Understanding comics

One idea that McCloud presented in Understanding Comics that I found very interesting was the concept of “the Gutter,” the space between two panels. He talks about how our brains are always seeking closure, so we interpret halftone dots to become a photograph, or 24 frames per second to become a single moving video. One simple example to visually represent what our mind does between panels is the Kanizsa Triangle.

  

We fill in the blanks.  We interpret separate panels as movement or a change of scenery or situation.  McCloud states there are six types of closure in comics and discusses how there is a pattern to the frequency and specific types of closure used in most any comic, no matter the genre. The most common type is action-to-action, where each frame is a distinct action, as opposed to moment-to-moment, which is 1 singular action broken up, much like film stills. What’s interesting is how even though there are a huge range of genres of comics form all part of the world, they all for the most part follow the same graph where action to action is the majority of panel types.

The second most used type of closure is subject-to-subject, which usually stays within the scene or at least the idea, but is more of key frames that we must piece together. The Arrival by Shaun Tan uses a fair amount of moment-to-moment to convey the main character’s emotion or action, but also uses a large amount of subject-to-subject which we have to deduce what the scene means as a whole.

The third part of the most common closure in comics is scene-to-scene. The is even more work left to the audience than subject-to-subject, where we must guess the entire content of a panel’s scene with only that singular container of information.

There are 2 more types that I haven’t even mentioned, but are not very commonly used, and when they are, most of the time, the comic is very experimental.

The Arrival-By Shaun Tan

The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a strange and fantastic story told only through pictures with no text. It is very successful in telling a cohesive and well-detailed story despite the lack speech or story text. When I first started, I was skeptical that it was possible to tell a completely understandable story with no text. I had seen plenty of stories told only through pictures, but this story was a whole new experience.

The reason The Arrival is so successful in its storytelling is the visual language and close attention to the main character’s emotions and facial expressions. One of the first things that became apparent, which differed from the modern comic or graphic novel, which I am used to, is the way time is represented in each panel. When words are used to tell the story, the panel’s story can progress with no visual explanation of what happened the way that The Arrival does. On the second page of the story, when the main character wraps his family photo, every step of his action is shown throughout the nine separate panels to show the exact progression of the action. The same technique is used when he is on the boat in a slightly different way. The length of his journey to the new land is illustrated by the changing sky; progressing multiple time from dusk onto night, into the dawn and day, all the way back to the night again. The visual storytelling here is very similar to the way that films represent the same sort of idea. The reader understands exactly what is going on without having to read text.

Another way that The Arrival is able to tell the reader the story is by showing the main character’s reactions, actions and gestures as a way of explaining what would normally be a text bubble.  His facial expressions are much more visible than a standard comic and we are able to read his feelings and troubles. Although the story is monochromatic, the color still changes for multiple reasons: sometimes to show the time of day or illumination of the scenery, The most prominent and powerful use of the color change, is when the old man is telling his story of being young and traveling as a soldier. His story starts out warm and saturated, and becomes cold and desaturated as his friends die and the story becomes grimmer.