Searching for a Common Ancestry: Linguistic and Biological Analogies in Comic Art

Abstract

Similar drawingssometimes appear in comics, which could have been copied from old comics orcould have been generated independently by chance. Once defined if the image isa copy or not the aim of the present work was a proposal to analyze similarimages using the analogy concept since two disciplines, linguistic andbiological. The linguistic concept of analogy could be used when the recurringelement or the image is in the speech of the copy and the recreations, On theother hand, when the images are similar by chance, the concept of biologicalanalogy could be used and the images interpreted using the theory of thecollective unconscious. In this brief note, we show some examples of how theuse of tools outside visual disciplines can be useful when standardizedmethodologies for the analysis of recurring images are lacking. The authorssuggest in conclusion that the aesthetic experience is not only about observing, but about having the time and thecontextual framework to find similarities and interconnections, and hithertonon-existent patterns.