And sometimes it’s better not to show certain things. For example, when it comes to violence, to traumatization. Or about what is probably the blackest moment in human history: the Holocaust. In any case, the well-known Berlin comic artist Reinhard Kleist reacted to the horrors in the concentration camp with a black page in his book “The Boxer”. In “Madgermanes” by Birgit Weyhe there is also a black page, followed by abstract drawings. Directly before that, in the comic by the artist who was born in Munich and lives in Hamburg, a letter can be read that describes war atrocities. At a symposium in Munich’s Literaturhaus, Weyhe said that showing them would only seem voyeuristic to her.
In his comic “Unfollow”, Lukas Jüliger talks about Earthboi: a boy who says he is nature personified and who, as an influencer and with the help of an app, wants to save the earth from climate collapse.
(Photo: Lukas Jüliger/Reprodukt Verlag)
With “panel panel. Images for the invisible” was the title of the event, which was about the relationship between comics and science for seven hours. The panel with Weyhe and Kleist was about historical science. Two other panels dealt with natural science and psychology. And two lectures were about how comics can be used in digital form in photonics research and in teaching history symposium streamed on the Internet from the network”Comics in Bavaria“. It was funded by the Bavarian Ministry of Science and Art.
Science Minister Markus Blume therefore gave a video greeting at the beginning, in which he classified comics as “literature”, “all-rounder” and, yes, as “Bavarian” – because of the “lively” local comic scene, which also includes the The curators of the symposium include Barbara Yelin and Jutta Pilgram. As Yelin explained in the introduction, the two women came to the topic simply through their work. Because with her comics, such as the graphic novel “Irmina”, which was set in the Nazi era, she has always entered into a dialogue with scientists. But you rarely see that in the book, just like the complex development process in general. The symposium was also about increasing appreciation for it.
“Panel Panel. Images for the Invisible” was the name of the symposium in the Literaturhaus, which aroused great interest.
(Photo: Julian Schulz)
The moderator of the first panel, Christine Knödler, promised a “look behind the scenes”. She had Lukas Jüliger as guests and Alexandra Hamann, who has been drawing science comics for years. These included expert opinions, a book about the achievements of medicine and a booklet designed to take patients’ fears of surgery. This required positive colors, she was not allowed to draw suffering patients, she said. Because the booklet should clarify, but not cause panic. A difficult task. Nevertheless, she loves her job because she is “incredibly curious”. And limitations made the job even easier. “Necessity inspires me.”
Lukas Jüliger addresses climate change in “Unfollow”. The main character is Earthboi, a boy who becomes a kind of new messiah as an eco-influencer. It’s not science fiction, said the Berliner, but close to the present. He would have researched more deeply on topics such as evolution and extinct animals. But the impetus was emotional – “because climate change also affects me and scares me”.
It was exactly this direct, “less distanced” approach that Hamann called the strength of comics. Markus Färber also dealt with a very emotional topic in “Fruchtetal”: his father’s suicide. It started out as a private project. As an attempt to overcome your own speechlessness.
Färber said that at the panel on “Comics and Psychology”, where the Swiss Anja Wicki also presented her book “InOrder”. It’s about a girl who has a mental illness. It was important to Wicki that she wasn’t named, because the protagonist should be perceived as a “normal person”. And just like Färber, she deliberately treated a taboo subject. To talk more about it.
Weyhe and Kleist were also concerned with the unsaid. Because with the story of the Jewish boxer Hertzko Haft and the story about contract workers from Mozambique in the GDR, they took up topics that were hardly known. The media scientist Véronique Sina, who also sat on the podium, thinks it’s great that “the self-marginalized medium of comics is being used to tell marginalized stories”.
The style is also impressive. The change of style, the black side, the filling in of blanks: Especially with themes like trauma and memory, these are the means that perhaps really only comics have at their disposal. A potential that became clearly visible at this symposium.