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The essay presents, first, some key concepts for analyzing the visual form of comics and graphic novels. Second, it proposes some concrete and easily adaptable exercises for classroom use. The aim is to sharpen students' awareness for the way in which visual communication works in comics and graphic novels, and thus to enhance their media literacy.
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... students will have some experience with reading comics, which makes it reasonable to assume that they will recognize Fig. 1 as a schematized version of a comics page. At the same time, students (and perhaps instructors, too) may find it difficult to discuss such images, in part due to the lack of a shared critical vocabulary. Instructors can begin to remedy this situation by providing an alphabetic list of key terms and their meanings, such as the one ...
Context 2
... the -often, but not necessarily white -space between panels (e.g. between panels I and II), or between a panel and the edge of the page hyperframe: the outline of all the structural elements on a comics page (i.e. panels, speech balloons, thought bubbles, etc.); the total or combined, 'contentless' shape of all the structural elements (example: Fig. 1 as a whole can be seen as a hyperframe, i.e. it shows the outline of all the structural elements of a comics page, but no specific content) line: can convey different types of meaning, depending on the way they are drawn (examples: the dashed line of speech balloon (e) might indicate whispering; the squiggly red line used for panel VI ...
Context 3
... (which is a virtual construct that only exists in the minds of individual readers, i.e. one never actually sees the entire multiframe because it is distributed across all the pages of a given comic book) onomatopoeia / sound effects: expressions like WHAM! or BOOM! (with or without frame; such a frame might look like the empty shape d in Fig. 1) page layout / page architecture / miseen-page: the underlying panel grid (i.e. the arrangement of all the panels on a page; the hyperframe, minus speech balloons, captions, etc.); can be subdivided into four types (Peeters, 2007;rev. by Groensteen 2007, pp. 92-95;see also Cohn, ...
Context 4
... a single image on a comics page (I-VI) › accentuated panel: best thought of in relative terms, within a given context (example: in Fig. 1, VI is more accentuated than III or V); a panel can be accentuated through its site (i.e. position on the page), size, shape, and/or style of border › bleed panel: a panel that 'bleeds' into the edge of the page (panel IV in Fig. 1 is an -unframed -bleed panel) › double-page panel (or double-page spread): a single panel covers both ...
Context 5
... on a comics page (I-VI) › accentuated panel: best thought of in relative terms, within a given context (example: in Fig. 1, VI is more accentuated than III or V); a panel can be accentuated through its site (i.e. position on the page), size, shape, and/or style of border › bleed panel: a panel that 'bleeds' into the edge of the page (panel IV in Fig. 1 is an -unframed -bleed panel) › double-page panel (or double-page spread): a single panel covers both facing pages in a comic › full-page panel / full-page splash: one single panel covers an entire page › framed panel (I, III, V, VI) › splash panel: a very large, visually dominant panel (at least half a page; in Fig. 1, IV does not ...
Context 6
... of the page (panel IV in Fig. 1 is an -unframed -bleed panel) › double-page panel (or double-page spread): a single panel covers both facing pages in a comic › full-page panel / full-page splash: one single panel covers an entire page › framed panel (I, III, V, VI) › splash panel: a very large, visually dominant panel (at least half a page; in Fig. 1, IV does not 'feel' like a true splash panel because a large part of it is covered by other panels, which reduces its visual prominence) › superimposed panel (example: III is superimposed on IV; I, V, and Vi are partially superimposed on IV) › unframed / borderless panel (II, IV) speech balloon / speech bubble (a, b, e): like panels, ...
Context 7
... like panels, speech balloons can have different types of borders (e.g. dashed as in e, to indicate whispering; but also squiggly, thick, borderless, etc.) tail / pointer: the element attached to a speech balloon or thought bubble that points toward the character(s) from which the utterances emanate; onomatopoeia often do not have a tail (cf. d in Fig. 1), whereas most speech balloons and thought bubbles do thought bubble (f): as is the case with speech balloons, the style of the border may vary (e.g. dashed vs. regular or no ...
Context 8
... order to foster such media literacy, teachers need specific methods for drawing students' attention not only to character types, plot structures, and common themes, but also to aspects of visual form -in short, not just to what is being told, but also to how the content is presented on the page. and explain these terms (e.g. by using Fig. 1). Once the terms are familiar to all students, teachers can display Fig. 2 and ask the students to describe this double page using the appropriate terminology, such as splash page or framed vs. unframed panels. Next, the class can be split into buzz groups to discuss the following questions: 'What is the relation between these two ...
Context 9
... entities), one in the left-hand and the other in the right-hand half of the image; › not too crowded or busy, to ensure that there is sufficient space for students to add panel divisions, speech balloons, etc.; › no character or object right in the middle of the image, as this may end up looking peculiar once the image is divided into two pages. Fig. 10 provides one further example of the type of images that are ideal for the present purpose. (Both Fig. 9 and Fig. 10 were taken from Deviantart.com, and the artists have kindly granted permission for their images to be used in a non-profit educational context.) In addition to explaining the exercise properly, instructors may want to ...
Context 10
... that there is sufficient space for students to add panel divisions, speech balloons, etc.; › no character or object right in the middle of the image, as this may end up looking peculiar once the image is divided into two pages. Fig. 10 provides one further example of the type of images that are ideal for the present purpose. (Both Fig. 9 and Fig. 10 were taken from Deviantart.com, and the artists have kindly granted permission for their images to be used in a non-profit educational context.) In addition to explaining the exercise properly, instructors may want to alert students to the problems associated with reusing images, and perhaps discuss such concepts as fair use, creative ...
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