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Contents
Historical Background 5
Bibliography 40
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- Detail from McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. (48)
“Essentially a hybrid form, part verbal and part pictorial, the latter must be considered
its primary feature…it cannot be dominated by text” (2)
-Kunzle, David. The Early Comic Strip: Narrative Strips and Picture Stories in
the European Broadsheet from c.1450 to 1825.
David Kunzle’s model of ‘a hybrid form’ (above) is, on its most fundamental
levels, hard to dispute. The comic form has, both historically and today, been
essential to interpret film. Notable definitions of comics have differed somewhat from
the ‘hybrid thesis’ – namely, McCloud’s “Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in
deliberate sequence,”2 but even this does not specifically deny the interplay of picture
and image, still allowing the use of non-pictorial elements in the phrase ‘and other
images’.
Where Kunzle has attracted criticism of late however, is in his assertion of the
2
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Kitchen Sink Press, 1993. (9)
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comics, still derive more of their meaningful content from their verbal component 3.
More fundamentally, others have objected to the very philosophical premise upon
which Kunzle’s statement is founded. David Carrier’s rebuttal reads like a polemic
justifying the cultural ‘worth’ of comics, but his statement is powerful in the way it
questions our inherent definition of narrative: “[Kunzle] assumes that a narrative must
be either visual or verbal – and comics must be a mixture of the two. This I deny.
Comics in my view are essentially a composite art: when they are successful, they
very basic level Carrier is correct, but that he stops short of the more profound truth
that comics offer. The medium of comics is so thorough in its melding of visual and
verbal that its very existence calls into question the doctrine of the discrete natures of
verbal and visual discourse. Such a doctrine is understandable, stemming from the
this critical mindset is also very destructive to the form, as it necessitates judging a
comic’s literary content against that of its literary predecessors, and its visual content
against that of its visual predecessors. Looking again at McCloud’s illustration on the
first page, we can see how the separate arts of text and image push outwards in their
ideas, and the visual becoming the most effective representative of reality it can.
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abstract as possible to deliver narrative clarity, while giving the text a less abstract
and more representative function in order to grant it visually aesthetic qualities and
make it work harmoniously with the image. The ‘two forms’ model is incompatible
with comics as a medium, and inevitably damages the critical status of that medium in
its reductivity. Logically impossible as it may seem, I therefore believe that finding a
single, unitary point on the axis between visual and verbal technique is the only way
of comprehending comics as a single, unitary form, and this is what I shall attempt to
Historical Background
I should first explain the necessity of this process. The ‘two forms’ model is
far from baseless, using 1800 years of art as its genealogy. While my argument sets
itself up in contention with the ‘classical’ model, Kunzle’s judgement of the primacy
of pictorial narrative can also be regarded as appropriate within the context of his
particular research. Kunzle’s focus of research was, as his title suggests, the early
comic strip, ending at a date of 1825, and from such a period emerged his definition,
which has been later misappropriated. In fact, the works of the time held themselves
Looking Glass derived their humour primarily from the nature of their distorted
visuals, while more sequential ‘strip art’ still predominantly confined text to the
outside of the frame, used to clarify and caption the image (see figure 0.2 for an
example).
Such practices had their antecedents in history - William Hogarth’s Gin Lane
(figure 0.3) and Beer Street featured text as no more than an illuminating caption,
distinguish the medium from the adjective ‘comic’, meaning humorous.
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seen as incidental to the extent that the works themselves were frequently reprinted
with the text omitted. This methodology extends to sequential art - the often-cited
‘father’ of the comic strip, The Bayeux Tapestry, features a distinct division between
the visual and verbal content, with the verbal content firmly marginalised. Such a
division persists beyond British culture, and far further into the past. The ultimate
juxtaposition of words and pictures is a physical one, in the form of Trajan’s Column
(113AD): while the bulk of the hundred-foot high column is dominated by the
spiralling visual narrative of the emperor Trajan’s victory over the Dacians, this is
only verbally acknowledged on the column’s base. The recurring pattern, one that
versed in the art of the independent pictorial narrative, most particularly fine art.
