Webs of Self, Webs of Meaning. Three Female Fragmentary Portraits in Post-Digital Print Comics

Abstract

The present paper analyses the work of three contemporary, independent women artists active in the Portuguese comics scene: Hetamoé, Joana Mosi, and Ana Margarida Matos. It provides a close formal reading of their work by following Peter Wollen's seminal article on counter-cinema. Despite the caveats of adopting whole cloth and in a clearcut manner notions from different media, there are enough commonalities and narratological features that provide stimulating comparisons. As in cinema, comics also have a broadly accepted normative understanding of comics' way of creating meaning, against which these three authors present what one can call, after Wollen, resisting formal strategies. Portuguese comics have had a troubled history, which entails a difficult economic development and the lack of wider social recognition (as a culturally relevant field). However, its most independent realms and sub-cultures have provided ample proof of engaged, informed, and inventive individual creators. Women creators are no exception to this, and this particular group shows three potentialities of opening up the field, both politically and aesthetically. Moreover, these same de/re/constructive strategies broach issues associated with identity, self-portrait, bodily matters, memory, and the very meaning-making processes at the core of their work. The feminist dimensions of their work, albeit quite varied, allow one to detect intense interpretations of the self and the role of womanhood in a broader process of self-actualization and social life. Thus, I will use Sianne Ngai's notions of "cuteness" and "animatedness" to understand the three author's specific manners of doing so, as depicted and constructed within the medium of comics.