Multiframe fever: Comics as archive

Abstract

Read through the concept of the multiframe (understood as a database of separable units), this article argues that comics are not a distinct cultural form, but an expression of archive. The principle of the archive orders and animates modern culture in general, infusing it with the unavoidable violence inherent in establishing structure and meaning. If comics are archival, the principles of comics reading can be applied to other archival forms. This article thus also examines the common law (an exemplary modern archive that has wide social and political significance and well-rehearsed connections with violence) as a ‘legal multiframe’ that is nested within the continuum with other frames in the potentially infinite multiframe of material culture. What is seen overall is both the unavoidable nature of the violence of framing in meaningful encounters with the world, and the continuity or interconnectedness of all cultural and meaningful forms. This understanding is enabled by an encounter with the multiframe that is not blinkered to its violent qualities, and does not seek to arbitrarily delineate ‘comics’ from other multiframed structures.