Hogarth’s prints are effective by such standards because the image entirely shoulders
the burden of conveying meaning. Returning to Gin Lane, we see that the ‘story’ of
singer, the hanging barber, and even the many crossing diagonal lines of the
composition itself all frame the central ‘horror’ of the drunk mother dropping her
baby, making a narrative collage of many simultaneous scenes. The modern comic is
given unfair treatment when compared to this older form, as it has evolved to perform
a different function, and as such must be judged on its own terms as a hybrid form
Therefore, over the course of my investigation I will attempt to meld the two
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forms together on a critical level by examining their extremes, but applying to each
the traditional criteria of their opposite form in order to test the validity of their
will be examined for their use of verbal narrative technique, to see the extent to which
a well-crafted set of visuals can tell a story as much as it shows it. In Chapter 2, the
words of the comic form will be given an opposite treatment – by examining them in
the context of iconography and composition, I hope to illustrate the way symbolic
language can utilise the powers of visual aesthetics. These two investigations will
ultimately highlight the flexibility of comics’ media, and thus present the case against
The extraordinary breadth of comic works allows this analysis to have unique
acclaim (such as Maus by Art Spiegelman), popular success (Remi’s Tintin, and
others), or marked artistic innovation (particularly in recent works such as the new
iteration of Tank Girl now solo-written by Alan Martin, with new illustration by
Ashley Wood). In this way, I hope to demonstrate not only how comics can use their
unitary form in artistic exploration but also in the pursuit of both critical and popular
success. Regrettably, the nature of many of these ‘unusual’ texts means that very little
specific critical material exists. For this reason, much critical material in comics’
the works of Will Eisner and Scott McCloud), and other works only tangentially
related, often written in outright isolation from the comic form (such as Richard
Grusin’s Remediation).
However, the possibilities this body of critical material affords speaks very
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well of the inclusiveness and universality of the comic form, and enables us to
examine comics in the broader context of other media. This unique situation allows
for a conclusion in Chapter 3 where I shall define comics’ place on the visual-verbal
axis, then tentatively suggest the ways in which our new definition of comics
highlights the expressive potential of the form, and redefines our very notion of
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For the last hundred years, the subject of reading has been connected quite directly to
the concept of literacy; learning to read has meant learning to read words…but reading
has gradually come under closer scrutiny. Indeed, reading can be thought of as a form
of perceptual activity. The reading of words is one manifestation of this activity; but
there are many others – the reading of pictures, maps, circuit diagrams, musical
notes…
- Tom Wolf, Harvard Educational Review (Aug 1977)
On our visual-verbal, axis, the visual element is the pole most readily
identified with the medium of comics, and so we shall begin with Kunzle’s “primary
feature”. As an epigraph to this chapter, I have isolated one of the simpler panels from
Frank Miller’s 300, a graphic retelling of the battle of Thermopylae, and a well-
entire double-page spread, presents in tableau the moment when Spartan king
Leonidas leaps to cut the whip from the arm of a Persian general. Within the single
image we are able to deduce a series of events, both sequential and simultaneous, as
well as some of their more aesthetically notable details; it is obvious to the reader that
Leonidas is not simply hanging in the air, just as it is evident who strikes whom, and
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what sound emanates. How is a static image able to encapsulate such a progression of
events, which are by definition the change between one single state and another? The
generic comic panel: “In its most economical state, comics employ a series of
repetitive images and recognisable symbols. When these are used again and again to
convey similar ideas, they become a language…it is this disciplined application that
aspects of the above panel into a unified whole. This process can be expressed
The main clause of this ‘visual sentence’ is the severing of a hand. The subject
of this severing is Leonidas, while the Persian is the object direct. Miller actually
leaves the subject-object as a mystery in the central panel, only clarifying who is who
focusing upon the details of the action. This simple relationship is then fleshed out
with the visual adjectives of posture, gesture, and colourisation. Finally, the ‘moment’
Leonidas’ blade7. All this is juxtaposed with the unrelated verbal narrative taking
Such a ‘verbalisation’ of the image demonstrates that using the comic’s well-
defined set of conventions, specific action-based scenes can be portrayed that can
perform a dual function: not only reproducing the visual element, but also depicting
abstracts such as the flow of action, and the nature of such an action, even within a
6
Eisner, Will: Comics and Sequential Art. Paramus, New Jersey: Poorhouse Press, 2006. Pg. 8
7
Visual narrative allows even the adverb itself to be modified, by visually manipulating the word as it
appears in the panel, but such textual matters are a subject for a later chapter.
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static space. Both pictures and words have similar capacities for narration, so much so
that these narrative strategies can be expressed in similar terms. This means that either
discipline can be used to convey the essential ‘meaning’ of any one panel, a choice
It might appear, then, that the other ‘unused form’ is left out of the process,
but this is not so. “When pictures carry the weight of clarity in a scene, they free
our 300 panel above, the visual depiction is so effective that the conventions of verbal
However, this process can operate in both ways, as McCloud continues: “On the other
hand, if the words lock in the ‘meaning’ of a sequence, the pictures can really take
off”8.
