Tall Tales in Comic Diction

Every medium tells stories in its own idiosyncratic way. Consequently, if we transfer a narrative from one medium to another, points of friction will occur, the identification of which may allow us to draw conclusions as to the narrative potential of the target medium. Thus, comic adaptations of literary texts should be of major interest for the study of comics as well as for intermediality studies, yet they have hardly been investigated as to their narrative qualities in contrast to their source texts so far. Tall Tales in Comic Diction engages to support the closing of this gap which exists in the field of comic theory by paying closer attention to comics adapting literary source texts. This volume sets out to discuss concrete excerpts from comic adaptations next to their textual counterparts, for instance, novels, short stories, plays or epic poetry by Oscar Wilde, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, Paul Auster, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Terry Pratchett amongst others. Their analysis will further the understanding of the narrative potential of comics in general. Thus, the present book intends to contribute to a comic narratology based on the textual model and introduce a world of storytelling that only comics can offer.