From poly-medium to post-medium A discourse on non-evolutionary movements of manga and comics

This is a reflection on manga as a litmus to talk about two dimensions of comics at large. The first is the non-evolutionary nature of the comics medium. The article first argues that manga's and comics' perceived stages over time cannot be informed by the metaphor of evolution, but proceed-ed via "lateral" movements. We suggest that this form has mutated and is migrating into different technological realms, following non-ascending movements that date back to more ancient forms of visual sequential languages. The second dimension we discuss is in fact comics' transition from a "poly-medium" to a "post-medium" status. This article's focus on comics' post-mediality relates the new situation of media convergence where comics as content carrier is in turn carried through any possible image-supporting device, and this entails the loss of its status of a technology-specific form.

本文以漫画（manga）为试金石，探讨广义上漫画艺术的两个核心维度。其一为漫画媒介的非进化本质。文章首先指出，漫画（含manga）随时间推移所呈现的阶段特征，无法用进化隐喻来阐释，而是通过‘横向’演变展开。我们认为，这一艺术形式已发生变异，并正迁移至不同技术领域——其演变遵循非上升式路径，可追溯至更古老的视觉序列语言形态。其二为漫画从‘多元媒介’（poly-medium）向‘后媒介’（post-medium）状态的转型。本文聚焦漫画的后媒介性，旨在关联媒介融合的新态势——在此情境下，漫画作为内容载体，可通过任何图像支持设备进行传播，这意味着其技术特定形式的属性已不复存在。