Riso Comics – creating narratives in dialogue with the machine

In recent years comics printed with digital duplicators from the Riso Kagaku Company in Japan have emerged to become a niche of its own, as so called Riso Comics. Even though the technique has been around for decades and digital duplicators are manufactured by several other companies, riso has become the generic word that describes both the technique and its result (Haylock 2011, 120). Riso Comics are a recurring feature at comics-festivals, and since they are printed in limited editions and often quite expensive, they have contributed to change the perception of what fanzines are in relation to esthetics- and economy. The technique has also inspired comics artists to acquire Risograph-machines of their own, to form riso-studios and publishing companies. Even though Riso Comics have been an integrated part of the comics-field for quite some time, little scholarly interest has been directed towards them, the technology behind, and their cultural significance. This paper aims at describing and discussing the phenomenon of Riso Comics in relation to the characteristics of the printing technique in terms of esthetic- and embodied practices, as a bridge between analog and digital production (Reif 2020), as well as their position as both art and craft (cf. Drucker 2004). The paper will also discuss how the Risograph is used in dialogue, as a partner, in the iterative processes of both making and printing comics.