Public history with webcomics: Interview Answers

Last week I participated in a seminar about the value of using webcomics as a tool for public history. There was a list of questions set by the moderator to structure the conversation -- and as the kind of person who needs to prep for panels and public speaking events with pre-written answers, I gladly yoinked the question list from the screenshot.

So, anyone who missed the seminar and wanted to know what I might have said, here are my thoughts on the topic! (Not all of the questions came up during the actual discussion)

What inspired you to create a history-based webcomic?

• Do you have any academic experience of history?
• If yes, do you prefer making webcomics to working in academia producing traditional monographs and journal articles?
  

MORE GENERAL:
I've always been a fan of historical fiction, and since young I've always had a strong interest in the history of the world and how humanity has evolved and developed culture. Culture is how stories are passed down, and we often receive or accept those stories through the typical vessels of the most impressive manuscripts or visual art. But I am more interested in the underrated modes of transmission, like pottery, carpets, or how someone holds a cup or acts around others depending on status. I think that comics are the best modern means for synthesising and representing all of these varied typical and underrated modes of transmission.

MORE SPECIFIC:
I've always been a fan of historical fiction and always had a strong interest in cultural history and visual culture. I was compelled to retell the Alexander Romance because firstly, it overlapped with a lot of my fields of interest in regards to sociological, cultural and literary history; and secondly, because it is itself an inheritance from the hundreds of storytellers before me, my elders, across multiple eras and cultures and beliefs. Like Plutarch the Hellenistic Greek historian and Nizami the medieval Persian poet I'm drawn to the mish-mash, and I want to show my readers just how cool this unbroken millennia-long artistic collaboration is.

While I do have academic training, it's not in history. I originated from a science background, and just recently, finished my Masters in arts management. Although I don't create theses or journals out of my comics, I've adapted my science research and communications training into my craft.

Do you feel that your webcomic is a form of knowledge dissemination?

Only for my historical fiction, yes, and primarily through learning by immersion. I don't deliberately set out a lesson plan or anything like that, but I do take seriously how images transmit information and that an image itself can become a mental model of how someone understands a culture or time. Like, for example, the public still can't shake off the idea of ancient Greece as white statues, or all dinosaurs as scaly reptiles. Why? Because they are shown this vision of Ancient Greece, of dinosaurs over and over again through the medium of painting, film, architecture and even comics. So I see my work as offering remediation to those kinds of calcified knowledge, by showing how statues were painted, or how dinosaurs can have feathers, through the readers getting invested in the story, in the characters, in the worldbuilding. It's not necessarily corrective; just expansive.

Do you feel that your work can be called 'public history' as you understand the term? Why or why not?

Yeah, sure, in an independent, almost undeliberate way. I'm not trying to set myself as the Ultimate Expert-Communicator of the subject matter I'm into at the time, but I do see myself as a translator/interpreter of academic language/content and a gateway to more in-depth reading. If I can get my readers to appreciate the history and grow their love for the world, I'd be happy.

Have you ever worked with the public in the GLAM sector? Did that inform your desire to create a history-based webcomic?

* GLAM refers to the Gallery, Library, Archive and Museum sector

As mentioned earlier, I only just completed my education to officially enter the GLAM sector as a worker - hopefully; I'm looking for work right now haha! Anyway it was very recently that I only began to partner with libraries and museums to do communications, since for a long time comics were considered "low-brow" and comics-making skills were not recognised by the institution. However the GLAM sector has inspired me to make my webcomic a vehicle of knowledge through how they have utilised various arts and technologies to share and contextualise their collections to the public; for example, immersive sense-based experiences, recreations, diagrams, web design, tours, games, activities, etc.

Is it accurate to say that one purpose of your webcomic is to introduce people to forgotten, complex or contested histories? Do you consider your work to be activism?

In the case of Alexander Romance, yes, because it itself has been forgotten, yet its iconic scenes and the historical figure attached to it are some of the key items in the moodboard of the imperialist, colonialist and Western, patriarchal project. I don't think of my work as activism, because every time I am reminded of Kurt Vonnegut's comment about art as activism in the form of a dropped custard pie. BUT I do accept my work as being one of the many items in the moodboard of the long project of radical, progressive, collective liberty.

'A historiography that was alert to memory's shadows… might give at least as much attention to pictures as to manuscripts or print' (Samnual, 1994). Discuss.

I feel like for the majority of humanity's history, actually, even today, we are more surrounded by pictures or non-text-based encounters than text-based. The clothes we wear, the way we dance, hold our fork and knife, the most popular colours of the day; all of these are expressions about how we are raised and what cultures we interact with. The same goes for how a historical moment or person was perceived by the common man. All that comes through more clearly in paintings, photographs, film, images whatever, than a description could provide. I think it'd be a shame if we disregard such the large and valuable mode of knowledge transmission that is the visual, which is such a core part of perceiving the world.

Do you have any knowledge of comics theory? If so, how do you relate it to history as you depict it in your work? (Especially time in comics)

I AM comics theory.
I'd consider myself at an advanced level of comics theory, though I still have a lot to learn about the potential of the artform. I take advantage of comics as an heir of the book arts, which itself also borrows the visual culture of the past and its contemporary era, so I incorporate a lot of stylistic modes across a single work. Something can look like Greek pottery on one page and a 20th century French poster on another. Panels can become like a frieze, or shaped like a carpet, or be framed by Rococo S-curved leaves.

Adding your voice to a canon.

With the Alexander Romance I am working within a specific tradition (or canon) and it is already built-in that someone different takes on the mantle each time. I'm pretty comfortable with it and I know what I want to say, and I'm proud to be representative of the globalised era I'm in (English-educated, immigrant, Global South, non-binary, digital native)

How do you publish? How does the form (online/physical) affect the work and its relationship(s) to the public? 

I always prefer to publish my historical comics online, or at least, online first, so that I'm given the freedom to make author's comments and footnotes describing my process, research and bibliography. That gives my historical comics more of the public history AND art education components. The problem with turning them into books is always the constraints of the physical medium and its associated printing costs. If you were to add my commentary into my comics in book form, it'd be another 20-50 pages. Not cheap!