Conclusion
Such is the complexity of MALM that this brief examination of its status as a comic has barely scratched the surface. Comics theorists, particularly McCloud and Groensteen, have a tremendous amount to offer such a text and this alone should encourage those studying comics to continue to include instruction manuals such as MALM within their spectrum of thought. Yet, the original claim that an understanding of MALM could potentially contribute to an understanding of comics has been threatened by the fact that MALM strongly relies on its para-text for meaning. Whilst understanding MALM as a comic is instructional for a critic focused on MALM as a text, such a reading’ s contribution to comics theory now appears more limited. This is not to say that this study has no value. However, rather than expanding the boundaries of the domain of comics, it may have provided evidence of the limits of the field. The main theoretical conclusion that can be drawn from thinking of MALM as a comic stands in relation to its para-text, yet most comics lack an equivalent specific physical referent. Therefore, this conclusion is limited to the following two claims: firstly, that MALM, whilst having comic elements and benefiting from analysis as a comic, is constituted by aspects that are clearly beyond the scope of comics, and secondly, that its ability to contribute to comics theory is limited to certain contexts.
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