Study Task 1 - Illustration & Authorship

With regular book illustration, (or book cover illustration) it has been suggested that some of the writer's initial meaning can be taken away by the interpreted imagery of the illustrator - which could be totally different from how the writer intended the work to be seen. However the case is different when the author is both the writer and the illustrator, for example artists who make their own graphic novels. Perhaps these illustrators choose to create their own stories as interpreting other peoples work and meaning when it comes to illustrating can be tiresome, whereas when the work and meaning is your own you know what it is. "Artists’ books – using words, images, structure and material to tell a story or invoke an emotion – may be the purest form of graphic authorship. " For me artists books do definitely more engaging than just text, I find that when an artist has both written and illustrated a story or book there is a huge sense of ownership over that item, as if it is their child. 

James O'Barr is an artist who wrote and illustrated his own comic "The Crow". The story of The Crow is based on events in O'Barr's life, and used writing the comic as an outlet for his feelings "the author is thought to nourish the book, which is to say that he exists before it, thinks, suffers, lives for it" and in the case of James O'Barr the story has so much of himself in it, he has nourished and suffered and lived for it. The fact that the character of Eric Draven is meant to be a visual representation of O'Barr without it looking like him (as he didn't like drawing his own appearance) makes the story a little more up to interpretation by the audience. As this comic has been adapted into a film (several films, and a tv series), although the original comic will always be solely James O'Barr's, some of the authorship has been transferred to the makers of the film. Some ownership of the character has even been handed to Brandon Lee, who originally acted as Draven and who most people would associate with The Crow as it's become his legacy being his last movie, rather than the author himself.

Emily Carroll also created a graphic novel called "Into the Woods" that she wrote and illustrated, the tales in it are based on folk tales. What's interesting about some of her stories is that she purposefully makes the endings vague, perhaps she knows the "true ending" but leaves it to the interpretation of the reader, and to my knowledge has not addressed the questioning readers with explanations.

The story "His Face All Red" is one of the best examples of Carroll leaving the story open, as a character who is meant to be dead in a ditch mysteriously returns to town. There is no explanation given as to how this character returned, whether he's back from the dead or it's an imposter, or there's some dark magic going on. When searching online for it, I frequently find yahoo answer pages asking others to explain it as "the explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it" but as I mentioned before, she has not offered an explanation. The images included above are the last panels of the comic - revealing the "dead" character to look over his shoulder (his face all red). Carroll has strategically used the denial of information to add to the mysterious, dark and scary quality of the book, as the reader will feel like they never truly know what happened.

In this case the quote "it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author" rings true, as Carroll has had all the power in writing and illustrating her stories, and to imbue the imagery with her own meaning (which of course she does) but also by purposefully leaving the stories open for reader interpretation she intentionally removes herself, but I would not consider this a "death of the author" as that was her intention rather than just a natural occurrence.




Barthes, R. (1968) 'The Death of the Author', London, Fontana. 
Rock, M. (1996) 'The Designer as Author', Eye no. 20 vol. 5 1996.