Stylistics + Comics

Panel Staggering
Disintegrated Gutter Sizes
Link Between Visual interpretations and Different Moments in Time
Visual + Semantic Similarities

● Comics panels typically have straight and black borders

● These panels tend to vary to suggest alternative interpretations. For instance, a cloud-
like thought bubble may communicate a ‘flashy’ or ‘dreamy’ scene. [cf.
Eisner 1985: 44-50]
● The panels themselves usually vary in size, mainly between squares and rectangles. For
example, when a panel is bigger, it may tend to signify a deeper meaning, i.e. the panel
holds more importance as it may provide context or details
● Sometimes a panel is bigger, taking up the space of two or more rows, or even an entire
page, called a ‘splash page.’ Many artists occasionally or often deviate from the
conventional panel form: panels can be round, oval or polygonal, forms that – much like
balloon contours – may carry specific meaning.
● Why is a panel a given shape? What is the importance of the panel shape?
● The choice of background colours in panels may be meaningful as they can highlight the
theme of the context, or may simply add to the visual transition from one panel to
another. [colour makes it more simple to recognize minor details in specific panels]

● In many comics, the page or the two-page spread is an important unit of chronological
meaning [the transitioning from one panel to another]
● In European comics, the composition of panels on a page can resemble that of words in
a paragraph or a sentence in prose [sequence]. Since all panels on a page or two-page
spread are visible at the same time, their interrelations allow for additional stylistic play
● Peeters [1998: 39-64] distinguishes between different types of page compositions; in
one of them, the productive page, the composition appears to dictate the story instead of
vice versa [formatting, and selection of space to communicate a certain ideology]
● Also, the final panel on a page can be used to end a scene or create a feeling of
suspense. This happens with cliff-hangers in serial narratives, but can also be a way of
pacing the story to create suspense, and draw attention. [Groensteen 2007: 29]

● Comics also allow for every panel to enter into a relationship with any other panel in the
book, forming complex strands of correspondences [similarity] through ‘braiding’
[Groensteen 2001]

Normally comics are read from left to right. However, some types like Japanese manga pages,
which follow the Japanese reading convention, are read from right to left.
The normal grid pattern is not followed by types of comics- eg. Manga, american action comics.
Overlapping panels- Readers can read in many directions.
Gutter is important because it separates panels(ideas/scenes) and shows temporality in panels.
It is also a black hole where what is not shown happens. The reader can infer from the adjacent
panels what happens in the gutter.

Time passes in the same direction as the direction of reading.

No. of panels/ length of panels tells us how much time the action/s happening in the panel
take/s.
The reader’s perception can be affected by: size, arrangement, direction, shape of panel and
the space between ,overlap and angles in the panel.