Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

This photo is of a comic called Cecil C. Addle by Ray Collins.

In chapter 5 of Scott Mcloud’s book titled, “Living in Line” he discusses the significance line styles play in the visual of a comic. While visiting the MASC, I really enjoyed analyzing all of the ways Ray Collins utilized lines in his comic series named Cecil C. Addle.

The lines presented here are solid and bold, similar to that of Scott Mcloud’s illustrations in our textbook. I personally tend to find these solid and bold lines more pleasing to look at because they are clean and cartoon-like. In the second panel of this example, three small dashed lines are indicating that hearts or loving nature is coming from the female character.

In the second panel, short and crescent-shaped lines are made to represent anxious shivers coming from the male character while the same lines are coming from the female character in the third panel which represents excitement. The expressions on the character’s faces allow the viewer to make sense of the lines in apposing ways even though they are the same when it comes to design.

This is a page from The Amazing Spider-Man: The Goblins Power Comic by Stan Lee. Published in 1971.

In chapter 6 of Scott Mcloud’s book titled, “Show and Tell” he went over the amazing ways image and text can complement another. While looking through The Amazing Spiderman comic by Stan Lee, I really loved the way this page conveyed the emotions this female character was feeling, however, the world bubbles provided an additional set of context that allowed a reader to see exactly what she was feeling and why.

In the first panel, the female character is gazing out of a window in deep thought, as many dramatic thinking scenes have shown on many creative platforms before. The visual in the first panel sets an obvious tone, but I would have had no way of knowing that the character was contemplating running away because she wasn’t happy with her relationship dynamic. My imagination could have taken the image in a totally different direction. The word/thought bubble coming from the female character explained that she was upset at first and then by the end of the page, she is more hopeful.

This is a comic spread from “ZAP13” that I chose as an example of the use of line to display emotion.

When we went to MASC this week, I was initially overwhelmed by how many different examples we were able to choose from, however, once I started looking around I was instantly drawn to this ZAP comic book.  I think this comic uses line in great detail to display emotion.  The spread is showing a banana and I believe a potato, smoking together. The panel that sticks out to me is on the second page in the middle.  The artist uses line to depict chaos or some sort of tension within the entire spread.  As the comic continues, the lines only get messier, which acts as a way for the reader to see that the characters are losing control.  By using line to create the stars and miscellaneous shapes behind the characters, the more cluttered they become, the more cluttered the characters’ minds become.

“The St. Kahuna Surfing Mysteries?” comic spread from ZAP13

I chose this spread as my example of an interdependent word/picture combo.  I would consider this comic to be interdependent because, without the words, there would be no way for the reader to comprehend the narrative that this comic is attempting to display.  At first glance, even just skimming over the comic as a whole (pictures and words included), this comic was a tough one for me to find meaning in.  I didn’t pay attention to the overarching title that spans across both pages, which was clearly meant to be read first, judging by the text size.  However, when I was first looking at this spread, it had so many different images that I was just overwhelmed.  I tried to take everything in at once, which left me thoroughly confused.  That being said, once I slowed down and read the text fully, I was able to understand that this comic was telling the narratives about one island’s surfing mysteries.  Honestly, without the text and without the images this comic would simply just not work which is why I would consider it to be a good example of an interdependent word/picture combination.

Illustration of Dance of Death, From the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493, Located in Special Collections in the WSU MASC

Chapter 5: “Living in Line” from Understanding Comics, mentions how to use line quality in order to convey emotion. While in the MASC, at the WSU library, I found multiple examples on line quality which conveyed emotion, but I found the illustrations from the Nuremberg Chronicle to be most telling. The representation of the dance of death not only implements line quality with the aspect of thickness of the line but also the direction and angles of those lines. The thicker lines on the dead skeleton brings emotions of emptiness and coldness compared to the thin lines on the still living skeletons which brings emotions of lightness and joy. The direction of the line also plays a role in the emotion that it displays. The more horizontal lines bring a sense of calmness whereas the more vertical lines represent anxiety or anxiousness. Overall, the line quality used in the illustration of the dance of death utilizes the thin/thickness of the lines as well as the direction of the lines to express emotions.

Illustration from RAW, by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly, pg. 87, Located in the WSU MASC

Chapter 6: “Show and Tell” from Understanding Comics, defines a lot of terms of the relation between words and images. The term that I would like to focus on is duo-specific. Duo-specific means both the words and pictures send essentially the same message. I found many examples of this in the MASC, but one example particularly stood out to me. In the graphic novel Raw, by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly, there is an illustration of a car crashing along with the words “CRASH” emphasized. This is a clear example of duo-specific because if the words crashed weren’t on the page, the reader would still clearly know what was happening in the scene. The words “crash” and the image of the car crashing are sending the same message to the reader that the car is in a collision.

