Literaturcomics

The comic hybridizes text and image, while the literary comic hybridizes literature and comic. The days are long gone when adaptations in comics were, if at all, dismissed and regarded as mere child-friendly entry aids to 'real' (text) literature: The range of comics that use literary texts as their foundation is too vast, diverse, and creative to simply be overlooked or merely illustrated. This volume examines the media tension between text literature and the 'ninth art' (Scott McCloud) and reflects on the very different narrative techniques and sometimes radically divergent poetics that underlie them. It takes a closer look at the diverse spectrum of German-language literary comics and the observable trends and preferences: The literary comics released in the last nearly ten years offer a rich repository of various adaptation, staging, and narrative strategies. This is particularly true for few German-speaking authors as it is for Franz Kafka, especially the 'transformations of the transformation' provide a highly vibrant habitat for literary comic analysis. Indeed, Kafka's perhaps most famous narrative has been the subject of particularly many adaptations.