western Australia, where my parents and I had moved when I was seven. In the story called ‘Our Expedition’ in Tales from Outer Suburbia (2008), a young boy and his brother roam their neighbourhood, eventually arriving to a spot which is ‘off the map’, literally and figuratively. The story concludes with them sitting at the edge of the land, cliff-face, with a couple pipes and a bit of cloud beneath them confirming how ‘cut off’ they are.
Shaun Tan, “Off the Map”, in Shaun Tan, ‘Our Expedition’, Tales from Outer Suburbia, (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2009)
The ochre tones of the page and the tenor of the images and story represented beautifully the expansive horizon and sense of anxiety that I often experienced during my childhood in Perth. Many years later, in an interview with Tan, I mentioned this image and my feelings towards it, and he replied that many readers from WA told him they felt almost exactly the same way. I marvelled at the power of his images to capture similar feelings for so many people with undoubtedly different backgrounds and upbringings.
This image also serves as a useful launch point to consider how comics in Australia/Australian comics comprise such a vast and differentiated body, one that reflects many different experiences, from the migrants in The Arrival, to the refugees in Safdar Ahmed’s Villawood (2015), the visual tapestries of TextaQueen, the autobiographical comics of Mandy Ord, and so many others. This body remains fruitfully incomplete, bringing forth a richness of works from all kinds of creators. Discovering Pat Grant’s Blue (2012) several years after my Ph.D. was exciting because of the way that its central characters found themselves in an alienated relationship with the land. The way he drew the flora in and around the fictional town of Bolton made the familiar delightfully unreal; the style reminded me of the ‘surreality’ of Dr Suess and the linework harkened to the bold prints of Margaret Preston. The central characters, Christian, Muck, and Verne, are teenagers who are signified as ‘white’ within the ecology of the comic – and yet despite their claims to ‘belonging’ to the town, demonstrate a more uneasy dynamic at play through half-spoken thoughts and action. The subtle contradictions that Grant infuses in their words and actions indicate that their sense of identity may be more troubled than initially meets the eye – a tension that remains unresolved at its conclusion. The comic also features ‘blue people’ – who Grant depicts in a deliberately strange way with long striped tentacles. This signification makes it clear that at least on one level, the members of this populace have arrived in Bolton from elsewhere and retain an ‘othered’ status throughout the work. The presence of these blue people who are at once marginal yet reside at the heart of the work highlights the similarly disturbing treatment of ‘boat people’ in recent decades, in a country whose modern nation was itself shaped by colonisation.
One of the things that I found valuable about Blue was the invitation to see things through the perspective of characters with whom I have very little in common, and from whom I would feel particularly alienated if I encountered their equivalents in real life. I was continually drawn to the muted blue of the comic, which seemed attuned to the downbeat register of Christian’s memories, while also acting as a haunting signifier of the blue people and the oceans they had crossed. These elements of the text kept me by its side, helping me forge a bond with the narrative and navigate some of its more unfamiliar aspects. Grant himself similarly affirms the potential for comics to deal with difficult issues, suggesting in an essay that ‘[s]inking into the story space that comic art affords us – as cartoonists, but also as readers … leaves us exposed to raw, emotive readings of time, space and form’ (“Genealogy of the Boofhead”).
Indeed, the possibility of exploring the unknown through comics finds powerful expression in a sequence where Christian and his gang encounter a blue child at the train station. Grant depicts this encounter over four pages, and the time he takes to explore this moment is a testament to a fragile confusion that falls into the artificial solidity of racism. The sequence commences with a blue child breaking the fourth wall as he looks at the reader, and the next panel registers Christian, Verne, and Muck’s collective shock—depicted through their surprised features and stylised sweat beads—before the child moves past them. It seems that an elderly local couple has adopted this child, as they hold one of his striped tentacles. The group expresses shock at the appearance of the child, confused about his ethnicity and place of origin. Muck asks, “What are we supposed to call them?” to which Verne answers, “I don’t know, just blue people”. Muck wonders whether this term is racist, and Verne responds: “Maybe. They are blue though. How can it be racist if it’s true?” A few moments later, Christian uses a racial slur in relation to the blue people which abruptly ends Verne and Muck’s tentative wonderings. In response, the sequence then focuses on the latters’ shocked expressions – which Grant depicts almost identically to their response to the blue child. The next two panels move ‘down’ the page and respectively portray Christian’s smiling face, and then the others’ reflection of his smile. The transition in Verne and Muck’s response to Christian’s use of a racial slur articulates visually a subtle movement of significance. Verne and Muck’s initial response portrays apprehension and surprise as they look up at Christian on the train platform, before being reassured through the visual cue of his smiling face. The sequence thus conveys how Verne and Muck’s uncertainty is thwarted by Christian’s authoritative and racist declaration.
