Why comics?
From the Spinner Rack to the Sightless Void
Do you remember the first comic book you ever read? For me, it was a Green Lantern comic. It was the mid-80s, and I was around nine years old, so this was long before the era of big comic book movies and specialty comic shops. Back then, my brother and I had to find our comics in the wild, though we were usually able to buy them off the spinner rack at the local corner store.
I don't remember the details of the issue or the plot, but I do remember being captivated by the pages. They were filled with strange characters. Aliens and weirdos all working together. That was a kind of magic for me. It left me feeling like anything was possible, and my love of comics has yet to wane.
As my earliest reading experiences came by way of comic books, so did some of my earliest published writing experiences, and while I prepare content for this newsletter, I've been exploring the technology of comics further.
Yeah, other people just read their comics. I waste spend my time investigating the technology that makes them work. Because comics are a special kind of collaborative art. Made solely up of words and pictures, they allow the storytellers and the readers to play a sort of temporal game with one another.
Comics as a powerful storytelling medium are covered extensively in works like Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, by creators like Eddie Campbell, and in publications like The Comics Journal.
However:
"Unlike the movies, where good or bad timing is a measurable fact, in comics everything else on this subject is fiction. And like all good fiction, it requires a suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader. In fact it requires a little more than that. It requires complicity."
Rule #4 of Campbell's Rules of Comprehension - Eddie Campbell
When reading a comic, the reader has to actively engage with the story, using their imagination to fill in the gaps between the panels to navigate the flow of the narrative. This creates an experience different from the linear storytelling in a movie or a novel.
Comics are the rare storytelling medium where the authors and the audience are frequently out of sync. There are all kinds of tricks writers and artists use to capture the imagination of the reader, to immerse them in the fiction, and draw their gaze across the page to convey the story in an intentional manner. Yet, despite it all, nothing can stop the reader from immediately absorbing the most crucial images on the page first.
This is a feature as far as I'm concerned. It's what gives comics that specialness I felt as a kid and still feel as an adult. The reader is also a collaborator.
In an attempt to educate myself about this weird aspect of comics, I stumbled on some folks studying comics through a behavioral and neurological lens.
If interested, check out Graphic Textbooks by Brian M. Kane and the Visual Language Lab by Neil Cohn.
It turns out that readers are relatively disciplined when reading comics. Across the board, among both inexperienced readers and regular readers, people tend to skip large chunks of text. Inexperienced readers tend to be more erratic and confused about where to look, while experienced readers spend most of their time looking at the art. Yet, miraculously none of this behavior inhibits comprehension of the work as a whole.
When reading comics, our brain actively analyzes the story, images, and panels—taking into consideration what has been seen and what has not been seen. It then combines this with the language-based information on the page to comprehend what is happening, all at once and in concert with each reader's unique pace.
Sounds a bit like magic.
Anyway, the comic I'm kicking this newsletter off with is a weird horror story titled "Eternal Gaze of the Sightless Void." It's brought to eerie life through the talents of an incredible artist who goes by Norma Noxe. You can look forward to seeing that really soon.
Until then, read more comics.
If comics are not your thing because you find them confusing, I really don't blame you. There's a lot of information on a page, and it can sometimes feel unwelcoming. I found this VOX post about reading comics to be insightful, and maybe you will too.