In the field of fiction, stream of consciousness is a well-known concept which is often associated with modernist literature. Renowned authors such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner have extensively delved into the depths of character’s consciousness, shifting the narrative focus from the objective external world to the rich internal landscapes of the characters. In recent decades, the term “stream of consciousness” has also been taken up by critics to describe comics in reviews and academic articles. Some of the comics artists whose works have been associated with stream of consciousness by critics were Grant Morrison, Robert Crumb, Howard Cruse, and John Hankiewicz (Maremaa, 2004, p. 24; Kawa, 2000, p. 219; Kunka, 2022, p. 76; Chamberlain, 2017). However, exactly what is stream of consciousness in comics or what kind of comic people refer to when they talk about it remains largely unexplored. In this article, I attempt to define stream of consciousness in comics and draw attention to different types of it. This study brings into relief similarities and differences between literature and comic in representing stream of consciousness, thereby highlighting the distinctive features inherent to the medium of comics.

Stream of consciousness in literature

Before exploring the concept of stream of consciousness in comics, we need to investigate the concept of stream of consciousness in fictionFootnote 1 in the first place. The term “stream-of-consciousness” was first used by Scottish philosopher Alexander Bain, but it was William James’ psychological works that made the term widely acknowledged. William James explains that consciousness is not “chopped up in bits” and is “nothing jointed,” but flows like a “river” or a “stream,” thus he prefers to call it “stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life” (1950, p. 239). May Sinclair’s, 1918 article “Novels of Dorothy Richardson” marks the debut of the term “stream-of-consciousness” in the field of literary criticism, in which Sinclair insightfully points out that: “in identifying herself with this life, which is Miriam’s stream of consciousness, Miss Richardson produces her effect of being the first, of getting closer to reality than any of our novelists who are trying so desperately to get close” (Sinclair, 1918, p. 58). Dorothy Richardson’s Pointed roofs (1915) is now widely recognized as the first complete stream-of-consciousness novel in English.

When Sinclair used the term “stream-of-consciousness novel,” he did not endeavor to provide a precise definition; it was only later that numerous scholars embarked on efforts to conceptualize stream of consciousness in literature through their critical analyses. In an article published in 1950, Lawrence Bowling regards stream of consciousness as a kind of literary technique, and defines it as “that narrative method by which the author attempts to give a direct quotation of the mind—not merely of the language area but of the whole consciousness” (Bowling, 1950, p. 345). This initial conceptualization of stream of consciousness in fiction is apparently problematic, since in the works of Virginia Woolf and others we have seen many cases of indirect quotation of the mind mediated by a narratorial voice for this genre. In his influential monograph Stream of consciousness in the modern novel (1954), Robert Humphrey defines stream-of-consciousness novels as “a type of fiction in which the basic emphasis is placed on exploration of the pre-speech levels of consciousness for the purpose, primarily, of revealing the psychic being of the characters” (Humphrey, 1954, p. 4). Under Humphrey’s definition, only a text that focuses on covert and nonverbal parts of the consciousness could be categorized as a stream-of-consciousness novel. Moreover, different from Bowling, he argues that “stream of consciousness” describes the subject matter of a genre instead of techniques. This view is quite influential and has been accepted by many scholars, testified by Keith Leopold’s claim in 1960 that “it seems fairly generally accepted nowadays that ‘stream of consciousness’ refers to the subject-matter of a certain type of novel” (Leopold, 1960, p. 25). For example, the revised version of A handbook to literature published in 1960 follows suit and defines stream-of-consciousness novel as “the type of psychological novel which takes as its subject matter the uninterrupted, uneven, and endless flow of the stream of consciousness of one or more of its characters”; moreover, it points out that the difference between stream-of-consciousness novels and other psychological novels lies in that the former tends to concentrate on “pre-speech, nonverbalized level, where the image must express the unarticulated response and where the logic of grammar belongs to another world” (Holman, 1960, p. 429). However, there are some scholars who still prefer to regard “stream of consciousness” as a technique, exemplified by Shiv Kumar, who employs the phrase in this manner in Bergson and the stream of consciousness (1962). Meanwhile, Melvin Friedman summarizes that stream-of-consciousness novels should be regarded as a kind of fiction “which has as its essential concern the exploitation of a wide area of consciousness, generally the entire area, of one or more characters” (Friedman, 1955, p. 3). In this definition, the subject of the genre is expanded to the whole compass of consciousness rather than the pre-speech part of it as in Humphrey’s conceptualization.

