Comic theory

Discuss the future, present and past of sequential art.

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Fortunato
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Comic theory

Post by Fortunato »

I'm not sure this is the right place to post this, but since more people seem to read the morning improv forum than anywhere else I'll post it here.

Recently, it occured to me that the idea of linking lines (the things scott uses to connect his drawings for online comics, so that they can go in (theoretically) any direction) seems to contradict the purpose of gutters as he theorises them in "understanding comics". Although linking lines add another fascinating artistic direction to comics, I would argue that by connecting the juxtaposed images they ruin the closure effect that could otherwise happen, as it seems to rely on the complete lack of any connection between the illustratoins.

Don't get me wrong, I love the oline zot! story, and it proves (with the split line stories) that the linking line has lots of potential, but when the line is drawn in the same style as the panel I think i just connects the panels a little to much, and detracts from the effect that could be had with no connection at all.

maybe these questions prove I'm a purist prude, but they seem interesting.
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On the other hand...

Post by Penner Theologius Pott »

I think it must say something that until you pointed this out, I wasn't even conscious that the lines were there while I was reading the comics.
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Post by InkAddict »

I haven't read "UC" et, as it's hard to come by and rather expensive if I order it at my local bookstore, but I remember Scott saying a few times in "RC", that he has made some errors in "UC" and that "RC" is a also a bit of a correction of "UC"

u c ? :wink:
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Post by Scott McCloud »

Nothing in UC is really contradicted by RC. Some people think the "temporal map" description of comics at the end of RC is some sort of alternative to UC's sequential art, but really, it's just an alternate take on the same idea.

The gutter doesn't have to be the standard narrow rectangular strip between panels. That was just the most common example when I wrote the book.

Any series of images meant to be read in order produces that same in-betweener effect.
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Gaps

Post by Nick Douglas »

I prefer the gutter to other gaps, usually -- over Eisner's blank spaces, for example, or McCloud's linking lines... but of course, that's just me. The circular panels that Scott's used in Monkeytown -- something about that looks really cool. I'm gonna remember that...

Hmph, this is more a note to myself than a contribution to discussion, but I'm posting anyway. :roll:
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Post by InkAddict »

I remember when my eyes first opened to the possibilities of comics as an emotionally intense experience, when I read one of the first "Soda" albums (Tome & Gazzotti) in "Spirou magazine", a comics magazine. I must have been ten, or younger...

Soda is about a cop in NYC, "SOlomon DAvid", living with his mom. His father was a cop too, and got killed on the job, so because he's afraid his mom won't understand, and wouldn't survive it (she's a cardiac patient, and constantly afraid of what might happen "outside") he decides to "play" priest to his mom, and thus changes into his uniform in the elevator, so his mom wouldn't notice. It's really great art and has a cynical, black humour, while still being very warm (after all, Soda dresses up as his opposite because he loves his mom!), but in the second story, I believe, Soda starts writing a novel on a writing machine called "Thanatos" (Greek for "Death"), and a serial killer follows his script, disguising the murders as accidents.

Anyway, I was so used to those white gutters, this story took me by the throat just because the pages and gutters were ... BLACK

That's why the way gutters or other gaps are used don't matter to me; but when they are used in such a masterful way as to render an extra emotion/feeling, as in Zot's 2-feet scrolling rectangle to suggest falling (NO gaps!!!!), it becomes as important as the rectangles themselves!

As to the "closure" the classical system has over the "follow-the-line" storytelling technique, I noticed that while Scott uses this last technique consequently, he still keeps to putting some rectangles so close together as to form new gutters, just because that is what's needed! :D

I myself tend to get annoyed with linking lines that run too long without an actual purpose. It ruins a little of the pleasure I have with some print comics in enjoying the skill of a comic artist in making use of limited space! (you can compare it to a teacher of English litterature enjoying a Shakespeare reference noone else would notice :wink: )
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Lines

Post by Fortunato »

Yingo my freind, I live in a medium sized town, and we have a bookstore that carries UC for the cover price.

Ah, the perks of living in a college town :D <--- (note: first time I've ever used an emoticon)

but as for the lines, it wasn't just that the emotional appeal can change according to the way the background appears, but also that some of the closure is lost.

Breif summary of UC: closure is the name of the thing that happens between two panels to produce a meaningful sequence out of two (visually) seperate enities.

