Wokker. Notes on a Surrealist comic strip

Abstract

This essay explores the creation and development of a British comic strip, Wokker (1971-1999), and its connections with the surrealist movement. Although the strip is remarkable for its content and formalist properties, it remains obscure both because of its publishing circumstances, and because it does not fit easily into a history of comics. Rather it can be argued that its conceptual roots can be traced to the artistic ferment that happened in Paris in the 1920s (with Breton as a key reference point), and that it represents a very English, and late-flowering, example of the surrealist idea.

Keywords

• counter-culture
• poetry
• postmodernity
• surrealism
• underground