Article Outline and Report

The article I have chosen to outline and analyze is “Narrative in Comics” by Henry Pratt. This article focuses on the narrative strategies of comics and how these narrative strategies are similar to film and literature.

1. 
   
   
   
   
   Introduction
   1. 
      
      
      
      
      Summary of opinions from previous writers.
      1. 
         
         
         
         
         Most prominent commentators on comics claim that narrativity is a defining characteristic
      2. 
         
         
         
         
         Author views comics as “juxtaposed pictures that comprise a narrative” (107)
   2. 
      
      
      
      
      Dissenting opinions on the comments from the above writers
      1. 
         
         
         
         
         Non-narrative comics could be possible
      2. 
         
         
         
         
         However, “the process of reading a comic still requires us to cast about for a unifying device” (107)
   3. 
      
      
      
      
      Comics is is predominantly a narrative-drive medium
      1. 
         
         
         
         
         The topic of narrative in comics is unexplored
      2. 
         
         
         
         
         Purpose of article is ask questions about the philosophy of art involving comics
         1. 
            
            
            
            
            “How does narrative work in comics?” (107).
         2. 
            
            
            
            
            “Do comics offer narrative structures and strategies that are distinctive?” (107).
         3. 
            
            
            
            
            “What is so distinctive about them?” (107).
   4. 
      
      
      
      
      There is a literary element to comic narratives
   5. 
      
      
      
      
      There is a pictorial element to comic narratives
   6. 
      
      
      
      
      There is similar elements in the narrative strategies of film and comics.
   7. 
      
      
      
      
      There are distinct, hybrid elements in the narrative structures in comics.
   8. 
      
      
      
      
      This article only investigates the “most prominent narrative functions of the comics medium” (108).
      1. 
         
         
         
         
         Comics are diverse in style
      2. 
         
         
         
         
         Comic artists will try to explore and expand the accepted norms of their art form.

In this first section, the author lays out his goal for article; to investigate the narrative structure and strategies in comics. He lists the different sections of his essay, with each one dealing with a different dimension to comic narratives. He also lists the scope of the article, and the theorists who have covered similar theoretical ground.

1. 
   
   
   
   The Literary Dimension
   1. 
      
      
      
      Words in comics are found in four different forms.
      1. 
         
         
         
         The word balloon: speech and thoughts of a character with “some pictorial indication that connects them directionally to that character” (108).
      2. 
         
         
         
         Text in a box or caption outside the panel: “does not convey dialogue, but serves as narration”
      3. 
         
         
         
         Sound effects
      4. 
         
         
         
         Depictions of word in the art itself, like street signs or books.
   2. 
      
      
      
      The fourth kind of words affect the diegesis (fictional world)
      1. 
         
         
         
         These words are experienced by the reader and the characters in the story
      2. 
         
         
         
         The other kinds of words “are not exactly nondiegetic” 108.
         1. 
            
            
            
            Though the reader reads the speech bubble, the other characters can presumably hear the words spoken.
         2. 
            
            
            
            Sound effects (like KABLAMMO) are onomatopoetic, but they “cannot capture the exact sound” (108).
   3. 
      
      
      
      The literary dimension of comics is “visually nondiegetic” (108).
      1. 
         
         
         
         it determines “not what they see, but what they hear” (108).
      2. 
         
         
         
         Words are the only way the reader accesses sounds that are part of the narrative.
   4. 
      
      
      
      The literary dimension allows the reader to have “a degree of narrative of omniscience that is common in literature but nearly impossible using pictures alone” (109).
   5. 
      
      
      
      The literary dimension helps govern the passage of time
      1. 
         
         
         
         “Text can determine the duration of a single panel” (109).
      2. 
         
         
         
         A panel without text is ambiguous, because “it could represent one instant of a casual sequence” or “an unmoving set of objects”
   6. 
      
      
      
      Words regulate the passage of time in the narrative by encapsulating it within specific panels
   7. 
      
      
      
      This regulation is complicated by actions like human
      1. 
         
         
         
         This complication means that “thought balloons and narration may take much more time for the viewer to read through than the time that occurs in the panel in which they are located” (109).
      2. 
         
         
         
         The reader is supposed to understand that “thought balloons occur faster than speech balloons” (109).
      3. 
         
         
         
         The reader is also supposed to understand that “narrative text outside of balloons is in some way removed from the time frame of the panel” (109).
   8. 
      
      
      
      The comics artist needs to be skilled in order to guide reader perception through the literary dimension through pictorial placement of text.
   9. 
      
      
      
      Words appear to be “the reader's primary focus” (109)
      1. 
         
         
         
         At least on the first reading.
      2. 
         
         
         
         The words determine the pace and efficiency of the reading
   10. 
       
       
       
       “Comics are temporally static” (110)
       1. 
          
          
          
          “The pace of reading a comic is literary, constructed by the reader” (110)
       2. 
          
          
          
          The literary dimension lets the reader “play over the succession of panels” (110).
   11. 
       
       
       
       Even though literary elements shape the reading process, there is not a “subordination of the pictorial to the literary” (110).

This section shows how the author builds his argument. Each point of each paragraph leads into the next one. With this, each paragraph adds more detail to his description. This is most notable in how he addresses temporality in four paragraphs, with each one covering different ground in how time is perceived by the characters in comics and the readers of them.

1. 
   
   The Pictorial Dimension
   1. 
      
      You can have comics without words, but you can't have comics without pictures.
      1. 
         
         Even the words are pictorial elements (word balloons are part of the picture, placed by the artist)
      2. 
         
         Word balloons are the pictorial equivalent of “she said” (110).
   2. 
      
