This book takes an interdisciplinary and diverse critical look at the work of comic artist Ilan Manouach, situating it within the avant-garde movement more broadly.

Foreword Introduction: A Critical Situatedness of Comics Part 1: Textuality and Surfaces 1. Katz, Noirs & Tintin akei Kongo: Ilan Manouach's Critical Manifesto 2. Ilan Manouach's Abrégé de bande dessinée franco-belge: Ontography and the Past and Future of Stories 3. Whitewashing the Smudge: The Politics of Erasure and Unreadability in Ilan Manouach's Cascao 4. The Void that Challenged Narrative: A Poetics of Emptiness in Riki Fermier 5. Replacing and Reorganizing: A Discursive Arc about Cultural Production Part 2: Reading Practices 6. Reading Childly: Riki Fermier and Cascao 7. Disability, Comics and the Shapereader 8. Shapereader and the Limits of Touch 9. Blanco: On Blank and Illegible Books Part 3: Rethinking the Pasts and the Futures of Comics 10. Manouach Contrabandier: Countering Practices to Industrial Publishing. 11. Haunted by Tradition: Ilan Manouach and the Ghosts of BD Past 12. [CoCo]: Conceptual Comics and Online Archives 13. Can Comics Think? Automation on The Cubicle Island 14. Ilan Manouach: The Comic Book Hacker Afterword: Like a Robot Bereft of Its Function