Remove Original from the Glass
摘要
This chapter starts by pondering how the apparatus of photocopying, a form of printing predicated on attraction, is figured in various minicomics as a way of talking about desire, and I read Raina Telgemeier’s comic “Black Sand” (2002) as an allegory for the forces of attraction bound up in photocopying. I then consider how the self is trapped by photocopiers, from fingers inadvertently showing up in photocopied documents to people deliberately copying their own body parts. For security purposes, Americans were urged to photocopy key documents such as birth certificates and passports, but the proliferation of documentation risks multiplying and othering the self. The notion that photocopying generates surplus selves—an unmanageable glut of information and identity—is the theme of Arn Saba’s comic “Another Day at the Office” (1985). I conclude by considering how the miniature women in Lynda Barry’s Girls and Boys (1979–1980) offer a way to conceptualize minicomics themselves, arguing that minicomics transform their ephemerality and vulnerability into power and control over the reader.