Monsters, Mercenaries and Me: Comics Research as Plaited Exegesis

Comics as academic artefacts have seen significant modal shifts in research methodologies. While ideal for typical approaches that centre upon the study of texts and literature or aesthetic denouement, the results of the studies tend be somewhat predictable – a position is established, literature is consulted and the findings are discussed in the typical academic cycle. There have, of course, been endeavours made in terms of exploring the creative aspect of the medium itself, with works such as Scott McCloud's work on the subject matter of Understanding (1993, 2017), Making (2006) and Reinventing Comics (2008) paving the way forward for deep explorations of the truly unique phenotypes and ephemera that make up the larger works of comics. As inspirational as these works are, they have drawn criticism from comic scholars for their over-focus on minutiae that ultimately segregates a comic into tiny components, divorcing the written text from the imagery and defeating the very intertextual purpose of the works themselves. This conflict elicited a desire in me to find methods that could work together to give a truly holistic view of research comics both within and without of the praxis, and in my Ph.D, I proposed a hybrid method inspired by the work of Welby Ings (2015) and Nigel Krauth (2016, and 2019), which discussed the creative exegesis method's function beyond its home in creative writing. By adopting Ings' so-called Plaited Exegesis, which sees the correlation of research and making as essential, real time, and most importantly, deeply personal; and modifying it to allow for lenses such as close reading, I created a series of pilot studies to explore the potential of this research method. I will demonstrate one of these case studies, which explored transmedial adaptation of traditional urban myth, inspired by the South African legend of the Pinky-Pinky, into an interactive Creepypasta comic and how it was made, documented and reflected upon.