Autographics and the History of the Form: Chronicling Self and Career in Will Eisner’s Life, in Pictures and Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life

Using the notion of “autographics,” this essay examines how Will Eisner, in Life, in Pictures (2007) and Yoshihiro Tatsumi, in A Drifting Life (2009), deploy the graphic form to illustrate the development of graphic art, incorporating the story of their artistic trajectory with a critical look at the development of the medium in their time. The texts become exceptional documents that trace the interconnections among politics, society, art, economy, and idealism in the United States and Japan before and after the Second World War. © 2011 University of Hawai'i Press