It is tempting to assume that this visual latitude means little more than
allowing the pictures to ‘illustrate’ the words (as indeed they often did with the
executed comic’s visual component is far from redundant, being used to generate
powerful sub-narratives that can either complement or challenge the ‘reality’ of the
textual content.
and image in a way that allows the structural conceits of the comic to echo its content.
8
McCloud, Scott: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Kitchen Sink Press, 1993.
(157-9)
9
Such as the Illustrated London News (1848), Penny Illustrated Paper (1861), and The Illustrated
Sporting and Dramatic News (1874).
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V takes as its themes the conflict between narrative and reality, the nature of truth,
and order versus anarchy; all these concerns are structurally introduced in the first
disembodied10, the lack of rectangular boxing to the words sets them firmly within the
10
Subtle aesthetic use of text allows the reader not only to identify that the voice is disembodied, but
that it is being relayed through electronic equipment. However, for the sake of clarity I will confine
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story (rather than a narrator’s ‘voiceover’), designed to reassure and inform the
residents of Moore’s London. The language itself reinforces the way in which the
verbal narrative has been constructed in supposed isolation from the image – “The
Voice of Fate, broadcasting on 275 and 285 in the medium wave…” indicates that the
across the page about exact weather patterns, food surplus, health advice and foiled
terrorist plots fall short of reality because they are confined to the abstract realm of
language. While the broadcast articulates a story and has legitimate ‘meaning’, its
place in the world of comics means that it is immediately subject to questioning from
content of the visual narrative precisely because of popular belief in the illustrative
role of the image. The classic perception we have already discussed is of image and
text as separate media, working to articulate the same message. The modern comic,
and particularly this example, can invert such a model by having both forms use the
same narrative strategy to articulate different messages, with one undermining the
other to distort its meaning. Both text and image follow the structure of a montage, a
structure sits very well with comics’ inherently disjointed ‘panel’ structure.
However, while the verbal, abstract narrative is one of reassurance, the visual
narrative is a series of images of tension. This tension is made manifest across the
page in both composition (the ‘unstable camera angles’ of the first and fifth panels)
and content (the close panel of the surveillance camera, the central scene of police
control, and finally the detailed picture of anguish on the face of Evey, the woman,
the first emotion depicted in the story). A perfectly valid narrative strategy would
questions of the aesthetic use of text to the next chapter.
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have been to use the same panels, but with narrative boxes clarifying what is seen. If
one were to rewrite V’s dialogue from a realist standpoint, it might read thus:
“London, 1990: A post-Cold War Britain has fallen under the control of a Fascist
government. Its citizens, stripped of their privacy and brutalised by the police, live in
subject matter, (and indeed this might have been the beginning if V was a pre-1950s
work), but it would miss intangible subtleties that this beginning provides. When an
artist uses the narrative abilities of visual art to ‘attack’ the integrity of the verbal, the
juxtaposition questions the nature of how objective truth is transformed into the
concerns within its very nature, from the outset, pushing the reader into mindset of
questioning what he or she reads in the coming chapters; this will prove vital as the
spiralling doubletalk of ‘V’ himself and the philosophical posturing of his Fascist
artistic expression; as might be expected, it finds its place in the polemical sphere as
well. A passage of Ted Rall’s strip, To Afghanistan and Back, uses the visual
use of images with captions. While political photojournalism has conditioned the
public into equating an image with the text accompanying it, the verbal and visual
narratives of Rall’s work are not only separate, but even contradictory (with a single,
teasing exception – the congruity between the phrase “Let’s start at the source!” and
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In essence, the structure above makes use of literary convention by abusing it.
The sequential, ‘caption’ style of the text gives the veneer of displaying a
conventional, logical narrative but, by the fourth panel, the reader’s attempt at making
chronological sense of the words is confounded as it becomes obvious that the fourth
caption could easily be followed by the first. The message is clear – that popular
American arguments for Middle East intervention are cyclical and sporadic in nature.