A brief overview of definitions displays two controversial issues upon which scholars could not arrive at a consensus upon: firstly, whether only works which delineate “pre-speech” levels of consciousness are qualified as stream-of-consciousness novel, and secondly, whether “stream of consciousness” refers to the subject or techniques of this genre. My view is that stream-of-consciousness novels do not necessarily involve representation of the “pre-speech” level of consciousness, and that stream of consciousness as a term could refer to both the subject and certain techniques adopted by a work. Regarding the first controversy, though stream-of-consciousness novels could imitate pre-speech perception by illogic, chaotic syntax as well as fragmentary images, a large part of text must still be verbalized, otherwise it would be impossible for readers to understand the mumbo jumbo. Many stream-of-consciousness novels are not esoteric at all and do not seem to represent a lot of “pre-speech” experience, such as Dorothy Richardson’s and Virginia Woolf’s novels which are logically sound and syntactically ordered. As for the second controversy, I believe that the dichotomy between subject and technique is problematic in itself since stream of consciousness could refer to both. When it is used to designate the subject matter of a specific genre, it highlights that a work focuses upon depiction of inner flow which differentiates the work in question from works of other genres. When it is used to designate certain techniques, it refers to methods to represent inner flow adopted by a work, and the work involved might only contain several pages of inner depiction other than dedicate its main body to it. In fact, I argue that stream of consciousness has already become a pervading literary “mode” in contemporary literature; stream-of-consciousness novel, arguably the “royal genre” or the dominant genre in the modernist period, has become a mode which seeps into other genres through a process called “modulation” in genre scholar Alastair Fowler’s terminology. According to Alastair, “generic mixtures need not be full-blown hybrids. In fact, it is more usual for one of the genres to be only a modal abstraction with a token repertoire” (1982, p. 191). In Kinds of literature, Fowler gives examples of modulation during the historical development of literature: allegory in the Middle Ages, epigram from late 16th century to 18th century, georgic in 18th century and elegy in 19th century have all become the dominant mode which reshaped other genres. Contemporary writers’ tendency to mix generic features may have fueled the process of modulation regarding stream of consciousness. Consequentially we witness depiction of stream of consciousness in many contemporary works such as in Infinite Jest and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, but these works are not stream-of-consciousness fiction in its strictest sense, because they only adopt the mode or techniques of stream of consciousness in parts of the text.

Drawing strengths from critics mentioned above, I develop my own definition of stream of consciousness in literature as follows: “a genre or mode in literary works which focuses upon depiction of fluid inner flows such as thoughts and pre-speech mental images by words, often marked by techniques such as free association and disruptive syntax.” What needs to be pointed out is that in literary works, pre-speech mental images could be depicted only through verbal means or verbal representation despite the fact that these images are not verbalized themselves.

When it comes to comics, stream of consciousness could also refer to both a genre and a mode or techniques. However, because comics which exclusively focus upon inner depiction are relatively rare and fewer than comics which adopt stream-of-consciousness mode or techniques in some parts of the text, and because study of the mode could adequately explain most features of the corresponding genre, in this article I mainly discuss stream-of-consciousness mode instead of a genre. Next, I will turn to this concept in comics, and examine its medium-specific features in graphic narratives in which verbal and pictorial sequences work together to convey meaning.

