Sequential Scholars

Our latest for @sequentialscholars.bsky.social explores the significance of names in Naoki Urasawa's "Monster." #ComicsStudies #Manga

How to Create a Social Media Setup for Publishing Scholarship YouTube video by Sequential Scholars

Happy to present our first online workshop on how other scholars can setup their social media to share their own work. We'd love to see more scholars taking this on and hopefully this can help get the ball rolling for some! #comicsstudies youtu.be/OD70PWiIFWY

Queering the Batman Universe (starring Renee Montoya) [3 of 4]
Renee also powerfully rejects the manipulations of Two-Face, who kidnaps her off a prison transport vehicle and brings her to an underground bunker, where he attempts to seduce her.

While we might view the palimpsestic effect as an unfair burden of pressure on the authors, it can equally be perceived as a rare and wonderful opportunity to engage a complex pre-established pathos – put very very simply: 40 years of TMNT all lead to this. 9/9

Within the broader cultural zeitgeist, The Last Ronin functions as a nexus in which all of the palimpsestic stories intersect, adding a richness of depth and nuance to the story that informs the tension it trades upon and the anticipation that drives it forward. 8/9

Through the palimpsest, the story (and even the marketing campaign) of The Last Ronin takes on an epic significance, with readers of all branches of TMNT witnessing a compounded and entangled experience that presents a grim future for the characters that they knew and loved. 7/9

The Last Ronin is thus not just the future of the original Mirage studios stories (as it was directly scripted for) but (on some level) of literally all iterations of TMNT that the reader has experienced, including animated series, games, and even recess role play. 6/9

This finding has remarkable power in a comics industry where characters and franchises can extend across decades, reboots, creator runs, and any number of other variables by which we might try to draw borders around a particular comics story. 5/9

For Dillon (riffing on Thomas De Quincey) the process of reading palimpsests results in a process “in which ‘our deepest thoughts and feelings pass to us through perplexed combinations of concrete objects…in compound experiences incapable of being disentangled.” 4/9

“The palimpsest reifies and aids the understanding of current ideas and concepts; at the same time, those ideas and concepts enable a reinscription of the palimpsest that sophisticates our understanding of its complex structure and logic.” 3/9

In literary arts, a palimpsest is an idea, concept, character or story that has been reinscribed upon a pre-existing one and thus the most valuable comics properties in the world are usually palimpsests. Scholar Sarah Dillon describes the effect of palimpsests as follows:” 2/9

Even before it came out, the concept of The Last Ronin struck a chord with generations of TMNT readers, and how that resonance was traded upon by the creative team of the story can be effectively approached through the concept of the palimpsest. 1/9

a page from “Monster,” showing Tenma and Lunge exchanging names.

Such is the grace and complexity of Urasawa’s writing, that its meaning is endlessly debated – thus reflecting a story that surfaces the nuanced ways by which our names can define us, but, more importantly, also how they can consume us entirely. 12/12

a panel from “Monster,” showing an empty hospital bed.

The lingering question (amongst others), however, is whether Johan enacted this ending in the conclusion of “Monster” or whether his plan was thwarted by Tenma, thus breaking the destined outcome. The reader is left only with an empty hospital bed upon which to hinge their speculation. 11/12

a still from the anime adaptation of “Monster,” showing the ending of the storybook.

In the end of “The Nameless Monster” the divided selves are finally reconciled when “The boy ate up the monster who went west. At last he had found a name, but there was no longer anyone to call him by it. Such a shame, because Johan was such a wonderful name.” 10/12

Cover art from “Monster,” showing Tenma.

It is ironic then that clearing his name, for Tenma, becomes a process of helping others, such that his name becomes deeply powerful as testament to his character, even as it puts him on wanted lists. There are thus two societies here valuating Tenma’s name – one informal, one institutional. 9/12

a panel from “Monster,” showing Johan asking another character “can you see me?”

Tenma, as a wanted man, is haunted by his name and the way that it labels him as a criminal, threatening his freedom and putting him in a position of having to restore his good name through his pursuit of Johan and the mystery behind him. 8/12

a page from “Monster” showing writing left at Johan’s crime-scene.

Johan, who quotes the storybook in blood at his crime scenes, becomes a master of manipulation, hiding in the shadows, taking on multiple identities, and growing stronger by methodically striving to erase his past. 7/12

a panel from “Monster” showing Tenma confronting Johan.

This duality (relating to our previous thread on the shadow self) invites the reader to view Tenma and Johan as two sides of the same Monster, each moving in different directions, each seeking a name (at least in the metaphorical sense) and each seeking to grow stronger. 6/12

a page from the fictional storybook “The Nameless Monster

In the storybook, a monster demands people give them their name so it can grow strong. Ironically, it’s from this book that Johan takes the name Johan. Furthermore, the nameless Monster, at the outset, splits into two: “One went east. The other headed west.” 5/12

the cover of the fictional storybook “The Nameless Monster”

A key subplot in “Monster” concerns the symbolic reappearance of a fictional children’s storybook called “The Nameless Monster” that drives Johan’s approach to life, featuring the line: “Who needs a name? I'm perfectly happy without one. After all, that's what we are - nameless monsters." 4/12

a screen capture of Rei Skywalker from Star Wars

Emmelhainz concludes that names “act symbolically to make a shifting identity or self-narrative manifest in the social context.” They are ways in which a person attains and defines their presence within a society. Names give us presence in a society and we are beholden to them. 3/12

a screen capture of the title of Emmelhainz’s article

In “Naming a New Self,” scholar Celia Emmelhainz explores the “unstable social balance between an individual’s interest in self-expression and society’s priority on the stable identification of persons within a given social sphere.” 2/12

A page from the fictional storybook “The Nameless Monster”

What in a name? Appellation is one of the more intriguing symbols in Naoki Urasawa’s “Monster,” a story that actively explores the lengths that human beings will go to build, protect, absorb, or erase a name and, with it, their place in a society. #monster #urasawa 1/12

Queering the Batman Universe (starring Renee Montoya) [2 of 4]
After Renee is outed, her coworkers immediately subject her to homophobic teasing and slurs.

Queering the Batman Universe (starring Renee Montoya) [1 of 4]
In an article for Autostaddle, May Rude calls Gotham Central “one of the defining books for queer women in comics.” This legacy begins with the award-winning story “Half a Life” starring Renee Montoya.

An image of Mark Zuckerberg

“or when Mark Zuckerberg’s algorithms prioritise engagement metrics over the demonstrable well-being of billions…they are replicating the inhumane logic of Kinderheim 511: human lives are deemed expendable in service to the relentless machinery of “growth” and consolidated power.” 9/9

An image of Elon Musk

Furthermore, despite the series being set during the cold war, Linblom sees staunch resonance to the systemic thinking of prominent modern industrialists. When Elon Musk guts Twitter/X, unleashing torrents of misinformation,” 8/9

A page from Monster showing Tenma interacting with others

For Lindblom, Dr. Tenma is the perfect antithesis to this kind of systemic thinking. Tenma is able to “disrupt the logic of control” by embracing the complexity of humanity – something we see primarily in the complex social and cultural networks that Tenma helps throughout the series. 7/9

A page from Monster of Johan directing Tenma to shoot him in the head.

“The “social engineering” of Kinderheim 511 is a programme for the systematic production of trauma, premised on the violent erasure of individual identity to engineer a “perfect,” emotionless leader.” 6/9