1
Discourse and Diegesis
Although comics is a visual art form and comics theory has developed from multiple disciplines, comics scholarship has been largely literarily and narratively focused, a tendency Kukkonen justifies by defining âliteratureâ as ânot tied to the written text,â since âfilms can be seen as literature, tooâ (2013: 2). Even if comics are literary in an expansive sense, the categorical inclusion does not dictate literary methods of analysis. Medley correctly identifies a need âto balance out these literary approachesâ (2010: 55), and GarcĂa warns against âthe analytical tendency that makes use of tools proper to narratology,â in order to âfocus our attention instead on visual and material featuresâ (2010: 4). Miodrag similarly argues âthat the practices and methodologies of art criticism are as valuable to the study of comics as the âliteraryâ readings of theme and narrative that have to some extent dominated critical approaches to the formâ (2013: 199).
Many approaches to studying images begin with object-based formal analysis in the tradition established by art historians in the late 1800s: identifying elements of line, shape, light value, space, color, texture, and pattern, as well as such design principles as unity, balance, emphasis, proportion, and implied movement. Iconographic (literally âwritten imageâ) analysis focuses on subject matter, including the traditions of signs and symbols identified by Panofsky in the mid-twentieth century. Other visual approaches analyze style, historical and cultural context, viewersâ perceptual responses, and the history of an imageâs public reception. Since works in the comics form are a subcategory of the visual arts, all of these approaches are applicable and likely essential to comics analysis. My focus is formal, so reception, cultural context, and iconographic traditions are beyond the scope of this book. While design principles and other elements of visual analysis are essential, I have nothing to add to their theory. Despite GarcĂaâs warning, I do use literary tools, but my focus is not on the narrative qualities that sequenced images may produce, but on the image features that may produce them.
As detailed in the Introduction, The Comics Form explores the two most common formal features identified in scholarly definitions: images and sequence. Sequence requires juxtaposition (and possibly nothing else), which I begin to discuss in the third chapter. This chapter and the next focus on the qualities of a comics image. âImageâ is an imperfect term because it can be used synonymously with ârepresentation,â meaning a simulation of something else. I therefore divide images into two categories: non-representational images are only their physical features; representational images are also understood in relation to what they represent. Adapting terms from literary criticism, these two sets of qualities are diegeses and discourses. A representational image is both the subject matter simulated (diegesis) and the physical substance that simulates (discourse). More simply, a representational image has both form and content, while a non-representational image has form only.
1. Formal Qualities
What are the formal features of an image in the comics form?
I derive âimagesâ from scholarly consensus, but while all scholars understand comics to include them, few specify a meaning. Though âimageâ can be used to describe multiple senses, when used to describe works that have been called âcomics,â the term appears to refer to visual images only, ignoring non-visual qualities highlighted by Hague in his accurate description of comics scholarship as ocularcentric. Cohn and Cook also include âvisualâ and âvisuallyâ in their comics definitions (2013: 1â2; 2015: n.p.). Kwa identifies âmost significantly, the emphasis on an insistently two-dimensional surfaceâ (2020: xxii). Bateman identifies two qualities, âtwo-dimensional and static,â when stipulating the nature of image-texts (2014: 28), which include most works in the comics medium (defined in the Introduction as works published by an entity that identifies as a comics publisher). âComics imageâ then might mean: any visual flat static image juxtaposed with another.
If we accept that inferred definition, works in the comics form do not include three-dimensional art. I suspect most readers would agree that a sculpture garden is not a comicâeven when sculptures share prominent features with comics. Siegfried Neuenhausenâs 1980 Small Sequence consists of five, reproducible bronze statuettes representing a figure dressed in a hat and trench coat who appears to be incrementally sinking from knees to chin into whatever surface the statuettes are resting on. So not only are the statuettes juxtaposed images, they create the impression of a single character repeated in multiple instances that must be viewed in a specific order to experience a unified event. Recurrence and sequence are common qualities discussed later, but despite its possessing such qualities, it seems reasonable to exclude Small Sequence only because it is three-dimensional. Similarly, although Nahoko Kojimaâs 2012 Cloud Leopard, Swimming Polar Bear, and Washi (a bald eagle) are made of paper (the most common comics-medium material), they are suspended from wires to create three-dimensional shapes and so are presumably not comics, despite being juxtaposed images in a thematically unified series. While itâs possible to imagine something that could be called a âthree-dimensional comicâ (perhaps a sequence of dioramas featuring a set of characters that continues an existing comics-medium story), the three-dimensional comic would not be in the comics form.
âFlatâ still produces challenges since it is unclear when an object should be considered two- or three-dimensional. Is Lorenzo Ghibertiâs 1452 Gates of Paradiseâwhich consists of two, five-paneled, bronze doors, containing Old Testament scenes in bas-relief (literally âlow raisesâ)âin the comics form? At what point does the discursive depth of an image become definingly three-dimensional? US quarters include bas-relief portraits of George Washington, but their depth is shallower than what a painter employing an impasto techniqueâas Van Gogh does in his 1890 Still Life: Vase with Pink Rosesâcan produce with layers of oil paint. Technically, any painting or even pencil drawing is three-dimensional. Despite this ambiguous threshold, I accept âflatâ as a quality of images in the comics form.
âStaticâ distinguishes a comic from a filmâor at least a projected film. If a film is the celluloid strip of still images that is run through a projector, the strip is a sequence of static images. Even so, the strip not the projection of moving images would formally be a comic. Webcomics offer a further challenge since some include segments of animation. Though segments of webcomics with animation are not in the comics form, if a webcomic contains sequenced static images at least those portions can be analyzed formally as a comic. Conversely, some projected films contain static imagesâor multiple identical images projected to appear static. Chris Markerâs 1962 La JetĂ©e consists (almost) entirely of projected stills and so would be in the comics form. Andy Warholâs 1966 Chelsea Girls, which features a split screen and so juxtaposed moving images, would not be.