Conceptualizing stream of consciousness in comics

Scholars have talked about stream-of-consciousness depiction in comics every now and then, but most of them only mention it in passing and tend to take the concept for granted without dwelling on its definition or features. For example, Abraham Kawa maintains that in Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, “words, ideas and images are joined in a comics equivalent of a stream of consciousness” (Kawa, 2000, p. 219). According to Andrew Kunka, Howard Cruse, an artist of alternative comics, develops a kind of “nonnarrative comics essays” and that “many of his comics essays read like stream of consciousness, where ideas in one panel seem to inspire the next, and so on” (Kunka, 2022, p. 76). Meanwhile, it is Thomas Maremaa’s view that many comic strips by Robert Crumb follow the stream-of-consciousness style (Maremaa, 2004, p. 24). Diana Green also notes that Crumb did a lot of stream-of-consciousness stories, “most of them non-sequiturs that end at their beginnings” (Green, 2013, p. 163). Comic critic Thierry Groensteen once comments that “works like A Small Killing, by Alan Moore and Oscar Zarate, Cité de verre [City of Glass] by David Mazzucchelli and Paul Karasik (based on the book by Paul Auster), or Cages by Dave McKean have experimented successfully, by means of the interplay of sequential images (accompanied or not by text), with stream of consciousness, the literary technique that tries to replicate the flow of thought” (Groensteen, 2013, p. 131). However, he does not dwell upon this topic, nor does he attempt to formulate a definition for stream of consciousness in comics. John Harnett has accomplished his Ph.D. thesis entitled Negotiating multimodality in graphic narratives—stream of consciousness techniques in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, and From Hell, but he does not examine the concept of stream of consciousness in comics in the first place, in fact, many passages in his thesis have more to do with psychoanalysis and structuralism than with stream-of-consciousness depiction. Andrés Romero-Jódar discusses the concept of stream-of-consciousness graphic novels in a more systematic way. He mentions Robert Humphrey’s statement concerning stream-of-consciousness fiction and believes that “trauma graphic novel,” which grew from the 1970s comics autobiographic testimonies, often features attempt to depict complex stream of consciousness of the protagonist (Romero-Jódar, 2017, p. 2). Though Romero-Jódar insightfully draws from discussion on stream-of-consciousness fiction, in his own analysis of comic works, he often falls into a trap of conflating first-person narratorial voice with stream-of-consciousness depiction. He also does not give a medium-specific definition of stream-of-consciousness graphic narratives. However, some of his methods are enlightening, especially the way in which he tries to explore how traditional verbal stream-of-consciousness techniques could be realized in the pictorial sequence. For instance, he maintains that in Paul Hornschemeier’s Mother, Come Home, the author transforms two techniques of stream-of-consciousness fiction by applying them to images, i.e., visual free indirect style or indirect interior monologue, and visual direct style or direct interior monologue (Romero-Jódar, 2017, p. 58). In A concise dictionary of comics, Nancy Pedri includes the entry “stream of consciousness,” and defines the term as “a method of narration that renders the flow of emotions, memories, sensory feelings, thoughts, and other happenings as they unfold in a character’s mind” (Pedri, 2022, p. 91). However, the term is apparently too general to be medium-specific.

For most of these works mentioned above, the concept “stream of consciousness” is used inappropriately and too broadly; no scholar in the Anglophone academia has attempted to conceptualize stream of consciousness in comics in terms of its definition and features. In this article, I tried to furnish some groundwork in this intriguing topic and to sketch a definition. Taking my definition of stream of consciousness in literature as a reference point, I define stream of consciousness in comics as “a genre or mode in comics which focuses upon depiction of fluid inner flows such as thoughts and pre-speech mental images by words or pictures, or both, often marked by techniques such as free association and disruptive syntax.” The major difference between my definition of stream of consciousness in comics and that in literature is that the former adopts “words or pictures, or both” to represent inner flows while the later only resorts to verbal means. This point is also the most important medium-specific feature when it comes to stream-of-consciousness depiction in comics.