Pat Grant, “Transition (detail)”, in Pat Grant, Blue. (Sydney/Marietta, GA: Giramondo/Top Shelf Comix, 2012)
Christian’s aggression continues in the next panel, as he yells at the blue youth that they should go back to where they came from (np). Grant depicts this statement in a larger, heavier font than the text’s regular dialogue, and the violence of the speech is supported by the way the words escape the confines of the speech balloon. Christian’s posture, with feet raised slightly off the ground in a mild upward thrust, along with the spit bubbles that travel vigorously from his open mouth, strengthen the affective vehemence of his call. As film scholar Tom Gunning suggests, ‘the power of comics lies in their ability to derive movement from stillness—not to make the reader observe motion but rather participate imaginatively in its genesis’ (40). In the example above, the sense of movement is derived through the transition in the affective flow of the sequence. The ‘stillness’ of the characters’ expressions allows the reader to wonder about the change, and the processes that inform it, thereby participating in the sense of movement (emotional and physical) within the text. In itself, this requires attention from the reader, and an ability to speculate on how the text drives their reading. At the same time, the portraits of Verne and Muck’s shock remain in place – on the page – so that the reader can simultaneously observe this moment within its narrative context. The moment endures, even while it is understood as a past event, and in so doing, allows the reader to remain with their fleeting vulnerability. As a migrant to Australia, textual moments such as these have helped me stitch together cultural meanings in my research as well as on a more personal level.
I have also discovered that comics can reveal stories that are often pushed into the shadows. The way in which comics artists such as Sam Wallman and Safdar Ahmed have used the online space to draw attention to the plight of individuals suffering in Australian detention centres has been invaluable. In ‘At Work Inside our Detention Centres: A Guard’s Story’ (2014), Wallman and the investigative team create a confronting and important work focalised through the perspective of an anonymous individual who decided to train as a guard to gather a first-hand account of the conditions inside a detention centre. The guard’s narrative mingles with insights about the circumstances faced by a number of detainees, and the rawness of Wallman’s art style powerfully transmits the harrowing experiences faced by some of the people in detention encountered in the course of the guard’s work – with regard to the conditions they have fled as well as those they must now live under while seeking safety. The design of the comic – artwork placed against a white background – means that images emerge as the reader scrolls up or down the screen. The white space can be read as a ‘sea’ of implicit memories—unconscious and non-verbal—from which individual memories emerge and which speak to the experiences, traumatic and otherwise, that are formed within the space of detention. The ‘thickness’ of the white space speaks of displaced memories or disavowal, from within the Australian political scene (the lack of recognition towards so-called ‘others’), but also of an intense layering of the many lived experiences that are not being heard or remembered, as they teem within the hyperscreen. Against this backdrop, the formation of conscious memories plays an important role in drawing attention to the precarity and resilience of life in detention.
In 2014, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, found that various aspects of Australia’s asylum seeker policies violate the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Specifically, paragraph 31 of his report found that the Government of Australia ‘has violated the rights of migrants and asylum seekers to be free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’ under the Convention Against Torture ‘by failing to amend the provisions of the two bills to comply with the State’s obligations under international human rights law, particularly with regard to the rights of migrants, and asylum seekers, including children’ (Human Rights Council 9). Against these kinds of findings, it is particularly important for lived experiences of individuals in detention to be heard and listened to, both within and beyond Australia, particularly given the prohibition of other types of images such as photography or audio-visual records being taken from within the prisons that constitute the detention network. In this way, memoirs such as No Friend But the Mountains (2018) by Behrouz Boochani, and the edited anthology They Cannot Take the Sky: Stories from Detention (2017), deliver powerful first-hand accounts of life in detention. A Guard’s Story, written from the perspective of a guard and accompanied by Sam Wallman’s drawings, generates valuable insights into the affective circuitry behind an ‘inhuman’ guise. The demise of the guard’s own mental health during his employment also offers a meaningful glimpse into the potentially traumatic impact of aggression on the individuals who carry out its demands. Taken together, then, the comic paints a picture of a failing regime that bears the disturbing hallmarks of bare life.
