Ephemeral landscapes
The materiality of the image

Front door

Subject matter

Project outline

The material artifact

The material artifact: sources

The immaterial artifact

The materiality of the image

Models for analysis

Research in progress

Bibliography (alphabetical)

Bibliography (grouped, with notes)

Links

Comic strips and comic books comprise a form of graphic art for reproduction that tells stories through the use of both pictures and words. (There are, of course, comics without words just as there is theatre without words, but in both cases the tradition of each form demands inclusion of its most visual extremes.) The form is known in French as "bande dessinée" (drawn strip), in German as "Bilderstreifen" or "Bildergeschichte" (picture strip or picture story), and in Italian as "fumetto" (literally "puff of smoke", in reference to speech balloons). The Japanese have "manga." Only in English is there the ambiguous reference to humour; though sometimes known as "funnies", comic strips and books are not necessarily "comic". In a gesture toward artistic respectability, recent producers of some of the more carefully rendered comic books have tended to call their work graphic novels or graphic narratives. The underground publications from the 1970s and later prefer the term "comix".

David Kunzle (1973: 2) proposes four essentials for the form:

There must be a sequence of separate images;

There must be a preponderance of image over text;

The medium in which the strip appears and for which it is originally intended must be reproductive, that is, in printed form, a mass medium;

The sequence must tell a story which is both moral and topical.

Measured by these criteria, the comic strip and comic book are extremely popular forms of popular culture, in many cultures. Though both derive from quite old traditional forms of printed expression in Europe and in the East, it is generally considered that their modern forms developed late in the nineteenth century, as a consequence of the explosion of newspaper circulation and the rise of literacy as a social goal for all rather than as an exclusive privilege. The contemporary comic strip comes more from the propagandistic seventeenth- and eighteenth- century popular broadsheets (documented in Kunzle, 1973) than it does from the mediaeval illuminations that often appear as the "first comics" in histories of twentieth-century comic strips.

Within the limitations prescribed by the definition, there is an astounding variety of expression. Usually, periodical comics maintain the strip form when compiled into books, but the flexibility of format offered by a page or double spread in a book has enticed artists to push the convention of the left-to-right/top-to-bottom reading sequence to its limits. Comic strips and books have developed through the twentieth century in close conjunction with other visual mass media (particularly films), and many technical conventions of pacing, framing, perspective, lighting and dialogue are shared among them.

Comics present, in ways both overt and subtle, visions of morality and topicality that have important social and personal uses. Their characterizations of personalities, institutions, themes and environments share a certain moral calculation, and are often very carefully directed to certain age groups and social classes. Both the graphic styles and the story contents of comic strip art are used to present and promote the artist’s visions. And both forms and contents are subject to the reader’s or viewer’s interpretation, either at the level presented by the individual artist, or on a multitude of other inadvertent but no less significant levels. The artist may choose to reinforce social convention, or to criticize it.

In practice, much popular visual narrative tends toward satire, usually with a "surprise" ending that may be humorous or tragic. Only in the longest comic-book tales is there to be found the type of story development characteristic of a novel; visual narratives seldom exceed short-story ambitions.

There is a general accepted distinction between realistic and "cartoon" styles in popular visual narratives. The use of the word "cartoon" has been appropriated from its origin as a preparatory drawing for a painting or fresco, and refers to a drawing style of simplified line and form which we recognize as fictional (as caricature) but accept nevertheless as a sort of visual shorthand. It should be obvious that even the most ambitiously realistic drawing styles are not photographically realistic, yet most readers will interpret them as realistic.

Setting, and the various techniques available to the artist for its delineation, serves to emplace the story of the comic book or strip. Architecture is most often employed in generic or typical forms. Only rarely in the body of popular visual narratives do specific buildings or complexes appear by name in a way that brings them into the story itself.

But recognizable images of specific places and eras do add essential character to a narrative in order to distinguish it from other similar story lines or drawing styles. Sometimes the story line is the dramatization of a specific historical episode, be it accurately reconstructed or (more or less) fictionalized. Such a story relies in either instance on the reader’s background knowledge of that episode and calls upon the reader’s preconceptions and imaginings of how a place might have looked at that time. The drawing of setting, whether detailed or abstracted, can make or break the narrative. Some creators have incorporated and manipulated photographs for these purposes as well.

The comic-book universe is populated with accurate or at least conventionally recognizable Greek temples, Roman fortifications, mediaeval castles and cathedrals, smoke-begrimed Victorian cities, frontier outposts, Art Deco fantasias, modern urban nightmares (often American, even in European comics), and utopias alternately apocalyptic and paradisaic. It is also populated with dream-worlds that can mix these all together, depending only on the artist’s gifts for verisimilitude to render "realistically" — or at least plausibly — an environment of complete impossibility.

On the comic page, dream environments are not only possible, they may be necessary.

