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Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics, 1993

Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics, 1993. Comics: “ Juxaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer” (9). Emphasis mine. Comics Terminology. Comics is the medium.

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Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics, 1993

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  1. Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics, 1993 Comics: “Juxaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer” (9). Emphasis mine.

  2. Comics Terminology Comics is the medium. The texts that you will be dealing with are called long-form comics by visual theorists, but the terms graphic narrative and graphic novel are commonly used by publishers, critics, and English studies scholars.

  3. Comics Grammar The Panel. The basic unit of a comic. The Bubble. Spoken or thought text within or across panels. The Gutter. The space between two contiguous panels. The Caption box. Narration placed in the gutters or in the panels. The Page. A single page of panels. The Spread. Two pages of panels that are joined in the middle with binding.

  4. Comics Grammar The Breakdown. The manner in which the panels are set out in terms of size, shape, and relationship on a page. And within an entire comics text, the way that the entire comic is set out. The Script is the text of the comic set out during the breakdown phase by the comics creator.

  5. Thierry Groensteen, Système de la bande dessinée, 1999 “If one wishes to provide the basis of a reasonable definition for the totality of historical manifestations of the [comics] medium, and also for all of the other productions unrealized at this time but theoretically conceivable, one must recognize the relational play of a plurality of interdependent images as the unique ontological foundation of comics” (17). Emphasis mine. In other words, the narrative in comics is primarily image driven. The thematic sequences that wend through a comic and carry the interpretative burden are called braids.

  6. Discussing the Panel • Within an individual panel, there are a number of factors to consider in order to understand how the scriptwriter/artist creates meaning. • Style • Color choice • Line • Shading • Shape • Layout • Placement of elements • Framing – or lack of framing • Relationship between image and text

  7. Breaking It ALL Down Understanding the relationship between contiguous panels marks only one of literally thousands of relationships that can occur as the panel comes into dialogue with every other panel in the comic. For this reason, it is useful to think of a comic as existing on a horizontal plane stretching from the first to the last panel. Yes, page breakdown is important, but so is the breakdown of the entire comic.

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