black titanic 99Mtani’s faithfulness to Cameron’s film has a considerable effect on
the way he organizes his graphic novel. Most panels have the rectangular
shape of a television screen, which leaves almost no room for more than
two panels on each page. Rarely is a page filled with a single panel alone
or with three panels. This gives Mtani’s work a rather static appearance.
Moreover, since he took only limited license to create his own images, it
is almost impossible to grasp the plot from the pictures and the speech
bubbles alone, in contrast to many other comics in Tanzania and else-
where. W hat governs the story, in fact, is the written narrative that runs
throughout the sixteen volumes at the top of each panel. Like Cameron’s
film, the elderly Rose narrates the story in first person singular. The major
part of the graphic novel is marked as a visualization of Rose’s memory,
something Mtani makes visible on a formal level when he draws the frame
lines of these memory panels with little edges and dents, alluding to old
manuscript pages or photo prints that have changed hands many times.
Even the panels that depict the narrative frame of Rose’s memory—
elderly Rose telling her story to the team of treasure hunters, which is kept
formally distinct by straight frame lines—are linked by a running text
told in third person by an absent narrator. As written texts, both types of
narrative serve the same purpose; they bridge the “gutter,” as comic theo-
rists call the empty space between panels (McCloud 1994: 66), and thus
help the reader to connect the various pictures with one another. Mtani’s
work leaves less room for readers to participate actively than other com-
ics, which invite their readers to use their imaginations to fill the gutter.
Thanks to the written narratives, however, his graphic novel works even
for readers who have not seen the film. This is a major difference compared
with the Nigerian remake, which as I have argued, takes it for granted that
the audience is familiar with Cameron’s Titanic.
Nevertheless, Mtani references the film frequently. This is done no-
ticeably in the first volume of his series, which features a full-page photo
of Céline Dion with a caption explaining that her song served as part of
the soundtrack for the film, a page with the lyrics from “My Heart Will
Go On,” and a color photo of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio on
the back cover. Likewise, in his rendition of the “first kiss” at the bow
of the ship, Mtani references the soundtrack and urges his readers to
participate actively: “My brother, reader, at that time the song My heart