When looking through the artifacts at the MASC there were a lot of different pieces that stood out to me for lines conveying emotion, but the one that stood out the most was a

“3D Batman” by Bob Kane published by National Periodical Publications in 1966 printed in USA

comic titled 3D Batman by Bob Kane. This is a comic about Batman and the crazy adventures he gets into, but expressed in 3D. When flipping through the book, I found that Bob Kane would often use lines and how we made the images to create tension for the reader, and the 3D aspect would make this feature stand out even more. In this example, for the inside cover page, you see a lot of sharp hard edges coming off of objects to create a sort of “sound” to go along with the image that conveys tension with the reader.

Also, while looking through the artifacts within the MASC there were a lot of examples I found while looking at the much older books that conveyed a lot of interdependent examples between lines and words in the works. In this example from A Pisgan-sight of Palestine and the Confines Thereof with the Old and New Testament Acted Thereon by

“A Pisgan-sight of Palestine and the Confines Thereof with the Old and New Testament Acted Thereon” by Thomas Fuller B.D 1652

Thomas Fuller B.D, you can see how the images are very descriptive, but there is also words throughout the images that are key for the reader to fully understand the image. While I don’t understand the language the author used within this piece, there is a reason the author incorporated the words into this piece. From what I can interpret it is the names of the places the images are conveying, or better describing to the viewer what is happening in the picture. 

This comic shows a woman standing in front of a doorway with what looks like a half-monster half-man staring at her. I mainly focused on the left page but I thought it was interesting to see another monster looking at the characters on the other page, I thought it was meta in a way. The line quality on the left page is different between the two characters. The lines around the woman are minimal, clean, and organized. The combination of her stance and the line quality makes the woman seem bold, independent and put together. In contrast, the man/monster concoction to her left looks like something out of a completely different comic. The line quality for the man is a lot of hectic and random, there’s a lot of drips, scribbles, and harsh lines, it almost provokes a sense of fear. The artist also separated the two characters quite distinctly, it looks like if divided the page in half at the right-most part of the doorway, the two parts would not look like they’re related at all.

This page is from the Richie Rich Millions comic. I thought this page was a good example of a Duo-specific or additive combo. This comic page is about how Richie has too much money and is trying to figure out where to put all his money. If there was no text, I think that the reader might be able to get the general message out of the comic soley based on the images. I also think that the reader could get the same idea if there were no pictures, and just text, which is why I think this page is an example of a duo-specific combo. At the same time, I think the text adds a little bit more context to make it easier for the reader to understand the comic.

Image from “Crash”

When I visited the Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC) on Tuesday in class, I found examples for both the use of line, and the use of interdependent words and images in a comic. For my example of line, I examined this full-page spread found in the comic, Crash. This page depicts a car crash, and as you can imagine, a car crash would be very chaotic, giving people stress and anxiety. The artist of this comic created an image portraying the crash, just as it would make you feel. You can see the car parts and action lines flying in every way possible. These lines laying across the page with no specific order or sequence provokes anxiety to the average viewer because there is too much going on and it is stressful to look at. This anxiety is also caused by the way each line and shape in this crash scene is darkly outlined, but unique in its own way, not contributing to any order or sequence. In addition, the way in which the artist draws car parts and action lines outside of the borders of the panel goes to prove that the chaotic mess of this crash can’t be contained by the border.

Image from “Crazy Men Deluxe” Comic by Michael Roden in 1985.

For an example of interdependent words and images in a comic, I chose to look at this full-page spread found in Crazy Men Deluxe, which is an underground comic from the 1980s. This comic book has much of a different artistic style depicting men who look very different to Human beings. This leaves its audience unable to connect with the characters as easily, as well not be able to recognize a lot of what is going in. I chose to look at this page for an interdependent relationship between words and images because the only words on the page says, “Road Race Today,” which gives the reader insight to the context of the story, which is needed because of the possible confusion from the unique artistic style. While there are cars in the right page, it would still take a lot of audience participation to understand that there was actually a road race taking place without seeing the sign. On another note, if this was a mainstream comic and the characters were more identifiable to the viewer, we would more than likely already have the context of the story, which would cause the image and word relationship to be image-specific because the words do little to add to the story which is mostly told visually.