Froggy People: Anthropomorphism and Slice-of-Life in Autobiographical Comics

This essay explores how the following three comics categories overlap and interact with one another: slice-of-life, anthropomorphic, and autobiographical. I search for reasons why comic makers would choose to tell their own daily life stories using animal avatars rather than their own faces. While each of these three categories has been studied extensively individually, I hope to find additional insights by observing how comic makers employ the genres together as storytelling devices. Each category has unique narratological power which impacts the reader’s experience. For example, anthropomorphism affects how the author and reader internalize and relate to characters. Slice-of-life comics are indicative of cultural performance. And, autobiographical comics communicate a sense of trust between the reader and author about what is true. I examine these attributes by analyzing the work of comic artists who play in between these genres, with the help of frameworks laid by comic and visual culture scholars. Ultimately, I demonstrate how the combination of these genres can have useful narrative potential.