Safdar Ahmed’s online comic ‘Villawood: Notes from an Immigration Detention Centre’ (2015) offers an artist’s perspective on the detention system – through the art workshops that Ahmed himself ran for the people held at Villawood.1 As of April 2020, it was estimated that there are around 430 individuals held therein (University of Oxford). Ahmed’s comic acts not only as a narrative about his experiences running the workshops but also as a visual archive because it includes artwork made by some of the individuals held in detention alongside Ahmed’s own work. Particularly devastating is Ahmed’s account of Ahmad Ali Jafari’s death, who was a Hazara refugee from Afghanistan and only twenty-six years old when he died. As part of the archival impulse of the comic, Ahmed includes an image of a couplet written in Urdu, which Jafari would write on napkins along with a translation immediately below the panel. In the knowledge of Jafari’s death, the couplet remains as a reminder of a life that was extinguished prematurely as well as a reminder of the lives that still persist behind bars.
Safdar Ahmed, “Urdu couplet”, in Safdar Ahmed, Villawood: Notes from an Immigration Detention Centre, Medium, March 5, 2015.
The political importance of these comics drawn by Wallman and Ahmed, respectively, cannot be undervalued as they depict the connections, bonds, and resilience of individuals who are disavowed under the operation of the Australian legal system. Works such as these also generate conversations about what rights and opportunities should be afforded people who seek asylum in Australia, and usefully complicate debates on the topic through a form of comics documentary.
In 2017, I spent a winter in Canberra researching Australian comics at the National Library of Australia. Scrolling through the NLA’s website, I had learned about an exhibit from 2014 on Australian comics, featuring a wide selection of titles, some one-offs, while others had begun a long time ago and were still being printed today, such as Ginger Meggs, the first instalment of which appeared in 1921. Almost all the titles were new to me, and among the works on display, the name Moira Bertram stood out alongside an issue of Wizard Comics (ca.1940s) that featured her work. Librarian Alison Carriage, who curated the exhibition, explains that,
When Moira was 14 and still in high school, she had her first comic strip published, called ‘Jo and Her Magic Cloak’, about a Broadway dancer who owned a magic cloak that would take her anywhere. Moira told the publisher that she was 16, for fear that she would be turned down if they knew she was only 14.
‘Jo and her Magic Cloak’ was the work featured on the cover of Wizard Comics, and the assured lines of Bertram’s style belies her youthful age at the time that she drew the strip.
Moira Betram, “Jo and Her Magic Cloak”, Wizard Comics #1, (Sydney: Frank Johnson Publications, c.1940)
I loved her artwork, and her flair for design is evident through all of her comics – many of which the NLA holds in the John Ryan Comic Collection. Bertram’s aesthetic is instantly recognisable, and her sister Kathleen created an equally distinctive lettering style. As Kevin Patrick writes of Moira’s work,
Anyone who's ever had a chance to see some of her full-colour comics from the late 1940s will testify that her work is as fresh and engaging now, as it was when it first appeared sixty years ago. (comicsdownunder.blogspot.com)
A few years later, I had the opportunity to explore the John Ryan Comic Collection and the McGee Collection both held by the NLA and spent several days poring over the extensive original works held in both collections – especially Bertram’s, who worked as a freelance artist and often signed her work as ‘Bert’. It was wonderful to discover snapshots of early Australian comics, whose industry appeared to be somewhat fragmented in terms of production, ownership, and sometimes fraught relationship with comics publishers overseas. While the Australian market was dominated by reprints of American comics in the 1930s, in June 1940 the Australian Government placed a ban on the importation of American comics and overseas syndicated reprints. Following this move, publishers such as K.G. Murray began publishing local comics such as Bertram’s Flameman: Genie of the Sun (ca. 1946), first in black and white, and later in colour. Not only is Bertram’s art style distinctive, but so is her flair for storytelling; the central character of Flameman is accompanied on some of his adventures with his assistant ‘Tiny’. Tiny in name as well as in stature, her character has a distinct presence in the story because of the jealousy she expresses when Flameman rescues a damsel in distress. Indeed, many of Bertram’s adventure stories such as ‘Pirate’s Gold’, ‘The Red Prince’ (both 1948), or romances such as ‘My love for the Yukon hero’ (1958), are punctuated with unexpected details, which makes them all the more gripping to read along with their rich colour and dynamic composition. It was wonderful to hear that Moira and Kathleen Bertram, along with illustrator Yaroslav Horak were awarded the 2018 Ledger of Honour (now the Comics Arts Awards of Australia) to recognise their respective bodies of work.
