Building Worlds and Myth Making: Magical Realism In Comics

Reality as it is often depicted in fiction can, let's be honest, tend to become a bit much. Fiction, especially comics-medium fiction, is a place for the weird, wonderful, wish-fulfilling and dream inducing tales of new and old myth.  Lately I have been thinking more and more about how the comics medium has grown to create spaces that are often over-reliant upon spatial and chronological realities-- realities which are often derived from cultural norms that are not balanced in our own world. The spaces comics can create have such greater possibilities as they are born out of the ideas of dreamers who create places that can be more surreal and inspiring than the state of our own realities. What these spaces in comics can (and in many cases have) create(d) and utilize(d), I believe, are elements that are often associated with magical realism. Therefore, magical realism is a very important element in the comics medium.

Magical Realism
The greatest thing about the concept of magical realism is that it has been a struggle to actually define it. This of course is the best thing about it--malleability. However, this malleability can be built from a grounded place (as all good ideas are). The one I want to focus on discusses magical realism as "characterized by a mixture of realistic and fantastic elements" that can have "realistic details and esoteric  knowledge intertwined with dreamlike sequences, abrupt chronological shifts, and complex, tangled plots", while also "frequently incorporat[ing] fairy tales and myths into [the] work" (Murfin & Ray, 2003, p.242). Comics (when not hung up on being so "real") often exhibit all of those or some of those parts all the time.  

The Waking Dream

In comics (and in most fictions), there is (or should be) the absolute and unmistakably dream-like quality of real versus non-real places. Magical realism is to a large degree already apart of the DNA of comics through not only our superhero and meta-human characters, but also in the dream-scape meta-realities of say a Marvel universe inhabited New York City. For example, think about perhaps a scene in an issue of The Avengers, or Amazing Spider-Man, where that deli in the borough of queens that your family and yourself have eaten at for two generations is where Peter Parker eats lunch with Tony Stark to discuss important plot points (which can also be argued as a meta-fictive quality). That is the beauty of Marvel's NYC (sometimes)-- it is there but it is not...it's really up to you.

A System Of Cultural Layers

Magical realism allows for a broader telling of stories through metaphor and allegorical cultural layers. This one is tricky, as it is important to broaden the "cultural" in that statement, something that has, while occurring, been very slow to continue along a greater development in mainstream comics. It's a big world, with a lot of untapped writers and artists of different nationalities and cultures who can blend a unique sense of place and the fantastical into the larger web of myth that the American superhero genre has created. The future of comics rests on the abilities of allowing the broadest spectrum to be represented and to express their own magical realities, either through established characters or new ones.

The Science Of Fiction

The worlds depicted in comics have their own physics and constructed realities. People fly. Gods of mythology walk amongst us. Large cities are destroyed and re-built. People can achieve speeds so high they can vibrate molecules--this list could really go on and on ( I actually encourage you to please continue it in the comments section!). Anything is possible. But for some reason, the abilities of approaching this idea are mostly squandered due to our over-relying on some need for reality. The beauty of how magical realism is functioning is that it doesn't need to be explained. It just is. Batman does not have to explain how he created a device that emits a low-frequency sound to stop Two-Face's wireless detonation signal. It's the fact that it works--that Batman helped stop destruction and death from happening. And somewhere, maybe it inspires someone in our own world to actually try to create that device to one day save lives.

It is hard sometimes, because of the way that we attach context and meaning to our fictions, to remember one of the great big rules about comic books (and fiction in general)-- None of it is real. This diversion from reality is part of the transformative appeal of comics--the ability to do anything means that they can do what we are not capable of, and thus gives us a window to wonder how we could achieve or build such things; How we can educate, save and/or empower people who need it; How we can develop pluralistic cultural understandings; How we can work together. This is achieved on a regular basis through crazy psuedo-science in places like a quasi-New York City on an alternate reality earth that magical realism works so hard to achieve. If we are able to achieve great dreams, create our ultimate selves and unite, then I will take the crazy over the real anytime. In the comments section below, please feel free to just write about the magical realism elements of comics that have inspired you or made you wonder.

References


Murfin, R. & Ray, S.M. (2003). The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, 2nd ed. Bedford St. Martin's: New York.