July 1st, 2021
Building up the methodology is an important part of academic research as it helps to not only build your research questions but develop the method in which you answer them. Diving straight into Narratology is rather daunting, as the phrasing can be confusing. To combat this, I have decided to take a few steps back, and build up my understanding of the methodology from the ground up. This involves first gaining a better understanding of close reading through comics. Building off Close Reading towards Narratology should make the text easier to parse. An understanding of Close Reading is explored through the book Studying Comics and Graphic Novels (Kukkonen.2013) by Karin Kukkonen and sources recommended through my colleague and mentor’s lectures at the University of Hertfordshire. Following the exploration of close reading, I will investigate Visual Methodologies (Rose.2012) by Gillian Rose, before moving on to Critical Approaches to Comics (Smith & Duncan.2012) as edited by Matthew Smith and Randy Duncan as well as Narrative Structure in Comics (Postema.2013) by Barbara Postema.
In Studying Comics and Graphic Novels, Kukkonen describes close reading as the act of providing the clues in which to make sense of panels and the events it represents. Your brain takes in information such as written text, facial expressions, gestures, and positioning to form a clear framework of what is happening in each panel, as well as their connection to each other. Each panel is presenting a ‘snapshot’ of action. Kukkonen discusses that on first reading, the reader will make note of the number of characters present in the frame, general spacing between characters, and the number of speech balloons. When it comes to the characters, we build an understanding at first glance, as we can relate our own experiences with our own bodies, ‘we feel an echo of the character’s experience’ (Kukkonen.2013:9).
At this point, we can build up the following list of things to consider when analysing a panel.
Characters in the panel,
Facial expressions,
Gestures,
Positioning,
Number of Speech Balloons,
Written text.
By investigating the panels, the eye is drawn to reading speech bubbles. How a speech bubble is presented can change how the text is read. This is something heavily discussed by Neil Cohn and includes classifications such as RA+-/AA+-, and the shape of carriers. Kukkonen makes note of this through discussing the lettering within these speech balloons. Notably how the size and boldness connect to the volume as to how loud it is spoken.
At this point, Kukkonen had been using four panel comics, however after discussing the above elements, Kukkonen now adds the idea of more complex panel layouts and applying the idea of closure. Something that McCloud discusses but comes from Gestalt psychology. That while the simple four panel strips previously discussed featured just one or two characters in a single location, however when moving to a more complex narrative, scenes might change between panels, causing long temporal gaps. Kukkonen likens this to the ideas of Gestalt psychology, an example that is depicted using several curved lines that are not connected. While they are not connected, our minds perceive them as being part of a circle, this is the act of closure. ‘We close the visual gaps and see a complete shape rather than lines’ (Kukkonen.2013:11). When this is applied to comic book panels, the closure is caused by our minds making the connection between what happens in one panel, and what happens in the next.
Kukkonen then touches on the elements of a panel that guide the reader through the page. Among these elements are the directions in which characters face. That the focus of their attention in the panel, should help to lead the audience in the direction the creator wants them to read in. Kukkonen notes that ‘both the layout of the entire page and the details of the individual panels feed into a larger whole, a gestalt. “gestalt” is a term from so-called “Gestalt psychology” which at the beginning of the twentieth century, was interested in the way we intuitively chunk and group the information we perceive’ (Kukkonen.2013:18).
The next section Kukkonen discusses is the idea of Story worlds and Participants. As we read comics, we create a web of inferences. ‘This web of inferences, however, is not free-floating. It is tied to the mental framework of a story world. A story world is the mental construct for the events which are represented in the panels’ (Kukkonen.2013:19). This seems to imply the notion of semiotics that are specific to that comic. In the case of DC Comics, this would be semiotic signs unique to the DC Universe, such as character logos. The most important element that Kukkonen discusses for story worlds is the characters, as they are the ones who will set the narrative in motion. However, while the characters are the ones setting the narrative in motion, the reader is creating the story world as they read the comic.