In the case of verbal sequence in comics, thought bubbles tend to represent direct thoughts without mediation, while words in captions could display both direct thoughts or mediated and narrated indirect thoughts. For example, in A Small Killing, captions are frequently used and are loaded with lengthy stream of consciousness of the protagonist. These thoughts are staccato and fragmentary, as displayed in the following excerpt: “…Occupied. Still occupied. Bang the door. Then. See who answers… No. God, no, don’t, not after customs, everybody thinks I’m perverted already, if I start knocking toilet doors, no, definitely not… customs…bastard American fucking ignorant… it was Nabokov. I mean, Nabokov! And he says… oh, forget it. Forget it. It’s in the past now” (Moore & Zarate, 1991, p. 2). The fact that this work was originally written by Alan Moore and subsequently adapted into comics by Oscar Zarate might explain why the language within it sounds more literary than that found in most contemporary comics. Sometimes verbal stream-of-consciousness depiction is accompanied by stylized caption box. For instance, in Joe Sacco’s Palestine, a lot of small caption boxes which look like post-it notes are adopted to represent the protagonist’s short and abrupt thoughts. On page 5, when a person asks the protagonist “but what do you think of my country?” several quick thoughts (e.g., “Back to that again, are we?” and “Okay okay…”) pop into the protagonist’s mind, each carried by a separate small caption box; the words in caption boxes and the protagonist’s voiced answer form sharp and intriguing contrast between what is thought and that is said (Sacco, 2001, p. 5). Verbal stream-of-consciousness depiction could be realized in different forms: most commonly, it is the caption box which carries the information concerning a character’s consciousness and inner flows; however, thought bubble could also be used to convey the same information. Vera Camden once laments that comic narratives witness an increasingly apparent trend that comics artists stop using thought bubbles in favor of caption: “the shift from the thought bubble imbricated as part of the image cluster on the comics panel, to a narrative box, shifts the reader’s focus from the character to disembodied reflective narration. The reader turns from the spontaneous interior life of the character to an overarching narrative voice, many times the voice of the character” (Camden, 2020, p. 617). However, as A Small Killing and Palestine show us, caption could also be adopted to display spontaneous interior life, and to represent complex stream of consciousness in stylized and experimental ways. Meanwhile, the pictorial sequence could render and represent stream of consciousness as well, but in an emphatically different way from that of the verbal sequence. Pictorial codes could of course illustrate what is imagined or constructed in a character’s mind, and could also render what is often called subjective perspective. As Juliane Blank concludes, comics could adopt “half-subjective” image which displays action “as if looking over a character’s shoulder, thus creating an equivalent to internal focalization” to highlight subjectivity, or could “use distortion as well as non-realistic and expressive colors to indicate that what we see is the subjective experience of a character” (Blank, 2021, p. 149). For example, in comics such as The Nao of Brown and Beverly, violent imagination of a character is illustrated in the pictorial sequence, mostly unaccompanied by verbal explanations. Meanwhile, as mentioned in my definition, in comics pictorial sequence could represent pre-speech mental images. In literature, pre-speech mental images could be described verbally through words, but in comics such images could be displayed more directly and vividly via pictures. Pictorial sequence could also string several images together to create the effect of free association. Stream-of-consciousness depiction in the pictorial sequence is often similar to the technique of collage which is widely adopted in contemporary art and literature. People and objects from different periods of a character’s life and from different places of the world are juxtaposed and muddled up in character’s mind, especially in the form of memory and fantasy. Elements to construct collage of the character’s consciousness could be either factual or fictional. Such method is reminiscent of the cut-up style adopted by postmodernist writers such as William Burroughs and Alan Burns. Compared with literary cut-up technique and collage, comic collage often seems more interesting because images tend to be more concrete and vivid than words. The corollary to the collage and cut-up style is that temporal representation in stream-of-consciousness comics is often achronological and the spatial relationship is also represented in a disruptive way. Stylized drawings and colors are often used to distinguish reality and imagination or fantasies in comics, but not necessarily so; some artists choose to blur the boundary between events occurring in reality and those constructed or imagined in the mind by employing the same style to render both occasions.

