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Abstract
This article explores Paco Roca's graphic novel La Casa (2015) with attention to the structuring role of architecture at two interrelated levels of analysis. At the level of theme and represented content, the comic employs architecture as a mediator of emotional connections and familial grief. At the level of comics form and visual narrative structure, artistic choices underscore the architectural properties of La Casa's own construction. Repurposing the notion of 'iconostasis' from Andrei Molotiu provides a way of bringing together the reader's self-directed perusal of the comic's page and the characters' self-directed navigation of their grief. The characters' collaborative construction of a pergola as an architectural addition to their father's house holds two meanings. It provides a degree of emotional closure, further contributing to the architectural theme of the comic, and it pulls the architectural structure of the work towards a cathartic narrative resolution.
Keywords: architecture, grief, house construction, iconostasis, multiframe, page layout, Spain
Francisco Martínez Roca (1969-) has crafted an important body of work dating from the 1990s and has gained increasing attention during the 2000s. Perhaps most significantly, his graphic novel Arrugas [Wrinkles] (2008) - first published as Rides (2007) in France, where it won recognition as one of the top twenty of the year - received two awards in Spain and has been translated into Dutch, English, Finnish, Italian and Japanese.1 La Casa [The house], originally published in 2015, is yet another of the author's widely translated award-winning titles.2 The Bilbao-based publishing house Astiberri has released the comic in Spanish, Catalan and Basque editions. Moreover, La Casa has received the Mejor Cómic Nacional [Nation's Best Comic] of 2015 designation from the CEGAL (Confederación Española de Gremios y Asociaciones de Libreros [Spanish Confederation of Bookseller Guilds and Associations]), the Premio Zona Cómic [Comic Zone Award] for 2016 and the 'Star 2016' (best comic of the year) designation from Le Parisien for the French edition, La Maison, published by Delcourt.
In La Casa's brief epilogue, the famed contemporary Spanish novelist Fernando Marías admits the possibility of a variety of perspectives on the graphic novel but underscores the one he regards as essential: 'Paco Roca ha hecho un libro a partir de los sentimientos generados por la muerte de su padre. ¿Puede haber...