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The Cutting Edge of Comics: Destructive Technologies in Morrison and Quitely’s We3

2020; Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte"; Issue: 28 Linguagem: Inglês

10.4000/sillagescritiques.9782

1969-6302

Isabelle Licari-Guillaume,

Art, Technology, and Culture

In We3, a 2004-5 miniseries published by DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely dramatize the motif of tearing within a narrative that features extreme violence and the destruction of bodies. This violence is perpetrated through the use of cutting-edge medical and military technologies such as biomechanisation and futuristic weapons, which, by tearing the flesh, also destabilise identities and disrupt the threshold between human and animal, between the organic and the mechanic. This exploration of hybridity develops within a visual narrative where the low-tech process of paper and pencil drawing is subsequently enhanced through computer treatment, foregrounding its high-tech, digital dimension. Moreover, the narrative structure of the book exploits transmedial techniques that question the very nature of the comics medium and, in so doing, suggest its possible hybridity.