In 2016, I moved to Dundee, Scotland to take up a position as a Lecturer in Comics Studies. My colleague Christopher Murray, Professor of Comics Studies, had established an Masters degree in Comics and Graphic Novels in 2011 – the first of its kind worldwide, the Scottish Centre for Comics Studies in 2014, and then in 2016 the Masters was developed so that students could pursue either a practice (MDes) or research-based (MLitt) degree. Dundee is a comics and video games powerhouse, the home of publishers such as DC Thomson (home to The Dandy, The Beano, Denice the Menace, The Broons, and many other titles which remain in production), as well as games such as Grand Theft Auto, and Lemmings – a childhood favourite. I remember pinching myself as I sat in the first comics Masters class, having been alone in comics for many years, and now having come to a centre of Comics Studies internationally. While working at Dundee, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting new comics aficionados; at the Leeds Comics Arts Festival in 2017, I heard an Australian accent at one of the stalls and started chatting with Bruce Mutard. We had a great conversation about comics, and I was even more excited to learn that he knew and also admired Moira Bertram. After keeping in touch over the next few months, Bruce and his then-Ph.D. supervisor Stuart Medley visited the University of Dundee, and then again with the ‘Comics Caravan’ in 2017. We organised a number of workshops for our comics students with the Caravan, comprised of Leonie Brialey, Rachel Ang, Stuart, and Bruce. Leonie and Rachel ran a workshop on the use of linework to represent affect – reflecting on their personal creative processes before running exploratory exercises to support participants articulate their own affective styles. As part of the discussions, participants shared their work and it was particularly meaningful to consider the way in which the exclusion of linework can amplify the emotional impact of artwork. Bruce delivered an illuminating paper on the earlier stages of his Ph.D. research, focussing on the relatively understudied links between comics and fine art. It was wonderful to host these talented artists and scholars for a few days and highlighted the diversity of the Australian comics scene.
The infinite variety of hand-drawn images with regard to content, design, and form offers a generous salve to the monotony of images arising particularly from news media and its reductive impulse. I’ve elsewhere described how drawings can usefully act an ‘alternate archive’, especially in circumstances where lived experiences are infrequently recognised (Representation and Memory in Graphic Novels). A good example is Safdar Ahmed’s ‘Refugee Arts Project’, started in 2011, a ‘small, not for profit community art organisation dedicated to supporting people of an asylum seeker or refugee background through art workshops and collaborations’ (“Refugee Art Project”). By incorporating refugee stories, and selected artworks in Villawood, Ahmed has created another platform through which readers can gain a greater understanding of life in detention. More generally, it is heartening to see scholars in Australia working with comics to improve mental health outcomes, and creators depicting the shifting contours and complexities of the everyday alongside many other types of explorations. The unboundedness of the imagination is writ large in comics, a medium whose ‘illegitimate’ status for many decades – at least in the West – has sown fertile soil for all kinds of creative investigations. It seems that for a country such as Australia, simultaneously ancient and new, there are all kinds of tensions that are yet to be worked through, uncomfortable gaps and silences to be explored and held. The ability of the comics medium to depart from the anodyne both in substance and form may offer exactly the kind of network to help us envision, experiment, and communicate alternate kinds of understanding – which remains as essential as ever in the complex of Australia.
Fig. 1. Shaun Tan, illustration, in Shaun Tan, “Our Expedition”, Tales From Outer Suburbia, 2009.
Fig. 2. Pat Grant, transition (detail), in Pat Grant, Blue, 2012.
Fig. 3. Safdar Ahmed, Urdu couplet, in Safdar Ahmed, Villawood: Notes from an Immigration Detention Centre, March 5, 2015
Fig. 4. Moira Betram, cover art, Wizard Comics #1, 1940
The views expressed in this essay are the author's own, and don't necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Universities, Partner Organisations or other parties involved in the Australia Research Council project.
Dr. Golnar Nabizadeh
Author Bio
Dr Golnar Nabizadeh is Lecturer in Comics Studies at the University of Dundee where she teaches on the Masters in Comics and Graphic Novels, as well as undergraduate modules on film and literature. She is the Director of the Dundee Comics Creative Space and has worked on a number of educational comics aimed at raising awareness about medical conditions such as fibromyalgia and coeliac disease, as well as themes such as suicide prevention, bereavement, archives and memory, and DNA analysis. Her research interests are graphic justice, critical theory, trauma and memory studies. She has published on the work of Alison Bechdel, Marjane Satrapi, Shaun Tan, Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama, and the Australian online comic “At Work in Our Detention Centres: A Guard’s Story”, among others. Her monograph, entitled Representation and Memory in Graphic Novels (2019) is available from Routledge.