A comics image could include other physical constraints. Kwa assumes a âsmall formatâ (2020: xxii). The image might be hand-held and so include both traditionally printed comics and webcomics viewed on a phone, but not framed artboards displayed on a gallery wall. Dividing points could be arbitrary, ambiguous, or both. A laptop is not typically hand-held but can be, while an 80s-era PC cannot, yet both can be used to view a comic on similarly sized screens. Likely any size constraint would eliminate the Nazca Lines, a set of geoglyphs carved in a southern Peru desert roughly two thousand years ago, since some of the images are more than a half mile wide and combined cover 19 square miles. However, the Nazca Lines, which include representations of a dog, whale, spider, hummingbird, and monkey in relatively close proximity, are not formally different from a page of identically drawn and proportionately spaced images. At the opposite extreme, quantum dot technology produces inkjet-printed images the width of human hair and viewable only through microscopes. While excluding such extremes may seem intuitively self-evident, the adjective âsmallâ lacks both clear parameters and formal justification while also adding little to analysis.
Publishing-based definitions require a comics image to be reproduced. If so, artboards used during the printing process are not themselves comics. Comics as defined by their history of publication do not have single originals. Every 1962 copy of Amazing Fantasy #15âs first run is equally the original comic, but Steve Ditkoâs Amazing Fantasy #15 art housed in the Library of Congress is instead material for manufacturing a comic, which did not include the blotches of white-out and blue guidelines that are elements of the artboards only. The adjective âreproducedâ formally distinguishes a work in the comics medium from its artboards, but then the definition applied formally includes all types of reproduction. A PowerPoint projection of a comic scanned into a digital pdf would be a comic, even though the projection is made of light and exists only while projected. If the pdf is printed from a photocopier, its pages of toner-formed images would also be a comic. Meskin explores the issue of multiplicity in greater detail, concluding: âAn exact duplicate of a comic does not count as authentic unless it was mechanically copied from the original plate or art or some other genuine copyâ (2014: 41). Attempts to distinguish âauthenticâ and âgenuineâ comics reveal the publishing-focused impetus for the stipulation, especially since an âexact duplicateâ would be physically indistinguishable from its source. Meskin also ignores âthe production, transmission and consumption of unauthorized comic book scansâ through a digital culture network involving weekly titles that numbered 28,000 in 2010 (Wershler, Sinervo, and Tien 2013). Regardless, concerns for authenticity and reproduction technologies seem specific to the comics medium, and so I do not adopt âreproducedâ or any further stipulated variant as a necessary quality of an image in the comics form.
Other formal requirements are possible. Groensteen and Grennan might include the adjective âdrawn,â since Groensteenâs monstrator is responsible for âputting into drawingâ (2010: 4), and Grennanâs book-length study is A Theory of Narrative Drawing (2017). âDrawn,â however, would arbitrarily eliminate photographic images and so photocomics, including Italian fumetto, as well as other images produced by creative processes that are not strictly drawing-based. Cook might eliminate La JetĂ©e from the comics form because his comics definition requires that the âaudience is able to control the paceâ (2015). Kwa refers similarly to âthe invitation to keep lookingâ (2020: xxii). The stipulation would separate La JetĂ©e from the comics medium, but audience-controlled pace introduces other ambiguities: What if a viewer is watching a film while intermittently pressing pause? Audiences also control pace when viewing galleries and photo albums.
Rather than adopting additional formal parameters in an attempt to exclude works outside the comics medium, I accept the results of the broad formal net. Despite their significant differences, La JetĂ©e, Nazca Lines, and many works in the comics medium share a meaningful set of formal features. Because that set is otherwise unnamed, I call it âthe comics form,â and I understand an image in the comics form to mean any flat, static, visual image juxtaposed with another, leaving âsmall,â âreproduced,â âdrawn,â and other descriptors as common but formally non-essential conventions of the comics medium.
2. Content and Form
Though a work in the comics form includes at minimum a set of the above physical qualities, it often involves something more.
From the Greek word for narrative, âdiegesisââand the adjective âdiegeticââmay refer to a story, the elements that comprise a story (including such things as settings, events, actions, characters, and charactersâ internal experiences), or the larger world in which a story takes place. Since a single representational image may or may not be understood as being, telling, or referring to a story, I understand diegesis to include represented subject matter generally. This visual application is an expansion of diegesis in the literary and narratological sense and may include an entire world represented but only partially pictured. If the image is Kehinde Wileyâs 2018 portrait of Barack Obama, its world is understood to be our world. If the image is a still from Fritz Langâs 1927 Metropolis, the diegetic world is fictional and therefore a different world. If the image is Frida Kahloâs 1946 The Wounded Deer, a self-portrait featuring the artistâs head attached to a deerâs body, the relationship of the image to our or any other world may be unclear. Regardless, diegesis can be understood generally as all represented content, overt and implied.
âDiscourseââand the adjective âdiscursiveâârefer to an image as a physical object independent of anything it might represent. The discourse of a work in the comics form includes the physical qualities identified in the previous section. In literary approaches, âdiscourseâ may be used to mean or relate to things such as plot, syntax, and other non-physical qualities excluded here, though this stipulated meaning can be applied to a prose-only work, too, âunderstood in terms of its purely physical propertiesâ (Goldberg and Gavale...