Dissatisfied, the reader turns to the visual component of the comic. What Rall
presents through his visuals is a competing narrative, but one he clearly believes to be
the ‘truth’. The visual narrative is elevated in the way that it is given a chronological
end, and so while Rall allows two versions to compete by letting both visual and
verbal express their narrative potential, the narrative power of pictures is ultimately
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narratives are effective only because of the way that humans are able to recognise the
double-narration requires a high and explicit level of mediation and artifice. Even this
artifice has been self-consciously explored by some artists, with interesting results:
Chris Ware’s “I Guess” (figure 1.1) blends the two utterly unconnected narratives of a
superhero story and his own autobiography, going so far as to substitute the
onomatopoeic ‘sound-words’ in the pictures for words from the verbal text. As we
‘read’ the visual narrative, it is impossible not to attach some meaning to the word
subtle interplay of word and image. In Ware’s execution, however, this interplay
slipping over into the other”11. In many ways, this example forms the ultimate
vindication of visual arts as a narrative technique, tested to its limit by being shown
juxtaposed with an ‘irrelevant’ verbal narrative, while still remaining valid. Visual
narrative is not only able to articulate itself fully using traditionally ‘verbal’
to the text that it accompanies. I have shown that such an approach can have narrative
Despite the devices above, and many like them, the coexistence of forms does
not necessitate competition. Verbal and visual narratives can be used in concert to add
11
Versaci, Rocco: This Book Contains Graphic Language: Comics as Literature. London: Continuum,
2007. (75)
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depth of meaning to each other, while maintaining a unified message. One of the
series of events – the fabulae, to borrow a narratological term – while also articulating
the way in which these events have been perceived by whoever is narrating them –
traditionally referred to as the plot. The great discovery of New Journalism was the
relationship between these two states: the acknowledgement that the objective facts of
the past were always reordered and ‘narrativised’ by their chroniclers. Hayden White
The facts do not speak for themselves, but the historian speaks for them, speaks
on their behalf, and fashions the fragments of the past into a whole whose
integrity is – in its representation – a purely discursive one. Novelists might be
dealing only with imaginary events whereas historians are dealing with real ones,
but the process of fusing events, whether imaginary or real, into a
comprehensible totality capable of serving as the object of representation is a
poetic process.
-White, Hayden: Tropics of Discourse. (125)
The comic form is perfectly placed to articulate this ‘poetic process’ since it
can provide verbal narration (the ‘plot’) and use visual narrative technique to show
the ways in which this narrative is a distorted, nuanced one. This is particularly
important in comics that purport to count ‘truth’ amongst their essential elements. Joe
Sacco’s Palestine, a narrative about Sacco’s own trip around the West Bank and
Occupied Territories, is one of the earliest and most prominent examples of ‘comic
journalism’. Throughout his prose and pictures, questions of the veracity of the
narrative are tackled head on: “It’s very clear that I’m subjective,” he later professed
to Kauffman in interview, “I didn’t want to be objective and stay out of these stories
Throughout Palestine, the narrative moves back and forth along a spectrum
between objectivity and subjectivity, effectively fusing fact with narrative. However,
this is only made possible because at every turn, the language is qualified by the
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visual narrative that accompanies it. The backgrounds and geography are, for the most
realistic perspective12, and this helps the reader to identify the locations with a more
However, even within these same images a different style is employed to show
what takes place within the locations. The characters are dynamically drawn, and at
times almost ‘larger than life’ in the way they break the otherwise inviolate sanctity of
the panel border. Their slightly exaggerated style allows the reader to focus less upon
their aesthetic realism, and instead become aware of what characters say, and the
universal traits they represent – McCloud refers to this technique as masking (43).
Thus, while the scene is rendered ‘as is’, the characters within are expressionistically
rendered in order to make the reader conscious of how the entire narrative has been
12
This bears a marked similarity to Hergé/Georges Remi’s ligne claire (‘clear line’) aesthetic used in
the Tintin books, which aimed a similar ‘documentary realism’ in their locations, but one colourfully
accessible to a young audience. (Figure 1.2, Tintin: The Calculus Affair)
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‘foreignness’ almost resembling wartime propaganda. Such caricatures ask the reader
to consider the notions of tension that inform Sacco’s narrative, far more effectively
than a verbal statement of his own possible bias ever could. The scene below visually
multitude. The culture ‘distance’ between Sacco and those around him is made
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Not only the appearance, but also the arrangement of the figures – such as the
shift in perspectives along the left-hand side – undercut any notion of realism. Instead,
the expressionism of the figures serves a truly narrative purpose, unravelling Sacco’s
state of mind in concert with the ‘captions’ that thread through the composition.
The effect is given its greatest potency in the figure of Sacco himself: the
author crafts his own in-comic appearance to turn himself into an abstract entity.
