FORMAL LIMITATIONS OF THE GENRE

How is meaning conveyed (differently) in a novel, poem, or painting? What does theater bring in? Or film? Or better said, what can be achieved in a comic book? “The content of the form”, as partly inherited from the New Critics, speaks for itself. Formally, there are a number of limitations which artists struggle to manage or transcend (cf. Duncan & Smith 119-120):

1.      Space limitations: Monthly comic books usually amount to twenty-two pages of story. Graphic novels can amount to hundreds of pages.

2.      Reproduction technologies. Paper quality has been improved over time. If first comic books were printed on newspaper-quality paper, contemporary comics can be printed on very glossy paper, allowing for an enhanced effect on the reader.

3.     Unrealistic images. Comics are two-dimensonal and lack the photo-realistic qualities of other visual storytelling media (film, theatre, television, games).

About one and the same “moment” in Watchmen, realized in the comic book and the movie respectively. Notice the realistic details and the choice of colors.

4.      Limited control of the reader. The artist’s use of layout can influence, but not control, reading behaviour. A reader can view panels and pages in any order and for any duration.

5.      The page as a unit of composition: the reader can be controlled whenever s/he turns the pages because a pause occurs.

Expanding further on this formal issue, one can associate panels on a page with lines in a stanza. When a page ends and the reader is expected to move on to the next, the effect is similar to a fully-parsed stanza. In both scenarios, one is faced with the power of imposed fragmentation in interpretation. In Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics (via his hermeneutic circle) this is noticeably rendered in the part-whole relation. The understanding of the page relies on the understanding of its panels in as much as the understanding of the each individual panel is dependent on the page. So is the relation between one page and the comic book as a whole.

6.      Selected moments. Creators have to select significant frozen fragments of action (“moments of prime action”)

This implies that each encapsulation is an act of essentialized meaning, of snapping a significant still image out of  many other abandoned alternatives. In-between two consecutive encapsulation there are many “absent” panels to be imagined by the reader. 

 

7.      Interdependence of words and pictures. Visually oriented-people tend to look at pictures for a longer time than text-oriented people and vice versa

8.      Artistic skill. What can be depicted is limited by the skill of the artists.

9.      The serial aesthetic. Serialized editions can lead to repetitive actions of the protagonist.

Here is an example of such an opinion, posted on a forum.

“I found this article to be really depressingly true. The stagnant and repetitive nature of Batman comics has utterly killed my interest in the character, and this article articulates that so elegantly.” (Holmes)

Then, we are sent to the page by means of a hyperlink. 6 Ways Bruce Wayne Has Ruined Contemporary Comics. Dante R. Maddox writes:

Even if you buy the idea that Batman was barely a man when he started fighting crime, how old is Alfred? Commissioner Gordon?  Characters, who were obviously over 40 when the story began, are still running around without an AARP card. DC spent so long ignoring this worsening issue that the fact that Batman seemed to be able to resist the aging process despite having the most dangerous job in human existence that it became something of an inside joke, or even worse a point of pride. Frank Miller wrote once in the 25^th Anniversary edition of The Dark Knight Returns that his motivation for writing the story was the personal issue he had with the fact that Bruce Wayne was perpetually 35 years old.

WRITTEN BY EDUARD GHITA

EDITED BY ANTONIA GIRMACEA