Moreover, stream of consciousness in comics often demonstrates a poetic quality or lyricality. As James Phelan explains in his article about lyric narrative, there are basically two main modes of lyric: “(1) somebody telling somebody else (who may or may not be present to speaker) or even himself or herself on some occasion for some purpose that something is—a situation, an emotion, a perception, an attitude, a belief; (2) somebody telling somebody else (who may or may not be present) or even himself or herself on some occasion about his or her meditations on something” (Phelan, 2005, p. 162). Unlike narrativity, lyricality is more concerned with thoughts, emotions, and beliefs, etc. Phelan points out that there are narratives which contain features usually associated with lyric poetry or lyricality, and calls them “lyric narrative.” In the field of comics, there are also many examples of such “lyric narrative,” and stream-of-consciousness depiction in comics certainly displays high degree of lyricality since it centres upon thoughts and emotions. However, not all stream-of-consciousness depiction in comics shows a heightened sense of lyricality: there are also works in which stream of consciousness is represented in non-lyrical contexts such as in A Small Killing in which representation of inner flows is juxtaposed with a great amount of synchronic depiction of external action.

Stream-of-consciousness depiction in comics is not monolithic. The styles of prominent stream-of-consciousness writers diverge from each other dramatically: fundamental discrepancy exists between the style of James Joyce and that of Virginia Woolf, while William Faulkner’s writings are also emphatically different from both Joyce’s and Woolf’s works. Likewise, in the arena of comics, there are also various ways to depict stream of consciousness. A Small Killing by Alan Moore and Oscar Zarate, displays a style which is fundamentally different from John Hankiewicz’s method in Education in the aspect of representing mind flows since these works belong to different types of stream-of-consciousness depiction. Basically, there are three types of stream-of-consciousness depiction according to whether such depiction could be attributed to a character or not. First is the type in which mind flows of a character or characters are illustrated; in the second type, it is the mind of an impersonal extradiegetic narrator that is displayed; the third type is featured by difficulty in determining whether the focused mind is that of a character or an impersonal extradiegetic narrator. “Extradiegetic narrator” is a term in narratology which refers to a narrator that is not part of any diegesis and not a character in the story (Prince, 1989, p.29). Next, I will turn to each category for examination, which will help demonstrate intricate methods in comics to represent inner flows in a fictional world.

Consciousness of a character

In most occasions with stream-of-consciousness depiction in comics, the consciousness represented could be attributed to one character. Comics often use “thought bubbles,” or “thought balloons,” in the shape of a cloud or an ellipse to indicate that content within the circle is emanated from a character’s mind. Content within the thought bubble could be images rather than words, and a chain of small circles is often used to point to the character whose consciousness is depicted in the bubble, similar to the way in which small tails are used to associate speech balloons with their speakers. Sometimes artists do not adopt a chain of circles as the pointer to the thinker, but simply put the thought bubble near its thinker to indicate their relationship. One common way to suggest who is the focused consciousness is to accompany verbal description of inner flows with the face of a character in the pictorial sequence. Sometimes not only the face of a character, but also part of or even the whole body is delineated. Verbal description of inner flows could be either free-floating in the panels, or contained in thought balloons (often with wavy lines) or captions. It is interesting to note that in this method, the visual representation of a character’s face is actually illustrated from a point of perception which is different from that of the character focused in the verbal sequence, since a character could not look at his or her own face like a bystander. As a result, the pictorial content in such panels is actually mediated and is not directly quoted from the focused mind. Meanwhile, the pictorial sequence could also directly quote from the focused mind by depicting subjective thoughts or perception as mentioned earlier. As for the identity of the character, it could be a person (A small killing and Palestine), an animal (BEASTARS), a robot (Robot dreams), or even any anthropomorphized objects.

