Intellect

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Authors:  Laurence Grove 
DOI: 10.1386/stic.1.1.149/7

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Abstract
Like the graphic novel itself, Harry Morgan (born 1961, pen name of Christian Marc Wahl) crosses disciplines and mixes theory with practice. He is a well-established novelist (La Reine du ciel [The Queen of Heaven]; Paris: Rivages, 1997) and artist, but is probably best known to readers of Studies in Comics for his analysis of the historical and theoretical context of ‘drawn literatures’: his Principes des littératures dessinées [Principles of Drawn Litteratures] (Angoulême: Éditions de l’An 2, 2003) explores the structure and development of the graphic novel in terms of literary antecedents, leaning particularly on examples taken from the Victorian era. Le Petit Critique illustré, co-authored with Manuel Hirtz and now in its second edition (Paris: PLG, 2005; first edition 1997), provides the definitive bibliography of secondary sources on the bande dessinée in particular and comics in general. Regular updates are added on Morgan’s site, ‘The Adamantine’ (www.theadamantine.free.fr), which provides a quirky and often forthright exploration of critical approaches to the genre. In 2009 Morgan received a doctorate from the Université de Paris VII for his monumental work contrasting techniques in European and North American traditions, drawing specifically on the creations of Jack Kirby, Alain Saint-Ogan and Jean-Claude Forest. In spanning the boundaries of continents, time and language, Morgan’s analysis is unique amongst the scholarship of comics. The following interview was conducted by e-mail in December 2009.