Women's Hopes Dashed--By Comics!

In Graphic Design, Print Culture, and the Eighteenth-Century Novel, Janine Barchas argues that the dash is of inestimable importance in Sarah Fielding's novel David Simple. Barchas points out that even though Sarah Fielding's 1st edition of the novel had 808 dashes, the 2nd edition--the edition edited by her patriarchial brother, Henry--only has 81 dashes! What happened to the missing dashes, you ask? Brother Henry imposed masculine stylistic conventions upon her and destroyed them. In so doing, brother Henry robbed Sarah's novel of its complexity. For example, the dash "allows [Fielding] to echo the non-verbal world which the women of her novel increasingly come to inhabit" (154). A dash is "a visual sign both of conversation and silence," giving "the sense of conversational immediacy and psychological affect" as well as emphasizing "the important role non-verbal communication plays" (160).

Barchas's arguments have convinced me that I need to take artists' implementation of the dash more seriously. Let us take a look at Fantastic Four #70 and see how Barchas's insights shape our reading. (I should add that, given that the dash is a direct assault upon patriarchy, it's a surprise that more women aren't reading comic books.) In context, The Thing (or "Ben") has gone crazy, and Mr. Fantastic (or "Reed") has just shot him with a menta-wave unit to return him to sanity. I shall only include the dialogue, not the captions.

Panel 1: [The Torch (or "Johnny") comments:] "Reed! You--you did it! He's collapsing! But--he--he's not breathing--any more--! You've--killed--him!" Panel 2: The Invisible Girl (or Sue) is outside. Sue says,] "Something terrible is happening in there--I just know it! I'm almost afraid--to open the door! That noise--inside----like something smashing down the wall!" Panel 3: [Sue crashes through the door.] "Ben--he's dead! And Reed--Johnny!! Wha--?!! Coming thru the wall--a giant, mindless android!"

Now, even without the captions, we have 15 dashes here within a space of just 3 panels (19 if you count the captions). With Barchas's insights, I can better account for the dash usage. Let's take the phrase, "You've--killed--him!" Paradoxically, this dash reminds us of both conversation and silence, of presence and absence. Few situations are so fraught with conversational immediacy and emotional intensity as those in which we point out that somebody who normally isn't dead, is being so right now. Yet this situation is also filled with non-verbal communication: Ben's body must speak the words that he cannot, nonverbally communicating, "Help me, I think I'm deceased!" When Johnny tries to verbalize Ben's plight--when Johnny says, "You've--killed--him!"--we are reminded that there are some things you can never say, especially when you are dead.

Johnny, too, is at a loss for words: What else is there to say other than "You've--killed--him?" (Sort of like, "Mistah Kurtz--he dead.") To drive this point home, imagine the opposite situation: If Ben were alive, conversational topics would flow naturally. Johnny could say, "I--think--he's breathing! Call someone--a paramedic! Do you know--have you ever learned--CPR?" Instead, Ben's death reduces Johnny to silence. It captures for us that moment when consciousness fades to blackness ... when speech fades to blankness. Johnny is confronted with death, with absence, with silence--and in that moment, a socially induced paralysis takes hold of him, and takes hold of the reader. There is something beyond logos, beyond language, beyond loquacity, and we are powerless to ever control it. We are like Sue Richards, ever unable to see what is beyond that door, ever afraid to see what lies outside logocentrism. We fear whether the great beyond will realize our greatest dreams--or only dash them.