More even than those around him, Sacco’s features are distorted into almost
gargoylesque proportions, portraying him as a true ‘other’. This allows the visual
himself as sweating, nervous, distorted, and the perennial outsider – and finally, by
never allowing the reader to see his eyes – Sacco reminds us at every turn that he is
fulfilling his function as a reporter. As such he makes clear the distinction between
fabulae and plot, and his visuals weave the narrative of how they themselves were
Visual narrative, then, has great potential both in creating narrative and re-
argued that these can already be accomplished with traditional verbal work alone,
albeit with difficulty13. Logically, there is a final question in this chain: what if the
subject matter defies verbal narrative entirely, and cannot be adequately explored in
traditional terms alone? Can visual narrative interject to fill a semantic gap?
community when he declared, “Nach Auschwitz noch ein Gedicht zu schreiben ist
13
Versaci believes this is in actually impossible – “Such various approaches, if they had equivalents in
prose memoir, would no doubt render the narrative incoherent” (41) – but I would contest this, in the
case of more modernist literature such as James Joyce’s Ulysses. Even in this case, however, many
would consider the narrative a little incoherent.
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course, but a tension overshadows them: can language, a tool created to mediate real
experiences into abstract, possibly navigate its way through such an extreme event to
anguish and immense frustration of the writer who confronts a subject that belittles
such frustrations by using a surreal visual narrative to make the verbal one palatable.
14
Taken from Young, James: Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of
Interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988. This text translates the statement as “To still write a
poem after Auschwitz is barbaric”.
15
Rosenfeld, Alvin: A Double Dying: Reflections on Holocaust Literature. Indiana: Indiana UP, 1980
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Germans are cats, while the Jews are mice, in a visually acknowledged form16. A
number of commentators have argued that this conceit abuses the gravitas the
Holocaust ‘deserves’, and yet this metaphorical distancing from reality is, in fact, not
without precedent even in text: “[Auschwitz] was known, understood, and responded
to metaphorically at the time by its victims; it has been organised, expressed, and
commented upon, and given historical meaning metaphorically by scholars and poets
The animalising conceit is, again, a renarrativising process – the total human
element from the work altogether by dehumanising his actors. Such a dehumanisation
allows the reader to focus upon the individual story of the survival of Art’s father,
Vladek, without being overwhelmed by the enormity of human suffering – because all
the Jews look the same, they take on an abstract, symbolic function, rather than
consider how he or she narrates the ‘story’ of the Holocaust in his or her own
imagination. The reader is guided and encouraged towards reading the narrative from
a near-Nazi perspective, equating appearance with race, and race with status. This
‘false’ narrative is then torn down by Spiegelman at various points in the work: as
Book II begins we see that the ‘present’ Art has a human head but is wearing a mouse
16
This construction also forms something of a comment upon the wider comic tropes, constituting a
savage parody of the ‘funny animals’ genre, as well as being a sardonic homage to great antecedent
works such as George Herriman’s Krazy Kat (1913-1944, see Figure 1.3 for a 1917 example)
17
A similar strategy can be found Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List (1993), which is shot
entirely in black and white except for the red coat of a single girl, based upon the historical figure of
Roma Ligocka. The emotional impact of her story is thus enhanced when she is found dead towards the
end of the film.
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This effect reaches its zenith at the climax of the book, when Vladek is finally
given a human face (Figure 1.4, Maus 294). His photograph is almost nonchalantly
included within the final pages, but serves to recontextualise the narrative the reader
has constructed of his many sufferings, and violently so. By continually building and
possible to express this language only in traditional, verbal terms, as we began with
300, but this something of a disservice to the craft, as it implies that visual discourse
is at best only an aping of ‘literature’. What this examination has served to prove is
that visual discourse, particularly of an expressionist form, has the ability to relate
form that is receptive rather than perceptive; the ‘body language’ of human emotion
requires very little active decoding. The way comic art differs from traditional art is in
its use of pseudo-verbal strategies to turn this receptive information into narrative. In
this way, there is no question of ‘show’ or ‘tell’. Rather, the visual discourse of
axis. Since it exhibits verbal techniques, and is used to achieve verbal purposes, it
could in reality be said to occupy a central position on such an axis. However, such a
narrative is able to tell by showing, the process of using perceptive discourse to ‘tell
by telling’ seems redundant. However, this is where the comics’ subtle balance can be
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restored. The semantic networks of verbal and structural discourse do far more than
‘border’ or caption the pictures. In pursuit of the single, unified vocabulary of words
and pictures, we shall now examine verbal and structural techniques, but in the light
of aesthetic concerns.
