Myth in the heroic comic-book : a reading of archetypes from The number one game and its models
Date
2008-12
Authors
Birch, Robert A. C.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University
Abstract
This thesis considers the author's project submission, a comic-book entitled The Number One
Game, as production of a local heroic myth. The author will show how this project attempts to
engage with mythic and archetypal material to produce an entertaining narrative that has relevance
to contemporary Cape Town. The narrative adapts previous incarnations of the hero, with reference
to theories of archetypes and mythic patterning devices that are derived from the concept of the
“mono-myth”. Joseph Campbell's conception of myth as expressing internal psychic processes will
be compared to Roland Barthes' reading of myth as a special inflection of speech that forms a
semiotic “metalanguage”. The comic-book is a specific form of the language of comics, a
combination of image and text that is highly structured and that can produce a rich graphic text.
Using the Judge Dredd and Batman comic-books as models it will be shown how The Number One
Game adapts traditions of representation, such as in genre references, to local perspective to create a
novel interplay of archetypes. It will be shown that this interplay in the author's project work and
the rich potential of the comic-book as a site for mythic speech makes the mythic a useful paradigm
for considering the expression of ideology in the heroic comic-book.
Description
Thesis (MPhil (Visual Arts))--Stellenbosch University, 2008.
Keywords
Myth, Comic-books, Heroic comic-books, Graphic novels, Number one game, Dissertations -- Art, Theses -- Art, Dissertations -- Visual arts, Theses -- Visual arts