My feeling is that when two panels are connected, the mental link is weakened (not really LOST, although dpending on the relationship between the picture and the link, more or less closure is lost) because the mind no longer has to make the leap between panels on its own and has a crutch. Now, to be sure, we have the crutch of reading procedure to direct us, but that crutch is much smaller. all we have without linking lines is the convention that one reads right to left, top to bottom (without SOME kind of convention, it becomes nearly impossible to reconstruct a sequence as the artist intended to portray it. as an example, imagine reading this post one randomly chosen letter at a time. all the CONTENT would be there, but the MEANING would be lost. The same is true of comics, although to a lesser extent since they are less iconic). So then, without a crutch, we perform more closure and create more meaning ourselves, but this also forces one to become an active participant of the passive act of reading the comic.

ANYWAY, i've rambled for far to long. someone else gets a chance to talk now, for it is nap time at the home and they just fed me my morphine. Damn doctors, giving me a higher dose than... usual... My toe is green... I haven't called the telephone man... ZZZ (THERE'S a classic Icon if I ever saw one).

PS pay no attention to the previous paragraph, it was all lies anyway.
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Post by Jack Masters »

I don't really think there's ANY WAY you can connect panels together that "gets rid of" the closure, other then perhaps making them part of the same scene such that it is no longer a comic, and even this would be very difficult to achieve in some cases, even if it was your active intent. Closure means mentally parsing the panels into a temporal sequence, and you do that just as much with trails as with gutters.
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temporalectopia?

Post by Fortunato »

you got some interesting results with that comic, mister masters. the lines along the top connecting the frames to another as yet un drawn frame create an interesting effect.

Now, I agree with you. closure CAN'T be gotten rid of. we perform it on a regular basis. you're performing closure while you read this by assembling meaningful sentences from this sequence of letters. But I do believe that one can have different amounts of closure. just as it takes less closure to take meaning from the sentence "This is Bob." than from "yellow feet toad carries death wax port" (writing doesn't work to well as an example because it's so iconic. McCloud uses better examples in his stuff on transitions in UC, remember "moment to moment" as opposed to "non sequitur"?

However, one could say that we always perform the same amount of closure, we just have more or less difficulty constructing a meaning from the sequence.

Hmmmmmm......
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Post by InkAddict »

It would be an improvement to use linking lines only when they're really necessary,.

When two rectangles are so close together you get a standard "gutter anyway, why not drop the linking lines?

There couldd even be room for a type of less "dominating" linking line, as the traditional ScottMcCloud Link is quite paternalizing, i.e. taking you too much by the hand. I for instance like the idea of "dots" to show the way. They also never interfere with the line delimiting the square itself!

Thanx Greg, I'll check it out!
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Post by Greg Stephens »

Yingo- Different ideas for how "trails" can be presented may be seen in Scott's I Can't Stop Thinking! #4: Follow That Trail", just in case you hadn't read it.
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Post by Guest »

This argument doesn't match my experience very much. Closure involves the <I>logical</I>
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Trail-blazing

Post by Nick Douglas »

Dang, re-reading the trails article is a splash of cold water on the metaphorical face. Yet I rarely see Scott use trails nearly as deftly and ingeniously as in that essay.

It does give me ideas for my own Liquid Velcro, though.
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A

Post by InkAddict »

I guess Scott doesn't use all of his propositions because he feels comfortable using "his" linking lines. He just proposed other ways of using them because other ways are possible. I hope he won't use them all, because, even if he likes to experiment, it isn't always what is necessary to a comic. He doesn't have to behave like Acme's novelty library, because he isn't a one-man research facility in comic techniques. He just wanted to show the ways that are open to us!

I tend to get bored quickly with comics that are just an assembly of techniques and experiments, because that isn't what comics is all about!

To make a comparison: We may admire some impressionists for their innovative way of "painting light" using strong complementary colours, but would we like, and I really mean LIKE, paintings that are actually just visual essays on how light refracts,and changes hues? I for one don't, and even as I may enjoy some of these "experimental" ways of approaching colours in painting, I prefer the works that use these techniques to a good effect, without just being showcases of what's possible. When I spoke about SODA's black gutters, I really liked what I saw, because it contributed to a feeling!

What I DO like in RC, though is the fact that all these ways are being opened to us, but now it's up to us to make use of them WHERE THEY ARE NEEDED!

Comics are a way to communicate! the form should just be another toolbox in that communication, and it's the choice of tools that makes the comic better.
This argument doesn't match my experience very much. Closure involves the logical
To my experience, this may be the formal frontier we're finally breaking too. Logic is no longer an objective value any more: Instead of seeing superman jump in the air, then watching superman fly, to induce the idea he jumped to start flying, ... we now start to see ILLOGICAL sequences taking on a shape of their own.