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-Detail from Martin, Alan: Tank Girl: The Gifting: “Kill Jumbo!” (74)
As the previous chapter has concluded, comics derive much of their meaningful
impact from visual narration. However, many of the examples featured above used a
significant amount of text in concert with the visuals, and panels like the one from
Tank Girl above are very common. A panel analysis of the space used would
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conclude that text covers about half of the space of the composition18. The word
‘BAM!’, covering most of the textual space, illustrates text’s most elementary
onomatopoeically. That is, the ‘invisible concept’ of sound is made visible by using
the letters that most closely correspond to the sound, in the English language. All text
serves to articulate the invisible, and this is why it generally serves so well to
essentially the invisible reordering of events into logical form. However, in the above
panel, as in the world of comics at large, text and other abstract structuring elements
that dominates this panel, and is perhaps the most distinct verbal element to inhabit
the visual space – the sound effect. While it is generally assumed that language will
not so much a complete abstract unit, as it does turn one sense impression into
another, thus recreating it. Aesthetics, broadly, is the art of transmitting sense
impressions between the minds of creator and recipient, and as such we can see the
reader that a series of shots have been fired – rather, it uses the characters of language
to describe a sound that the reader can mentally reproduce. From there, the intention
is that the reader can then deduce, from a combination of picture and mock ‘sound’,
what is happening. Once again, the discipline is ultimately designed to show, not tell.
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reception in narrative19. Why is it that artists and writers of comics feel the particular
need to show? It is noticeable, for example, that in using ‘visual text’ to indicate
something, artists will always use “POW!” and never “PUNCH!”; they will forever
favour “BOOM!” over “EXPLOSION!” This trend is linked to the need for
immediacy on the visual plane, by avoiding the abstract. The multi-media approach of
comics means that there is enough ‘room’ within any panel for both immediacy and
semantic clarity. In a last look at our Tank Girl panel, we can see that if the “BAM!”
the other text – the balloons – is reintroduced, some context exists, enough at least to
characterise this as a violent act. However, it is not enough to solidify the meaning of
the sequence.
In this case, Wood has chosen to use a set of specific visual indicators to
describe the situation: the figures, the gun, and the flare from the gun. In this way, this
panel forms a perfect balance not only of word and picture, but also of the immediate
and the specific. The onomatopoeia is an entirely sensory device, designed to present
the immediate aesthetic details of the act, while the level of specificity in the picture
allows for clarity. Using this device, verbal technique can step outside of its abstract,
meaning-based role, and function aesthetically within a wider narrative. However, this
technique extends only to words that are sense-based in nature. One might even argue
that onomatopoeia should be excluded from ‘verbal technique’ as a label per se, since
it is not an abstract device. What, then of the semantic unit of the ‘word’?
19
I should point out at this juncture that ‘sound words’ are far from a universal component in the comic
vocabulary. They are, however, ubiquitous. The fact that certain comics with stronger ‘realist’ concerns
(such as V for Vendetta) consciously choose to leave out such a device is in recognition of the inherent
invisibility of sounds. It is interesting to note, however, the way in which these same comics will often
use exhaustive amounts of detail, as if to fill the sensory gap of silence.
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“the ultimate abstraction” (47). If one were to draw a scale between visual and verbal,
it would certainly be true to say that verbal discourse can carry a special semantic
function that visuals cannot. Furthermore, literature has given a strong precedent to
books, have long emphasised the difference between words and pictures” (47).
However, this is only true to certain extents. While the formal structures of speech
balloons, narrative boxes and panel frames seem designed to divide the ‘space’
allocated to words and pictures, some intrusion is still possible. We have already
discussed one instance, that of onomatopoeia, but entire words will occasionally exist
This integration requires the text to display a certain level of visual technique.
Will Eisner’s first graphic novel uses an aesthetic dimension to fuse narrative text
-Detail from Eisner, Will: A Contract With God. New York: Little, Brown and
Company, 2005 (2)
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aesthetic function: by having the text affected by the rain as much as the scene below
it, Eisner pushes the text back into the visual plane. The lack of any narrative boxing
around the text only reinforces this unity of text and image. Not only does this aid the
integration of the text but, crucially, it allows the shapes of the text to be complicit in
shaping the aesthetic dimensions of the narrative: were the text to be boxed away, the
reader could not grasp the sheer verticality of the rain pictured. Having multiple
obstacles along the path of the rain highlights its force, and subtly suggests its all
its rules, by breaking it: Eisner distorts his lettering in order to depict a rainstorm so
imported into the picture area. However, once again a critic could regard this as a
technically non-verbal device, since it has been structurally divorced from the
traditional verbal plane: true verbal techniques, it might be argued, are only those
dwelling within the verbal spaces of speech balloons, thought balloons, and narrative
boxes.
ways in which to do so, each tied to one of the human senses. The most prolific
method is, quite naturally, visual description – characters are clearly different because
they look different. A secondary technique is the use of careful panelling and
movement lines to depict how a character moves, but again this is essentially visual.