Depiction of inner flows of a character in comics often discloses unreliability of the character involved. For example, in the 388th chapter of Hunter × Hunter by Japanese comics artist Yoshihiro Togashi, a character speculates about what kind of magical power other characters hold since such knowledge is of vital importance for him and his team to survive. Yoshihiro Togashi adopts lengthy verbal description to represent the character’s mind and his conjecture, but he also shows that despite the character’s careful consideration, his conclusion is still wrong with regard to the nature of the magical power of his major opponent. Meanwhile, not only could the verbal sequence represent unreliable mindset of a character, but the pictorial sequence is also capable of achieving the same effect. In fact, as Elizabeth MacFarlane displays in a critical essay on unreliability in graphic narrative, comic is a great medium to represent fantasy and imagination because the transition from reality to fantasy is often “seamless” with the assistance of concrete pictorial display (MacFarlane, 2013, p.51). For instance, in Rooftops by Australian artist Mandy Ord, a female character imagines that a man tries to harass her in an underground washroom. By illustrating the creepy scene imagined by a character in the pictorial sequence, the artist highlights the insecure and paranoiac mental state of that character. Similarly, in Big Baby by Charles Burns, the teenage protagonist tends to perceive things around him in an exaggerated and distorted way under the influence of horror comics he reads. In the pictorial sequence, the protagonist’s distorted mind is vividly captured and displayed through the visualization of his fantasies.

Consciousness of an impersonal and extradiegetic narrator

Scholars such as Robert Humphrey and Melvin Friedman indicate that literary text is qualified as stream-of-consciousness depiction only when the depicted consciousness could be attributed to one or more characters. As Humphrey emphasizes in his definition, stream-of-consciousness representation mainly aims at “revealing the psychic being of the characters” (Humphrey, 1954, p. 4). In some experimental works such as The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett, it is difficult to identify the speaker and narrator as any specific character in the story, and the narrator seems to be extradiegetic, a pure narratorial voice. Nevertheless, these works resemble dramatic monologues, and the narrator is by no means impersonal; on the contrary, the unnamed narrator is an emphatically overt agent by expressing his or her feelings and thoughts. They are still characters to a great extent, despite being unnamable. It is fair to conclude that in the field of literature, stream-of-consciousness depiction is usually associated with characters; it is not the consciousness of an impersonal narrator that is explored in stream-of-consciousness literature. In fact, the concept of “impersonal narrator” seems to be problematic in itself: How can a narrator be impersonal if it could speak and narrate? Since consciousness is always concerned with a thinking agent, how can something “impersonal” become the subject of consciousness depiction? However, in comics, the concepts of impersonal narrator and impersonal stream-of-consciousness depiction become possible by virtue of the pictorial sequence.

Thierry Groensteen, one of the most influential comic critics, points out that there are two kinds of narrators in comics. The first is “reciter” which mediates verbal narration, and is the narrator for the verbal sequence; the second is “monstrator” which refers to the agent that mediates pictorial narration; all elements which are “responsible for the rendering into drawn form of the story” could be attributed to the monstrator (Groensteen, 2013, p. 86). It is with the help of monstrator that “impersonal” stream-of-consciousness depiction becomes possible. Monstrator could express thoughts, feelings and emotions, etc. through pictorial mediation of selecting, juxtaposing, disrupting and reorganizing visual elements. In other words, it represents a consciousness. Meanwhile, such stream-of-consciousness depiction is impersonal in that “monstrator” is not a character in the story, but is the totality of narrative methods and means. Readers could probe into “the mind” of the monstrator via this type of depiction, instead of the mind of a character. It is important to admit that many pictorial sequences in comics take the form of “camera-eye,” and depict things in a seemingly objective way without any mediation or filtration of human consciousness. As Kai Mikkonen comments: “the non-character-bound perspective, generally speaking, is coded for transparency: while showing and framing a field of vision, it does not necessarily presuppose a human narrator or a reporter” (Mikkonen, 2017, p. 192). However, pictorial sequence could also use highly stylized methods to suggest attitudes, emotions, or thoughts. For example, in a graphic novel called City of Glass which was originally written by Paul Auster and then adapted into graphic narrative by David Mazzucchelli, many panels adopt stylized images with low narrativity in the pictorial sequence. Readers seem to drop into a mental maze of the monstrator who plays with visual elements at will. In most comics, the monstrator tries to imitate reality and the manipulation is covert; in others such as the second type of stream-of-consciousness depiction, the presence of a monstrator becomes overt and obvious, often caused by deviation from realistic or normative representations with low degree of narrativity in the pictorial sequence.

