Comics have successfully, and some would say flawlessly, transitioned between comic books, comic strips, television series, and feature films. First becoming prominent in 1920s, comics featured “pulp heroes”, action heroes displaying typical human abilities and experiencing normal but amusing adventures, and later matured into highlighting the more mainstream superheroes. However, even pre-superhero, comics advanced past comic strips to radio almost immediately with characters like Popeye and Doc Samson. The emergence of characters like The Phantom and The Clock in the early 1930s led into The Golden Age (1938-1956) which featured the most popular characters such as Superman, Batman, Fantastic Four, Captain America, etc. in comic strips, books, and radio. Although popularity began to decline at the end of World War II, comics have always had a passionate, loyal following that seems to be growing over the past couple decades. With increasing presence in films, video games, and television series, some would consider comics as “transmedia” due to the constant media-hopping starting from strips to radio to film. However, it is important to recognize the inherent difference between transmedia and media: transmedia is not a type of media, instead, it is a description of the mode. With this in mind, comics are not the media, but a transmediatic mode.
Transmedia, more often than not, is referred to as “transmedia storytelling”. According to the Director of Media Psychology Research Center, Dr. Pamela Rutledge, “Transmedia storytelling uses multiple media platforms to tell a narrative across time…The process is cumulative and each piece adds richness and detail to the story world.”(1) Thus, transmedia storytelling is a narrative, a process, not an actual medium. The practice is used so that one mode can be supported by several media. In this case, transmedia storytelling is used so that comics can be supported by several media. This statement is (or should be) noncontroversial. However, objections begin to rise when W.J.T Mitchell directly compares transmedia and modern media, “As media, comics are more like cinema and the computer, capable of remediating every other medium. They are a transmedium that, in contrast to the modern media, maintain a direct link to the most primitive forms of mark-making…” The comparison makes little sense because transmedia describe the strategy used within media while modern media define the actual means of communication. Mitchell goes to argue that, “Comics is transmediatic in its openness to multiple alternative frameworks in terms of style, form, structure, material support and technical platform.” I wouldn’t disagree with this statement if “transmediatic” was defined as containing a narrative across multiple media platforms. In fact, the history of Batman embodies this. Created in 1939, Batman comic books gained popularity, except for a dip in the 1950s and early 1960s, until the comic achieved a television series in 1966. Later, the movie Batman debuted in 1989 and was followed by several other films and adaptations (2). However, this proves that Batman is the mode, not the medium. Its ability to transfer from different media makes it transmediatic, but not the medium itself.
Depending on how you define “transmedia”, it can be argued that comics are transmediatic. However, I only believe this if we are going by Dr. Rutledge’s definition, and not Mitchell’s.
(1) http://athinklab.com/transmedia-storytelling/what-is-transmedia-storytelling/
(2) http://ultimatebatmancomicswebsite.weebly.com/batman-history.html
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