Say you see superman jump in the air. Next image, image of Che Guevara, then an image of a guy in a cellar rotting away, Nixon saying something about "trusting the american government", then superman in Clark Kent disguise telling Lois a man can't fly, then again the image of the prisoner,...

This is also a form of closure, without ANY classical logic, which calls up very different emotions and ideas in everyone.

As a comparison, it can be fascinating to analyse Bunuel's surrealist movie "Le chien Andalou" (The andalousian dog), or a surreal movie by, say, Fellini.

I'm not saying this kind of comics would get a big readers' audience, but it is definitely worth a try, and can give what I'd call "absolute art", an art speaking to the mind of the reader, and only to HIS mind.

Without becoming too elitist, this kind of comics can be very fascinating and fulfilling. Especially when this technique has a point. Even when the author has a very definite idea, about what he's telling, it can still give the reader a unique experience every time he (re)reads the comic.

Enough Comics theory for today, I guess :wink:
Hope I got m?y point across. 8)
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for a quick example

Post by Fortunato »

for a good, quick example of the outer limits of closure simply hop on over to "one-armed carl" at scott's site. It can be found with the other carls. Given the dramatic variance in the panels for the carl comics, it produces many jarring and funny combinations.
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Post by japanimationfist »

Just catching up on forum activity, and I came across this post. Interesting debate going on here.

Let me start in by saying that I think that the infinite canvas of the web-page presents a different environment from the printed page. The printed page has built in limitations (the edge of the page), whereas a web-page is not predefined (unless we consider the edge to be the edge of your viewing space, which seems like a waste of cyber-space).

Gutters on a printed page provide think space and opportunity for transition, as well as a means of getting from one image to another (I like to think of them as city streets, and the panels as blocks... but I am weird that way).

You can think that way on a printed page because there is an outer-limit/page border. On a web-page, the panels are no longer city blocks, but islands in whhat is potentially a limitless ocean. The need for a gutter becomes superceded by the need for continuity and direction. It's all about finding your way, and negociating narrative. The think time is still there, in between the panels, thoughin some comics, the trails become important because they are what links one part of the story to another part, in order to creat an overall narative.

I don't think that the trails are necessarily a contradiction, but I think the nature and the use of gutters changes as the limitations of your drawing space change. Where gutters are like streets, trails are like bridges, I suppose. The trasition is still there, but the way that it is represented and delivered changes.

What do you think Scott?
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Post by InkAddict »

(*while awaiting Scott's opinion*)
Where gutters are like streets, trails are like bridges, I suppose.
Still, the absence of paper boundaries does not have to exclude "page composition", as in Scott's chess comic, and especially its ending, where composition and the suggestion of a limitless canvas, in the form of a huge chessboard, shows a composition in a limitless canvas is still possible.

To draw a link between "modern" arts and the art of comics (I tend to do this a lot, cause I've had some art history teaching with an extremely open-minded teacher*), it's quite interesting to look at the art of Mondriaan.

He was a Dutch abstract painter concerned about the "perfect composition". Here's an image of his work:
"composition with Red, Yellow and Blue"
Image

What a lot of people don't know, was the fact that he was inspired by Jazz music and street maps, as with "Broadway Boogie Woogie"
Image

...and the fact that he didn't consider his compositions to end at the edge of the canvas!
"Mondrian wanted the infinite, and shape is finite. A straight line is infinitely extendable, and the open-ended space between two parallel straight lines is infinitely extendable. A Mondrian abstract is the most compact imaginable pictorial harmony, the most self-sufficient of painted surfaces (besides being as intimate as a Dutch interior). At the same time it stretches far beyond its borders so that it seems a fragment of a larger cosmos or so that, getting a kind of feedback from the space which it rules beyond its boundaries, it acquires a second, illusory, scale by which the distances between points on the canvas seem measurable in miles."
- From David Sylvester, "About Modern Art: Critical Essays, 1948-1997"

Actually he was the first one to have proposed the idea of an infinite canvas, though he was limited by the means of his time.

I'm sorry, Scott, to take away some of your credits :wink: (he WAS concerned about entirely different things, though), but it also stresses the importance of the infinite canvas in Art History!