This type of stream-of-consciousness representation is often seen in poetic comics or abstract lyrical comics. For example, in Poems to see by: a comic artist interprets great poetry, Julian Peters adapts twenty some poems into short comics with minimal plot development. In many poems anthologized in this comic volume, a first-person and often unnamed narrator is adopted in the verbal sequence; in the pictorial sequence, most images represent content of the verbal sequence as most works are adapted from poems, but there are also abstract images or content that are not described in the original poems, but are originally designed by Julian Peters. The adaptation of “Caged Bird” (Fig. 1) is a case in point. Peters uses a lot of rectangles to form abstract and highly decorative images which look like cages under close examination (Peters, 2020, pp. 13–18). The purpose of the pictorial sequence is to highlight a plaintive mood caused by a restricted life instead of to portray action or event in a realistic way, thus a case of lyricality instead of narrativity. Meanwhile, the source of the plaintive mood is attributed to the monstrator instead of a specific character. Moreover, in some experimental comics, the pictorial sequence is featured by illogical and irrational images, which records and highlights a subjective and often disruptive consciousness.

Fig. 1
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© 2020 Julian Peters

Poems to see by (Peters, 2020, p. 13)

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The in-between type

However, in some comics, it is difficult to determine whether the graphic depiction is from the imagination and the mind of a character or more characters, or from an impersonal “monstrator.” This is the third type of stream-of-consciousness depiction in comics, and I will use a relatively unknown work called Education by John HankiewiczFootnote 2 to exemplify it. According to Bill Kartalopoulos, American artist John Hankiewicz self-published Education first in 2014 with only 50 copies (Kartalopoulos, 2015, p. 9); three years later, Fantagraphics Underground produced another version of it with more copies available. The story itself is very simple without much plot or drama: an unnamed protagonist gives up his job as a teacher of English writing after frustrating teaching experience; he visits abandoned railroad stations with his father; he also exchanges correspondence with a Canadian girl who sends him gold stars.

Education is characterized by ambiguity in meaning with regard to its pictorial sequence. Many scenes in Education could either be interpreted as the imagination or memory of the protagonist, or as something constructed by an impersonal graphic narrator or monstrator. For instance, in many panels, a girl seems to visit the same location as the protagonist does and even their movements look emphatically similar, though they never confront each other vis-à-vis (Fig. 2). Juxtaposition of the protagonist and the girl with the same background and movement could be interpreted as a method to explore a mysterious feeling of the protagonist: because he thinks of the girl constantly, he sometimes feels that the girl is present with him all the time and feels conflated with that person, imagining what she will do in the same position. However, such scenes could also be understood as collage panels which do not follow logic strictly but are just pictorial experiments by the monstrator. In another scene, the images show that the protagonist’s father and the girl sit in the classroom of the protagonist’s writing course and seem to become students. The protagonist talks from off-stage, giving comments on students’ works and writings tips in speech balloons, while in the pictorial sequence the father and the girl focus on their own business, indifferent to the protagonist’s teaching (Fig. 3). One classroom chair is suddenly replaced by another chair which seems to come from the defunct depot depicted elsewhere in this book. In the latter part of this scenario, the father gradually and mysteriously turns from a young man into an old man. He seems to be dead at one point, but then comes to life again; however, at the same time of his resurrection, the girl disappears from the scene. The classroom scene in the pictorial sequence verges on farce and is clearly not depicted in a realistic way. Meanwhile, it is difficult to decide whether such farcical scene is a part of the protagonist’s fantasy, or is the result of the experimental manipulation by the monstrator without association with a character’s mind. Moreover, helicopter seed is depicted once and again in this book and serves as a motif and symbol for nature and travel. However, in many panels, it is difficult to tell whether the helicopter seed is imagined or memorized in the protagonist’s mind, or is just an ornamental or symbolic image designed by the monstrator beyond the protagonist’s consciousness. In stream-of-consciousness novels, free indirect discourse often produces the effect of ambiguity by blurring the boundary between character and narrator: whether a thought comes from a character or the narrator often becomes indeterminate. In the pictorial sequence of stream-of-consciousness depiction in comics such as that in Education, we are confronted with similar situations.

