More to the point of my blog, though, the title of the thesis is Paratext in Paradox: Paratextual Elements and Functions in the Webcomic Kill Six Billion Demons. The academic study of webcomics is woefully lacking, generally speaking. One of the reviews of my own book noted, as one of his biggest complaints, that there weren't enough academic references in it... but then went on to add that there simply isn't much to reference in the first place! So it's worth noting when we get a thesis paper on webcomics in any capacity. More interesting, though, is that Ronja focuses in particular on the paratexts of Kill Six Billino Demons. The paratexts are basically all the stuff that's part of a webcomic, but not the comic itself! Everything from the ALT text on the images to the web site's FAQ to even the extra material over on an ancillary site like Patreon. I barely touched on paratexts in my book, doing barely more than citing that webcomics can have more options available that traditional comics. As far as I'm aware, Ronja's thesis is the first study looking expressly at webcomics' paratexts and how they're intergrated (or not) with the main comic.
Here's the paper's abstract...
The thesis analyses how Kill Six Billion Demons uses its paratext to expand the webcomic’s narrative toolkit beyond just the comic. The webcomic paratext is used for directing the comic’s interpretation, presenting both supplemental and primary narratives, creating aesthetic and comedic experiences, and breaking the borders between textual and paratextual spaces to create potent narrative effects. Building on the theoretical bases of Genette’s ‘Paratexts’ and Kleefeld’s ‘Webcomics’, Waites’ idea of paratextual narratives, and the categories of paratextual function introduced by Birke and Christ as well as Gross and Latham, the thesis is the first to create an extensive typology of a webcomic’s paratext. It is also the first piece of academic writing to focus on Kill Six Billion Demons, inviting further research on both the webcomic specifically and digital paratexts in general.The full thesis is available for download from the Helsinki University Library website under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. If you've got any interest in webcomics, it's well worth the read and gets into a LOT of material that I didn't have the space to touch in my book. (Full disclosure, though: my book is cited several times and Ronja gave me a special thanks at the very end.) I've been saying for literally decades now that we need more journalistic and academic discussions about webcomics, and I think we should all support anyone doing exactly that! Go check out Paratext in Paradox and, if you happen to be working on your own thesis, be sure to make some references to it, so we can continue to spread the good word!
The paratext of Kill Six Billion Demons is shown to be unusually robust and influential to its text. While earlier research has claimed that paratexts function primarily to illustrate the author’s intent over the text’s interpretation to the reader, to assist in navigating the work, and to boost its sales, this analysis reveals further functions that challenge our understanding of the paratext as a solely pragmatic tool. The thesis gives examples of creative paratextual functions that demonstrate how the webcomic author can use the varied paratextual spaces that the webpage’s infinite canvas provides in ways that would be unfeasible in print comics. Paratextual space is used for textual functions and vice versa, creating a formal paradox that has the potential to both challenge and expand our contemporary understanding of the paratextual threshold.
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