      A picture “that constitutes a single panel of comics” has three kinds of narrative function (110).
   3. 
      
      A picture establishes setting or the scene of a story.
      1. 
         
         It “guides the reader's perception of spatial relationships within it” (110).
      2. 
         
         Panels can show how “characters and other physical objects are arrayed in diegetic space” (110).
   4. 
      
      The artist's stylistic choices regarding character design, word balloons, inking, color choices etc. provide narrative information like mood, emotional context, and ease or increase of dramatic tension.
   5. 
      
      A panel an inform the reader pictorially “about the emotional and other mental states of the characters contained in it, without the use of words” (110).
   6. 
      
      After discussing simple tasks of images in comics, more complicated things can be discussed.
      1. 
         
         How can the comics reader “make sense of a narrative that is displayed in multiple spaces all of which exist at the same time?” (111).
      2. 
         
         “What is the process used to combine panels?” (111).
   7. 
      
      One idea of this process is Scott McCloud's “closure”. (111).
      1. 
         
         “observing the parts but perceiving the whole”
      2. 
         
         this process connects “moments and mentally construct a continuous, unified reality”
   8. 
      
      The author debates terminology
      1. 
         
         “Closure” is already used to mean the resolution of narrative tension, and it is an epistemological term.
      2. 
         
         “Suture” is used for film theory, but it has an “abundance of controversial psychoanalytic baggage” (111).
      3. 
         
         The author would like to use the term “soldering” or “bridging” but the term “closure” is already prominent (111).
   9. 
      
      There are other processes similar to closure, and that will be discussed in Section IV.
   10. 
       
       Sequences of panels that use all of the above discussed techniques in the pictorial and literary dimensions and combined via closure are effective conveyers of narrative information.
   11. 
       
       Example of the use of closure from Action Comics No. 1, the first appearance of Superman.
   12. 
       
       Panel transitions (the site of closure) usually cover “small period of time elapses” (112).
   13. 
       
       In order to tell stories “span significant diegetic time” “more than an instant of diegetic time has to elapse between panels” (112).
   14. 
       
       Words can do this with phrases like “the following day” but it can be done pictorially (such as characters changing clothes) (112).
   15. 
       
       “The more diegetic time passing in the gutter implies more potential difficulty in following a comic's narrative” (112).
   16. 
       
       Time doesn't have to elapse between panels
       1. 
          
          “aspect-to-aspect transitions” show simultaneous aspects of the same scene
       2. 
          
          These transitions give the reader a better sense of the space of the narrative
   17. 
       
       Multiple panels don't just give the reader a sense of temporality, but also a sense of space
   18. 
       
       Comics cannot simulate the illusion of motion; all “substantial amount of movement” requires multiple panels (113)
   19. 
       
       Example from the first Superman comic to demonstrate the two above points
   20. 
       
       A shift in focus from closure and the construction of space and time to how the stories of comics are shaped by “which moments to include” and “which to leave out” (113).
   21. 
       
       Size, placement, scale, and distance to the reader are all ways an artist can influence the reader to pick up on cues in the narrative
   22. 
       
       This is identical to the use of “variable framing” in filmmaking (113).
   23. 
       
       Although comics uses some of the same narrative techniques and strategies of film they are not “cheap, static, deficient films” (113).

The length of this section demonstrates the importance of the pictorial narrative techniques and strategies in comics. He uses examples from specific comics in order to show what he means, but I do not understand why he did not just include the panels from the comic. It could be a permissions issue, but I am sure he could have found a comic that he could get the permission to reprint select panels.

1. Distinctive Narrative in Comics
   1. Comics are not simply hybrids of words and pictures, but the “intimacy with the narrative produced by the reader's constant exercise of closure” produces something distinct.
   2. This argument is controversial in comics' literature
   3. Scott McCloud's argument about closure has been challenged because what he describes isn't unique because it is equivalent to different “shots” in film and television
   4. The arguments against McCloud's position are convincing and powerful
      1. It is more difficult to explain how narratively comics and film differ than it is to explain how narratively comics and literature differ
      2. A comic can be seen as a “highly truncated film—a sampling of frames” (114).
   5. The main difference between comics and film is that the frames of a film showed in the same space at different times and that the panels of comics are “simultaneously present in different spaces” (114)
   6. Another distinguishing feature is that the artist must determine the layout, size, and shape of panels, with each variation providing new narrative information
   7. Even though films can use similar techniques (see any comic book film adaptation) but the author argues this use is “cheap and distracting”
   8. The spatial arrangement of panels allows the portrayal of simultaneous action in the same seen
      1. Like, the use of word balloons “allows for a number of conversation, speech acts, or separate thought to occur during the same diegetic time frame” (115).
   9. The reason for the easy comprehension of simultaneous actions is “because of the literary dimension in an otherwise pictorial medium” (115).
   10. This easy comprehension explains the widespread appeal of comics, because “sophisticated narratives” do not have “to be slowed down or have built-in redundancies” (115)
   11. Comics are like literature because they “are easy to produce, independently and inexpensively” (115)
   12. Because of their cheapness to produce, comics have a “close connection” between artist and reader (115).

This final section opens with a controversial argument and the debate around that argument. The gist of it is that Scott McCloud poorly argued that comics are much different from the pictorial narratives of film and television, and his detractors then declared the pictorial narratives synonymous. This author sidesteps this debate by providing better arguments for the distinct narrative techniques in comics. The structure to his argument is easy to follow, and the points he makes are clear. I was disappointed with the lack of pictures in an article about comics, but I was satisfied with how he wrote it. 

Works Cited

Pratt, Henry John. "Narrative in Comics."Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67.1 (2009): 107- 117.MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 1 Oct. 2010.