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		Ephemeral landscapes The materiality of the image

Front door Subject matter Project outline The material artifact The material artifact: sources The immaterial artifact The materiality of the image Models for analysis Research in progress Bibliography (alphabetical) Bibliography (grouped, with notes) Links		Comic strips and comic books comprise a form of graphic art for reproduction that tells stories through the use of both pictures and words. (There are, of course, comics without words just as there is theatre without words, but in both cases the tradition of each form demands inclusion of its most visual extremes.) The form is known in French as "bande dessinée" (drawn strip), in German as "Bilderstreifen" or "Bildergeschichte" (picture strip or picture story), and in Italian as "fumetto" (literally "puff of smoke", in reference to speech balloons). The Japanese have "manga." Only in English is there the ambiguous reference to humour; though sometimes known as "funnies", comic strips and books are not necessarily "comic". In a gesture toward artistic respectability, recent producers of some of the more carefully rendered comic books have tended to call their work graphic novels or graphic narratives. The underground publications from the 1970s and later prefer the term "comix". David Kunzle (1973: 2) proposes four essentials for the form: There must be a sequence of separate images; There must be a preponderance of image over text; The medium in which the strip appears and for which it is originally intended must be reproductive, that is, in printed form, a mass medium; The sequence must tell a story which is both moral and topical. Measured by these criteria, the comic strip and comic book are extremely popular forms of popular culture, in many cultures. Though both derive from quite old traditional forms of printed expression in Europe and in the East, it is generally considered that their modern forms developed late in the nineteenth century, as a consequence of the explosion of newspaper circulation and the rise of literacy as a social goal for all rather than as an exclusive privilege. The contemporary comic strip comes more from the propagandistic seventeenth- and eighteenth- century popular broadsheets (documented in Kunzle, 1973) than it does from the mediaeval illuminations that often appear as the "first comics" in histories of twentieth-century comic strips. Within the limitations prescribed by the definition, there is an astounding variety of expression. Usually, periodical comics maintain the strip form when compiled into books, but the flexibility of format offered by a page or double spread in a book has enticed artists to push the convention of the left-to-right/top-to-bottom reading sequence to its limits. Comic strips and books have developed through the twentieth century in close conjunction with other visual mass media (particularly films), and many technical conventions of pacing, framing, perspective, lighting and dialogue are shared among them. Comics present, in ways both overt and subtle, visions of morality and topicality that have important social and personal uses. Their characterizations of personalities, institutions, themes and environments share a certain moral calculation, and are often very carefully directed to certain age groups and social classes. Both the graphic styles and the story contents of comic strip art are used to present and promote the artist’s visions. And both forms and contents are subject to the reader’s or viewer’s interpretation, either at the level presented by the individual artist, or on a multitude of other inadvertent but no less significant levels. The artist may choose to reinforce social convention, or to criticize it. In practice, much popular visual narrative tends toward satire, usually with a "surprise" ending that may be humorous or tragic. Only in the longest comic-book tales is there to be found the type of story development characteristic of a novel; visual narratives seldom exceed short-story ambitions. There is a general accepted distinction between realistic and "cartoon" styles in popular visual narratives. The use of the word "cartoon" has been appropriated from its origin as a preparatory drawing for a painting or fresco, and refers to a drawing style of simplified line and form which we recognize as fictional (as caricature) but accept nevertheless as a sort of visual shorthand. It should be obvious that even the most ambitiously realistic drawing styles are not photographically realistic, yet most readers will interpret them as realistic. Setting, and the various techniques available to the artist for its delineation, serves to emplace the story of the comic book or strip. Architecture is most often employed in generic or typical forms. Only rarely in the body of popular visual narratives do specific buildings or complexes appear by name in a way that brings them into the story itself. But recognizable images of specific places and eras do add essential character to a narrative in order to distinguish it from other similar story lines or drawing styles. Sometimes the story line is the dramatization of a specific historical episode, be it accurately reconstructed or (more or less) fictionalized. Such a story relies in either instance on the reader’s background knowledge of that episode and calls upon the reader’s preconceptions and imaginings of how a place might have looked at that time. The drawing of setting, whether detailed or abstracted, can make or break the narrative. Some creators have incorporated and manipulated photographs for these purposes as well. The comic-book universe is populated with accurate or at least conventionally recognizable Greek temples, Roman fortifications, mediaeval castles and cathedrals, smoke-begrimed Victorian cities, frontier outposts, Art Deco fantasias, modern urban nightmares (often American, even in European comics), and utopias alternately apocalyptic and paradisaic. It is also populated with dream-worlds that can mix these all together, depending only on the artist’s gifts for verisimilitude to render "realistically" — or at least plausibly — an environment of complete impossibility. On the comic page, dream environments are not only possible, they may be necessary.
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