Reading Web Comics

[Note: Much of this information is taken from Scott McCloud’s wonderful book Understanding Comics.]

First: What are comics?

Scott McCloud spends some time discussing this, and ends up with a pretty good definition. Comics are juxtaposed images in a deliberate static sequence, designed to create an effect on the reader (9).

Let’s break that down a bit.

Images, first off – by this, McCloud means that comic book artists create what he calls icons, which are the fundamental, stripped down image (representation) of a given thing, especially a human thing, but really of anything. 

McCloud and the human face as Icon

Other icons

These icons work to create reactions in us, the readers, in a more powerful way than (say) photographic images would.

Juxtaposed: This, you’re probably familiar with. When two things are put next to one another on the page – juxtaposed – the reader will always attempt to create meaning between those two things. You’ll do this as a reader when you see two words juxtaposed on the page

Banana   Committee

And you’ll do this when you see two comic icons or panels juxtaposed as well.

This creation of meaning out of the two juxtaposed panels is called closure.

Closure: What’s closure? It’s our ability to see or hear or be given part of a sequence or a scene or whatever, and then “fill in” or understand the rest.

It’s like that joke about the three professors on a train trip to the north of England. One is an economics professor, and one is a mathematics professor, and one teaches logic. They cross into Scotland, and they see a brown cow in a field. “Oh, look,” says the economics professor. “The cows in Scotland are brown.”

“You reason badly,” says the logic professor. “All you can conclude is that there are cows in Scotland, of which at least one is brown.”

“You are both illogical,” says the mathematics professor. “We can only deduce that there appears to be at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown.”

This joke is funny because these academics fail at the basic tasks of closure, which most of us become adept at by the time we are six or eight months old. (That’s why peek-a-boo is so funny to a baby that age – she is learning the art of closure.) Seeing a cow on a hillside, and seeing only a bit of it – the backside, and a bit of its flank, maybe – we nevertheless understand easily that the rest of the cow is there, and that almost certainly the rest of that cow is brown, and that almost certainly other brown cows are somewhere nearby. That’s closure.

Seeing two panels, or six panels, of a comic juxtaposed with white space between them (the gutter is the official term for this white space) we understand easily that events happen in that white space. We understand that we need to draw conclusions about what those events are – to provide closure on our own.

Note that this is not a new skill. We do the same thing when we read novels, or poetry – the white space between verses in poetry are very like the gutters between panels in comic books.

Comic books are unlike novels and poems, however, in that they combine image – that icon – with words.

The role of line and shape and color: As we notes above, the image in comics are (usually) not representational – not photorealistic, in other words. Comic book artists make their images more iconic, and less realistic, expressing emotion and meaning through line, shape and color – this latter especially in the last ten years, as color printing technology has improved, and as web comics have become more common.

Words: Meanwhile, the comic book artist also has words, and can use those words in various ways along with the image to produce meaning. The words can simply narrate what is happening in the panel; or they can provide additional meaning; or they can comment ironically; or they can take us forward – past the image in the panel, to a new place in the narrative.

Other techniques: Other techniques used by comic book artists include time, background or scene, and variation with panels.

Scene/background: While characters and the objects they use are almost always drawn in an iconic style (not always, but almost always!), backgrounds vary. These are often drawn more realistically; sometimes they are very realistic, in deliberate contrast to the iconic nature of the characters. 

Other times, they’re as iconic as the characters themselves.

Time: Most comics are linear – that is, we move through time in a straight line, one panel after the next.  But this is not always the case; In “His Face All Red,” we start in the present, and move to the past, before returning to the present and moving forward again.

Time can move slowly in comics, from one moment to the next, or it can leap forward over months and even years from one panel to the next. This tends not to bother us in the least, probably because we’re used to such tricks with times from watching movies.

Panel variety: Finally, panels. The panel most commonly used in comics is the one we’re used to from the traditional comic – four or six panels side by side on a page, with distinct frames around each. Something like this, in other words:

“Darkness,” by Bouletcorp, makes use of this traditional format, even though it is a webcomic.

 Webcomics: Once comics began being created online, the traditional way of creating and formatting comics was no longer required. Now artists could use something called “the infinite canvas.”

The infinite canvas is a term for what is possible on the web which is not possible on the meat-space page -- or at least hasn’t been possible on that page since the codex has been our standard form.

The standard page in the physical universe is 8X11, and comic artists who work in print media are confined to that space, and work within that space for the most part.

On the web, however, the page can be any size – it can be an infinite size. See Emily Carroll’s “His Face All Red” and “Anu” for examples of what can be done with an infinite canvas.

Emily Carroll also makes excellent use of the extended palette available to the web artist. Previously, the print artist was limited in their use of colors to what was commercially possible, which is why the colors in traditional comic books are not very exciting. The palette for webcomic colors is much wider and richer.

The print artist is limited commercially in other ways – he (almost always he) must find a publisher, and must produce work that appeals to a wide audience – like television of the 1960s and 1970s, they play, often, to the lowest common denominator.  

Web comic artists can appeal to a much narrower and more specialized audience – as with cable TV, Netflix, and other subscription and streaming services, they therefore are often able to produce more interesting material, and better material.

The webcomic artist can also – as we see with Horang’s “Bongcheon-Dong’s Ghost” – add sound effects and movement to their comics. This is not quite animation; it is something new.

Finally, and this may well be the most important aspect of webcomics, the audience for webcomics transcends national boundaries. With print comics, while readers do have access to works created in other countries, our access is limited, usually, to a few titles. Webcomics are accessible to anyone anywhere on the planet (though language may be a barrier in some cases). Thus, a reader in France can read comics created in San Francisco; a reader in Arkansas can read comic created in New Zealand or Australia or Japan; the world is open.

Emily Carroll, “His Face All Red,” “Anu”

Emily Carroll, a Canadian graphic artist, started making web comic in 2010. She’s won a number of awards, most significantly the Eisner Award (twice, both times in 2015, once for best short story, once for best reprint).

Her genre is horror, mixed often with folk and fairy tales. Her adaptations of these stories is what gives them their power.

Color Palette: Reds, blacks, and bright whites are Carroll’s favorite colors, and she uses them to good effect, but they are not her only colors.

Carroll also uses a technique called desaturation, which is common in horror comics – she dims or bleeds the vibrancy out of the colors during tense moments.

In “His Face All Red,” Carroll combines typical fairy tale elements (the woods, the little village, the younger brother, the envious sibling) with horror elements (the monster, the killer, the ghost brother).

In this comic, Carroll also uses the infinite canvas to good purpose, especially in the scene where the younger brother goes down into the dark hole. 

But notice also how effectively she re-purposes frames – no longer do we see the four-frame comic, or some minor variation of that standard.

In “Anu,” we also see the combination of fairy-tale or mythic elements with horror elements, though the mythic elements are more pronounced in this one. Notice too that the frame has all but vanished, and Carroll’s color palette has shifted to bright blues and bright whites. The use (or vanquishing) of time in the final panel is also very cool.

Horang’s “Bongcheon-Dong’s Ghost”

Horang is a Korean webcomic artist (maybe Jong-ho Choi) famous for their horror manhwa (Korean manga, sort of) and webtoons.

Manhwa / Webtoons combine features of manga, web comics, and cartoons to make a new art form. Horang’s work focuses on horror and urban legends. You’ll notice he uses the techniques of both manga and horror films in his work. Notice also how he makes use of the infinite canvas and destroys the frame.