The use of multiple characters, with different intentions and attitudes, allows the narrative to unfold with different voices. This is what Mikhail Bakhtin refers to as ‘Heteroglossia’ (Kukkonen.2013:24) and is considered a key feature of modern novels. Kukkonen suggests that when ‘you analyse comics, relate what you read to individual story world participants and ask what it means to the’ (Kukkonen.2013:24). This implies that when a comic changes perspective to other characters, you need to consider that character’s own perception of the events.
To round off Kukkonen’s chapter on close reading, they suggest the following checklist:
‘What is the spatial layout of the page? Does the mise en page follow the classical three by three pattern or does it suggest an alternative reading path? How does the comic strike a balance between the “pregnant moments” of the individual panels and the entire page?
How do characters relate to each other in the individual panel? What do their postures, gestures, and indicated movements underline the encounter? How do their bodies relate to each other across the page? What does the exchange of their deictic gazes tell you? How does this relate to the narrative?
How do the facial expressions and the “pregnant moments” of the image relate to the dialogue as it unfolds in the speech bubbles?
How does the comic establish the story world?
Does the comic present different perspectives on the events? Does it juxtapose different takes on what happens in the story world through the combination of panels, or the combination of words and images within a panel?’ (Kukkonen.2013:26)
Noticeably, Kukkonen makes note of the ‘pregnant moments’, this is something that comes from Thierry Groensteen’s work, and is a term that refers to the amount of weight a panel holds through elements such as characters, speech balloons, etc. (Groensteen.1999:26).
Using this checklist, we can now expand the list we made before.
The page layout
How much of the page are taken up by panels?
How many panels?
How does the structure of the panels guide the reader? (How does it move the reader through time?)
How Pregnant is each panel?
How many speech bubbles/characters/objects etc?
Characters in Panel
How are characters positioned relative to each other?
How does their positioning effect the sense of movement?
How do their positions relate between panels and pages?
Where are they looking and why?
How do the characters expressions reflect what is going on in the story?
The World
How is the story world established?
In world semiotics?
Are multiple characters giving different perspectives?
How are the multiple perspectives being shown?
Just from Kukkonen’s discussion of close reading in comics, we have a system of questions that can be used to examine a comic.
Kukkonen follows her chapter on close reading with a discussion of narrative and narrators. A narrative in a comic, as Kukkonen describes, can be defined as a sequence of events which characters engage in and is recounted by a narrator. Kukkonen begins by discussing how images seem best suited for showing, while words are best for telling. With comics, you have both at work which leads to different avenues that the reader can build the story world from. In comics, the reader can pick up clues based on both the images and the words, allowing these two elements to unfold in the comics narrative. Kukkonen uses a page from The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes (Gaiman, Kieth & Dringenberg.1989) as their example. Specifically, a page starring Cain and Abel.
Kukkonen uses this page to illustrate how the reader understands the narrative. From the first panel, which illustrates an old house, with tombstones and bats as well as some dialogue. From the image, we get an understanding of the setting. The older house, tombstones and bats give the impression of a horror comic, this is something that the reader understands thanks to the image built up through horror movies and other entries in the horror genre. Without a caption or piece of dialogue explicitly stating where in space and time this is, it is up to the reader to interpret this. As Roland Barthes discusses, words can give an image extra meaning, a practice he calls ‘anchorage’. In this case, the dialogue over the image anchors the house and tombstones in that moment in time. The dialogue is happening at the same time we see this image. Cain, the character who is speaking, tells a lot about the story in just how he speaks, given his dialogue gives off a disrespectful tone to his brother Able. Through these elements, we can see the plot which is being told.
When discussing the plot, there are two key elements that are looked at. The Story and The Discourse. The Story is the chronological events in the narrative, so what happens in the story in the order they would have to happen. The discourse is the story as it is presented to the reader, so the order WE see the story in.
When it comes to the narrator, this could be viewed a few different ways regarding comics. The creators (writers, illustrators, inkers and letterers) are one aspect as they are the ones literally telling you the story. However, in the comic you have Heterodiegetic narrators, a narrator that is outside of the story world, and Homodiegetic, a narrator that is in the story world. In the case of The Sandman example, the narration is Homodiegetic as it is both Cain and Able speaking. There is also Meta-narration in which the narrator acknowledges that they are in a comic. The example Kukkonen uses are the old EC Comics horror stories, which contain a narrator telling the story directly to the reader, acknowledging that the reader is someone reading a comic book.
