2025/06/30 by Laser, Bjorn
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · #Comic #Comics and Graphic Narratives #German Colonialism and Identity Studies #Graphic Novel #Multilingualism #Multimodality #Psychiatry, Mental Health, Neuroscience #Semiotics
paper · doi:10.13136/2724-4202/1696
openalex publication_date 2025/06/30 · openalex created_date 2025/12/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
Comics have a rich multilingual heritage. Historically, they emerged in linguistically diverse US immigrant milieus. For decades, they were dominated by genres such as adventure or superhero, full of (presumably) translingual encounters. The world explored by the classic traveling hero of comics often seems to be governed by a common language everybody can understand. Yet, through their multimodal combination of simultaneity and sequentiality comics can create multilingual spaces and situations. The article explores the semiotic devices comics use to depict, indicate, or evoke multilingualism and how Mikael Ross uses them in his acclaimed graphic novel Der verkehrte Himmel (Il nirvana è qui in the Italian edition), a fast-paced crime and coming-of-age story set among Vietnamese-German youth in Berlin.