The auteur as algorithm – subjectivity, trace and automation in comics self-publishing practice

Resistance to AI-assisted production has been vocal in alternative comics self-publishing communities. These communities place value on the auteur and the expression of subjectivity through drawing, often in the context of autobiographical comics. In practice this auteur model is enabled by an array of digital and mechanical tools automating procedures of production and distribution through online sharing. This paper will consider the inscription of the indexical trace of the body in small press comics practice to critique this resistance.
European small press has been described in modernist terms by Bart Beaty as an ongoing attempt to reinscribe the aura of the work of art into the mechanically reproduced object. As such, small press comics practice can be theorised as a set of continuously adapting re-inscription strategies responding to reproduction technologies.
AI image generation systems pose a particular challenge to these strategies. Through the training of AI programs on image information available on the internet, these systems simulate both the subjective trace of the body and the intersubjective trace of bodies in comics history. The auteur subject as cultural worker becomes estranged from lineages of cartooning which value commitment to history and craft.
Through an analysis of recent comics in which the redrawing of subjective digital experiences become both subject matter and procedure, I will argue that performances of drawing from, and sharing through online platforms contribute to an ecology of digital reconfiguration which increasingly reflects operations carried out by AI image generation systems.