THE GAME WITH THE READER IN THE COMIC DIOMEDES, BY LOURENÇO MUTARELLI

Abstract

This research analyzes the game played with the reader in the comic book Diomedes: a trilogia do acidente, by Lourenço Mutarelli. The comic book Diomedes was initially published in separate volumes, with the first one being published in 1997. Only in 2012 did the publisher Companhia das Letras bring together all the stories, transforming them into a single issue. The trilogy narrates the dilemmas of detective Diomedes, an anti-hero who has never solved any cases. In this production, it is noted that Mutarelli attributes characteristics to Diomedes that refer to the degradation of the human being, highlighting problems such as brutality, social imbalance and loneliness faced by postmodern subjects. In this sense, the objective of this study is to discuss the game of the Aesthetic Effect that the comic book Diomedes provokes in the reader and to describe the way in which the reader updates and fills the empty spaces in the work. This is a qualitative research with an exploratory bibliographical character, whose theoretical bases were sought in physical and virtual libraries, supported by the basic precepts of the theory of the Aesthetic Effect, by Wolfgang Iser (1996; 1999), as well as the contributions of Luiz Costa Lima (2006), Jean-Paul Sartre (2004), Borba (2003) and Assis (2016). It is also important to mention that the comic appeals to the reader's emotions, since each character presented in the work carries some kind of social drama or misfortune in life. This brings the reader closer to Diomedes' narrative, by exploring feelings that are characteristic of the life of the postmodern man and his constant internal conflicts.