Nathalie wrote:
“Would you get more of a sense of the story if you did or did not have to wait between issues/volumes? Or does it not matter because maybe Satrapi’s ambivalence is intentional (as opposed to being the product of weak structure)?”
Analyzing these comments in the wake of hearing a bunch of people’s dissatisfaction with Persepolis’ ending, it’s hard to re-contextualize the book’s structure and think of it in terms of a serial. In the end, though, I think that Persepolis’ storyline may have made more sense in increments, as opposed to reading it in one blast straight through. I think the problem with any collected edition of serialized comic is that it removes the built-in anticipation and sense of momentum that one feels presented with a story incrementally. Being presented with chunks of a story one at a time instead of as a whole forces our brains to work much as a collator instead of a passive sponge, and it makes for a more committed, attentive reader, as opposed to one speed-reading his or her way through a work. It’s a very old trick, and one used by nearly every form of media.
You almost have to wonder if that sense of momentum (maybe that’s not the right word, inertia, perhaps?) that you get from a serialized work is a part of the artist’s process. The breaks in the story line are as scripted as the character’s words and as useful in developing a sense of pace and motion. Maybe that’s why people have said that Persepolis doesn’t have much a storyline: by serializing her own life and contexualizing it with the troubles in Iran, Satrapi imbued it with a sense of linear progression that we don’t get by having it presented in one, semi-meandering chunk.