Fig. 2
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© 2017 John Hankiewicz

Education (Hankiewicz, 2017, p. 121)

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Fig. 3
figure 3

© 2017 John Hankiewicz

Education (Hankiewicz, 2017, p. 38)

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What is worth mentioning is that in Education, objects and existences from different times and spaces are often juxtaposed to represent the process of free association. As Seymour Chatman explains, “free association” refers to the phenomenon in which the attention of the mind is “distracted from one object to another by an unexpected, sudden, or otherwise arresting or striking stimulus”; moreover, “it is the process of free association that is especially characteristic of stream-of-consciousness writings” (Chatman, 1978, p. 189). In Education, examples of free association are plenty. For instance, in the pictorial sequence, a greyhound appears out of nowhere at the abandoned depot. In the end of the book, a train at the depot suddenly turns on its light, and the dog gets on the train; it seems that the train is going to take the dog to embark on a new travel (Fig. 4). The clue for understanding this scene is given earlier at the beginning the story: the verbal sequence mentions that the protagonist’s father used to work in a railroad switch tower (p. 3), and he often talks about his trip to Denver in his early 20s to see the greyhound races (p. 7). This scene is fictional rather than realistic, since it is stated previously that the depot has been abandoned and not used any more. The greyhound and the train are associated here at the depot because of two reasons: firstly, they are both connected with the past of the protagonist’s father; secondly, the speed of the greyhound in the race competition is reminiscent of train which is also known for its fast speed. In this scene, it is still difficult to determine whether the train and the greyhound are something from the protagonist’s fantasy, or are experimental manipulation of pictorial elements by the monstrator.

Fig. 4
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© 2017 John Hankiewicz

Education (Hankiewicz, 2017, p. 134)

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Among three types of stream-of-consciousness depiction introduced above, the first type which depicts a character’s consciousness tends to assume a higher degree of narrativity than the other two types and the depiction of a character’s mind flows is often be accompanied by depiction of action and events; the mental reaction of the focused character to certain events is often minutely illustrated in such narratives. In contrast, the second and the third type feature a higher degree of lyricality. The first type is frequently adopted in comics of traditional style while the other two types are often associated with experimental or avant-garde comics. However, exceptions always exist and the statements above are just general observations.

Artist and critic Scott McCloud points out that in comics, “the landscape of the characters’ minds can be quite a sight” (McCloud, 1994, p. 132). However, few artists have dedicated themselves to the exploration of stream-of-consciousness depiction in comics. Most comics still follow a realistic and conventional style, and the potentials of representing mind in comics are not fully recognized yet. This paper attempts to trigger some interest in scholars and comics artists to consider the mechanism to represent mind in comics by exploring the concept of stream of consciousness in comics, and by dividing such depiction into three types. However, my discussion is by no means exhaustive regarding the topic. For one thing, though I have briefly looked at the method of free association used in Education, I have not given a systematic overview of basic techniques to represent stream of consciousness in comics. Hopefully, worthier stream-of-consciousness comics and thought-provoking criticism will make their appearance soon through the efforts of talented creators and insightful scholars.