Graphic novel Brightly colored pictures of the horror of a teenage pregnancy
In her graphic novel "Bauchlandung", Wanda Dufner tells of the witch hunt she experienced as a minor with a child in her womb. The fact that she is so strong today should encourage other victims. But the book is also frightening.
03.03.2025, 11:18
SDA
There is this image of the stake. Five girls, tied into a bundle with a rope, stand on top. Men and fabulous human-animal creatures light the pile with torches, others wave pitchforks, a spear or throw stones at the young women. "They're having their day!" they shout, "the witches!" The flames flicker red and yellow in the purple sky. And above it all, in handwritten capital letters, is the comment of 17-year-old narrator Noemi: "Being a woman and everything that had to do with it, including the fertility that now existed, was deeply embarrassing for me!"
It is these full-page, drastic images that characterize the graphic novel "Bauchlandung" by 33-year-old Aargau illustrator Wanda Dufner. In an interplay of comic sequences in boxes, double-page panels and monochrome color pages, they tell the story of what girls in this country experience when they become women. It is shockingly familiar, and the first time the reader leafs through the book, she asks herself: hasn't anything changed, not even for this generation?
The current topic of the abortion ban
On the threshold from child to woman, many teenagers are like Noemi. For the first time, they experience that their female body does not belong to them alone, but is ogled, judged and evaluated from all sides. That others own it and want to control it. That the female body is also a battlefield of ideologies, especially in the case of pregnancy. The ban on abortion, which is currently being discussed in many places or has already been reintroduced, shows that even in the 21st century, female self-determination cannot be taken for granted.
Particularly perfidious: in Wanda Dufner's autobiographical graphic novel, the abortion ban appears in the form of the fun-loving and loving grandmother, who is very religious. She is the only one who is happy that her granddaughter wants to keep the child, because an abortion would not be pleasing to God, and because she herself is looking forward to having a great-grandchild. But she doesn't offer any real support to Noemi, who is hostile on all sides. No, the women don't come off any better than the men in this book. In the picture of the funeral pyre, women stand on the edge of the action and look away.
Animal symbolism and strong colors
Protagonist Noemi clearly resembles her creator in terms of her illustrations, although she is usually distorted into the grotesque in the best comic style. Noemi's hair is interesting: striped yellow and black, it is reminiscent of a tiger's fur. It's not a kitten, it's a tiger inside her - how else could she survive the unadorned impositions depicted in the book? Painful sex with an emotionally cold, macho boyfriend, for example, who leaves her on average four times a week and shows little interest in their child?
This "boyfriend" is dark-skinned and unbearably self-absorbed - Dufner doesn't give a damn about political correctness. The dear God looks like a warrior of God, and there is no holy harmony for mother and child in the usual fragrant pastel shades. Instead, Dufner uses bright contrasting colors to show how a monstrous baby sews up the perineal tear suffered by the mother at birth with a sadistic grin.
At the same time, these colors radiate strength and joie de vivre. The fact that Wanda Dufner now also designs brightly colored dresses and wears them as a model on her own behalf shows that she is no longer embarrassed about being a woman, that she shows herself, that she wants to be seen. And she is seen: For "Bauchlandung", she received the Comic Scholarship of the German-speaking Cities of Switzerland in 2021, and in 2023 she was nominated for the Berthold Leibinger Stiftung Comic Book Prize.
She studied visual communication with a focus on illustration fiction in Lucerne and her studio is now located in Lenzburg in the former Wisa-Gloria factory. This is where "the good toys" were once made. Today, Wanda Dufner develops workshops for children on site. Her own child is now 16 years old.
*This text by Tina Uhlmann, Keystone-SDA, was realized with the help of the Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation.