This might seem natural, as comics are inherently a silent medium, but the aesthetics
of text have another part to play here – modifying the visual qualities of lettering has
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become a comics trope indicating that the reader should imagine the text in a different
‘voice’. While this might seem a somewhat avant-garde surrealist device, its most
basic form can be found in some of the most ‘realistic’ comic scenes. It is indeed so
integral to comic convention that it might be difficult to spot from the first panel of
The first and seventh panels feature a device that comic text has fully
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integrated into its language, but that conventional ‘literature’ as such would never do:
emboldened words. These acts of emboldening are intended, like the onomatopoeia,
to guide the reader in mentally recreating the speech. It must be acknowledged that
the emboldening action is not a traditional function of abstract text; it has no inherent
fits well with our earlier, non-speech examples and with Eisner’s more general thesis
that “Lettering, treated ‘graphically’ and in the service of the story, functions as an
extension of the imagery…it provides the mood, a narrative bridge, and the
can have an effect by its conspicuous absence. While several characters’ direct speech
features emboldening, they are not the focus of the scene. This passage, and the
chapter that contains it, focus upon the aesthetic characterisation of “Rorschach”, the
figure in hat, mask and trench coat, a dark parody of the detective trope. While the
bolding of the other characters serves to humanise them, with the choice of words
suggesting an utterly measured tone of voice. This tone is not a neutral one, however
– the unconventional italicising of the entire text indicates that while the owner of this
This effect completes its cycle when Rorschach is captured – as his mask is
removed and his true identity revealed for the first time in the book, his speech
changes into the standard comic form, first in a slew of emboldened exclamations,
then by losing its balloon shape and italicisation. It is here (Figure 2.2, Watchmen V.
28) we see the full aesthetic link between Rorschach’s patterns of speech, his mask,
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and his calm façade. The final effect is that while the dialogue as an abstract unit can
portray the world without, only when the dialogue is combined with the way it is
aesthetically presented can it shed light on the world within, in this case narrating the
The text itself has aesthetic possibilities in the way it is modified, but such
practices exist in other media that fuse text and image, such as advertising 20. Comics,
however, have a final element that truly melds the two forms: within every comic, the
very use of text is an aesthetic act, through the practice of encapsulation, within
balloons and narrative boxes. The technique of boxing forces narrative concerns upon
any text contained within it, by removing it from any ‘caption’ space outside of the
frame (where it dwelt with most pre-1825 works), and finding it a space within the
composition. While the text may be traditional verbal discourse, the ‘box’ is a visual
unit, calling into question our dogmatic separation of word and picture. The scholarly
community is only now beginning to use comics as the basis for such a line of
questioning, which is in some ways surprising considering their fitness for the
describes balloons as “the word made image” (Carrier 28) in his efforts to breach the
slightly facile in that it implies that balloons are only images because they exist on the
Returning to the Watchmen panel, the balloons and narration can be deconstructed to
20
Indeed, it could be argued that advertising carries much of the blame for constructing the
popular view of such media as a device of crass commercialism.
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manipulate not only the ‘sound’ of the speech, but timing between phrases, timing of
phrases, volume, mental state, and even perspective. Every one of these manipulations
like the text inside, indicates the mental distancing of his character, in contrast to the
naturalistic curves of the other characters’ words in panel 4 of the selection. Panel 4’s
use of the separation and combination of various balloons also introduces elements of
timing to the sequence by causing the reader to pause between the first “Please…”
relaying of events, but temporality also has fundamental aesthetic concerns, even
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same panel is placed alongside the scream, and the same point on the vertical axis,
implying that he is speaking as the scream continues. The aesthetic functions of this
arrangement stem from the fact that time is an essential component of emotion – the
scream can only be understood as painful when extended over a time period, and
Rorschach’s calm tone is only given its disturbing context when spoken concurrently
with the pain. As he turns to leave, a new form of text enters to narrate. The cream-
coloured, jagged boxes represent excerpts from Rorschach’s journal (as the first page
of Watchmen informs the reader), and as such offer a second perspective of his
mental state. The presence of the more eloquent internal discourse uses aesthetics to
present a double narrative: the immediacy of the visuals and balloon presents
moments as they unfold, while the journal entry gives a mediated retrospective. This
allows the reader to perceive the events both in an immediate present and the
mediated past, as innocent victims are left, in Rorschach’s mind, “to discuss their
past and present, as it lays bare the author’s process of mediating the text by ‘adding’
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those scenes where Vladek professes to having not witnessed the events he is
the visual image is deliberately obscured by his speech balloon. Thus, the image is
censored with an explanation of why it cannot appear, and the ‘present’ narrative
aesthetically affects the past. Structurally, this one of Maus’s most proficient
examples of the multiple identities of a balloon – as a visual unit it censors the visual
narrative, and as a verbal unit it provides its own context for the censoring.
