ABSTRACT
The present chapter departs from the following premise: apart from the author’s voice and that of the reader(s), comics books, as medium, have their own voice, which “sounds” via reading experiences. Through its constitutive facets—frames, speech balloons, sequences, and so on—subjective voices are either hidden or revealed, and thus mobilise a system.
By reading a number of Manouach’s experimental books (Brégé de bande dessinée, Les Schtroumpfs noirs, Blanco, Un monde un peu meilleur from the universe of Lapinot, Riki Fermier and The Cubicle Island), this chapter will, first of all, coax out a “grammatical” aspect of a historically and geographically situated way of making comics, namely the so-called Franco-Belgian comics scene. Through “defaced” strategies, Manouach reveals elements and structural interactions.
Secondly, the analysis will study how these voices are erased or revealed via the processes of cutting, distorting, erasing, blanking out, and so on. By acting upon some of the elements of the language of comics, but not others, whether through analog or artificial intelligence–driven processes, different results come about. As a language, comics pre-exist to the act of using them, so employing certain dynamics and avoiding others will always lead to a “speaking comics,” and as such, touch upon political and philosophical choices, which will also be examined.