... the talking about gutters (Mondrian's lines) and the fact they resembled streets and house blocks got me started :wink:

Up to you, Scott :D
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More analogies than you can shake a trail at

Post by japanimationfist »

I agree that an infinite canvas does not free you from considering page composition. In fact, I think it becomes all the more important. Here's another analogy to chew over: If traditional print comics are analogous to climbing stairs, webcomics would be analogous to rock-climbing.

Where the direction of the staircase is implied in its construction, and your options are somewhat limited (up or down), rock-climbing requires a greater level of participation on the part of the climber, while simultaneously offering a greater degree of latitude. The rock-climber is dependent upon those ropes (in our case "trails") in order to lead him or her successfully to the summit, and to ensure that they make it from point A to point B.

I tend to agree with you though, that the safety rope (which serves as the thread of our narrative, in this case) does not have to be a direct line. and occasioanlly it can even make the comic harder to follow than the traditional side-by-side panel construction. Dots, lines, chains, paw prints, you name it, whatever you use to string it all together, it shoudl be for a reason. That reason might be artisitic, but I tend to lean towards the old short story rule that everything that is part of the story should move the story forward... obviously most trails don't lead forward in space, but metaphorically speaking, so long as they are moving the story along, they are doing what they ought to be. Iam leary of artists using trails simply for the purpose of being "McCloudian", but at the same time this is still relatively new territory (despite the fact that people like Mondriaan has similar ideas long before the internet, or webcomics came along).

There's been an interesting trend in film over the last ten years, towards multiple narrative threads that intersect and cross one another at points. A good American example might be "Short Cuts", which is one of a number of films which uses the multiple-narrative-single-thread form. There are also some excellent European examples, notably "La Belle Histoire", directed by Cluade LeLouche. What's most interesting about these films, where we are concerned, is that they represent an interest on the part of the entertainment consumer in more complex story-structure, and in what we might call a more "global" perspective. Not global in the sense of international, but global in the sense of encompassing several different points of view.

My personal take on all of this (and I am getting to my point, I swear) is that with the advent of the internet and cellular phones, we are becoming more aware the lines that link us all together (both narrative and otherwise). The "trails," if you prefer. As a result, trails are working their way into all areas of our lives (though we don't call them that). We may call them links, or chains, or threads, but it all amounts to the same... of course I am a little off-topic now, so I will shut up. Sometimes I get a little carried away.

Will it seem a little hypocritcal now for me to say that I am not sure I could use trails properly, so for the moment I am using the old gutter method, with the occasional series of dots to hold things together?
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Post by InkAddict »

Japanimationfist, can i quote you on the stairs/rockclimbing analogy? It seems an excellent metaphore to explain online comics and their possibilities, while still stressing how difficult it still is :D I might need it in a school project next year about comics in Belgium.

I myself don't think trails are necessary to have great comics, as are rectangular images. Most things proper to print comics, AND the newlybred conventions in online comics, are just that: conventions.

We are slowly breaking free from these, and it feels good to know there's a place for all possibilities.

As with Pulp Fiction, another one of those conventionbreaking multithread films, the critics won't always like what they see, but as long as there is a public, these things will persevere and grow out to become subgenres and formal subtypes of their own.

"Pulp fiction", and "Short Cuts" were both initially destroyed by critics, but have become cult movies with a huge following.

Today's linked world has become extremely sensible to small changes as everything affects everything around it. A small innovation can take off and become a major new style!

It's a pity some of these style spawn so many clones though: we've had the Tarantino-style cinema, following the pearls "Pulp Fiction" and "Short Cuts", came dumb twisted-story movies with guys dressed in black, toting guns at each other.

Comics have the same problems. Even more so because it's easy for a person to make a comic, and even easier to make a bland copy of one.

It's harder to make a good one though.
Will it seem a little hypocritcal now for me to say that I am not sure I could use trails properly, so for the moment I am using the old gutter method, with the occasional series of dots to hold things together?
I myself haven't used trails yet, and it seems I won't,... until I tell a story needing them.

I prefer to let myself evolve gradually, to imitating other people's work. Also, it will take a while before some of these new techniques fade entirely to the background and let me enjoy the comics in se. It's starting to happen, I've noticed, with trails and even computerised viewing.

In a few years reading and thinking in trails will be as common to me as reading and thinking in speech bubbles :wink:
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Post by japanimationfist »

Be my guest Yingo, quote away. I think you have the right idea though: Use what you need to tell a story, and don't use it if you don't need it, or if it doesn't add anything to the narrative.
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