colourisation, and the character of line (what in the field of text is more
conventionally called ‘font’). More than this however, we must note the fact that such
aesthetic devices are frequently employed for aesthetic purposes – words may be used
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balance of colour, action, or form. They can add similarly abstract aesthetics to a
scene: the realistically invisible notions of sound, time, and emotion. Above all,
conveying the necessary immediacy to not only relay what is being said, but sensually
replicate it in the reader’s mind. This sensual discourse repositions text, like visuals,
at the very centre of the visual-verbal axis. The words are, through aesthetics,
21
In Eisner’s terms, “the amorphics of, say, the surge of pain or the glow of love or the turmoil of inner
conflicts” (126)
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-Detail from McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. (48)
The regimens of art (e.g. perspective, symmetry, brush stroke) and the regimens of
literature (e.g. grammar, plot, syntax) become superimposed upon each other. The
reading of the comic is an act of both aesthetic perception and intellectual pursuit.
-Eisner, Will: Comics and Sequential Art (8)
The image above, and the image of my introduction, both serve to illustrate a
prevailing assumption about the nature of comics: that they are somehow a
compromise of two media. The ongoing (and damaging) model is that of two
order to be allowed into the comic sphere. This model is based on the assumption that,
in comics, each medium uses its own traditional techniques to try and perform some
the verbal discourse from an aesthetic perspective, we have reached a different kind
of unity – a unity not only of purpose but of processes. The two media do not reach
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towards each other from their separate points in a compromise; in comics, they are
encouraged to use each other’s techniques to achieve each other’s functions. The
prevailing trends of my examples are that pictures can be made to use composition,
and the character of line. On every level, each medium is fundamentally indebted to
the traditions of the other. This model returns us to the original question: if both forms
use such a wide range of techniques for such a wide range of purposes, is it possible
purpose and process, these two investigations prove that the unitary point must exist,
and this point is centred upon the fundamental processes behind both media.
make the reader question what it is to ‘depict’. Both verbal and visual techniques do
so with equal validity, and with such similar characteristics that it would be hard to
discretely define the two at all. Visual scenes are what are used to make up the
essential narrative processes of life, where the immediate is translated into a self-
mediated narrative. In the surrealistic world of comics, they are often distorted not
only to show the real but also to describe the abstract, such as emotional context,
of “the ultimate abstraction,” but comic technique makes this a less convincing
judgement. Of course, language has very strong abstractive elements (which is why it
relation of the representative world of the symbol, visual images designed to bear
some resemblance to what they signify. While the textual language we understand no
longer does this, it has a similar function, letters in Western language now serving as
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serving as very basic units of sensory experience, translating sounds into visual
signals on the page that can then be reshaped into events in the reader’s mind.
However, it is only in the unrestrained landscape of comics that language gains the
of picture.
Textual language helps recreate the visible, while the expressionist rendering
of pictures helps represent the invisible – this is the profound truth that comics has to
offer. This single medium shows that words and pictures are, in essence, two facets of
a single technique – the process of translating a creator’s vision into symbolic codes
that can then be reinterpreted by the reader. In truth, text and image always have been
married, ever since they came from the same creative desires – comics, if anything,
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*Eisner, Will: Comics and Sequential Art. Paramus, New Jersey: Poorhouse Press,
2006
*Eisner, Will: A Contract With God. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005
*Hergé: The Adventures of Tintin: The Calculus Affair. London: Egmont, 2001
Kunzle, David: The Early Comic Strip: Narrative Strips and Picture Stories in the
European Broadsheet from c.1450 to 1825. Berkeley: U of California P, 1973
Latour, Bruno: We Have Never Been Modern. Harvard: Harvard UP, 2006
*McCloud, Scott: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Kitchen Sink
Press, 1993
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