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Elisabeth El Refaie. Autobiographical Comics: Life Writing in Pictures. Jack son: UP of Mississippi, 2012. 273 pp. ISBN 978-1617036132, $55.00.
Since the publication of Art Spiegelman's groundbreaking Maus as a two- volume book (in 1986 and 1991 respectively), literary scholars working with life writing have turned to comics as promising objects of study that might challenge and redefine traditions and conventions of auto/biography. Al- though autobiographical comics are more often the subjects of literary criti- cism than superhero comics, there are only a few books devoted to this mode. Charles Hatfield's Alternative Comics, an insightful analysis of comics influ- enced by the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, is not exclusively focused on autobiographical comics, but two chapters are dedicated to them, and the other chapters explore historical and formal issues that are relevant to autobiographical comics. Hillary Chute, besides publish- ing a number of significant articles, especially on Art Spiegelman's work, produced the only monograph on autobiographical comics, Graphic Women, which focuses on the contributions of important female comics artists. Mi- chael Chaney edited a collection of essays, Graphic Subjects, which has begun to reveal the range of autobiographical material in comics, as well as possibili- ties for approaching them.
In contrast to the previously mentioned books, Elisabeth El Refaie's Auto biographical Comics is a broad-based survey of the major, current trends in autobiographical comics. The book provides a helpful assessment of the field, as well as explores the many different ways that comics can be analyzed. El Refaie's own background is in visual and media studies, especially the newspaper, and she has published articles in those fields, as well as on literacy and, of course, on comics.
El Refaie's approach is shaped by two key decisions. First, she does not rely solely on narrative theory to analyze comics, but draws from many dif- ferent approaches, including semiotics, discourse analysis, and psychoanalytic theories, to name a few. She also decides not to concentrate on a few auto- biographical comics, but rather mentions, with varying degrees of detail and focus, eighty-five different comics from Europe and North America. While previous significant studies either focus primarily on American or European comics, El Refaie draws from both traditions (though not from manga). It is...