We can now add this information to our list of questions:
The page layout
How much of the page are taken up by panels?
How many panels?
How does the structure of the panels guide the reader? (How does it move the reader through time?)
How Pregnant is each panel?
How many speech bubbles/characters/objects etc?
Characters in Panel
How are characters positioned relative to each other?
How does their positioning effect the sense of movement?
How do their positions relate between panels and pages?
Where are they looking and why?
How do the characters expressions reflect what is going on in the story?
The World
How is the story world established?
In world semiotics?
Are multiple characters giving different perspectives?
How are the multiple perspectives being shown?
Who is speaking?
Is the dialogue Homodiegetic, Heterodiegetic or Meta-narration?
What is the Plot?
Are we seeing this in Story order, Discourse order or both?
From Kukkonen’s two chapters on close reading and narration, we now have a list of around 18 questions that could be used to analyse a comic book page. But we still need to go deeper and have a definitive methodology. Granted, I am aware that while looking into these chapters, I am looking at them with a clear knowledge of what comics I will be looking at with these questions.
The remaining chapters of Kukkonen’s book are likely not needed going forward, as they focus on autobiographical comics, and adaptation comics. The autobiographical comics section might be of use, as I know there are sections of my case studies that are characters recounting their own lives. However, as the events are still fictitious and are not recounting a real life, I am inclined to either skip this chapter, or return to it later. Knowing this, I will move onto my next source. Gillian Rose’s Visual Methodologies.
Visual Methodologies is not comic specific, and instead looks at any form of study that uses visual media. Going through this first chapter there is certainly a focus on the image being put before text because we learn to interpret images before we learn to read, citing John Berger. This is an interesting point and gives the impression that the visual elements of a comic should be looked at before the text. This is likely the best way to look at it, especially when you consider that during the invention of the comic book, reading was a skill not offered to all, and especially one that young children would not have been as versed in as 21st century children.
Rose briefly brings up the work of Jean Baudrillard and his work on Simulacra and Simulation. Simulacra and Simulation gives four stages in which something with meaning becomes meaningless. The first is the idea of a faithful image or a copy, it is a reflection of reality. Second stage is a perversion of reality where you begin to see elements that are not quite right. A copy with reality hiding within it. Third is where reality is now obscured, signs and images claim to represent something that is real, but they do not actually exist. Arbitrary meaning has now been assigned in place of reality in what Baudrillard calls ‘the order of sorcery’. The final stage is pure simulacrum where there is no connection to reality.
I wonder if Baudrillard’s four stages of simulacra and simulation could be transferred to comic studies? Especially regarding Superhero comics, the first stage would be pages depicting everyday events in everyday environments. The second stage could be elements that are average in appearance, but do not conform to reality, such as a human with abilities. The third stage could be more supernatural elements that we could possibly see happening, but they are also far removed from reality. Such as cosmic powers, aliens, magical powers, or demons. The final stage, pure simulacrum, could relate to elements such as the erasure of time as that has no connection to our perceived reality. Of course, the problem with the first stage is that even if we considered depictions of Metropolis or Gotham as first stage simulation, they are not real places. They are not true reflections of reality. Though both Gotham and Metropolis as interpretations of New York, so does this make them second stage? Reflections of reality with elements that do not fit, such as gargoyles in Gotham and the giant Daily Planet building in Metropolis?
So far, we can construct the following questions to ask for each page of a comics:
What is the panel layout of the page?
How many panels are there?
How pregnant are each of the panels? Characters, objects, speech balloons, etc.
How are characters positioned relative to each other in a panel?
How does a character’s position effect the sense of movement?
How do their positions relate between panels/pages?
Where are they looking and why?
How do characters expressions reflect what is going on in the story?
How does the structure of the panel/position of characters guide the reader through the page?
How is the story world established through semiotics?
Are multiple characters giving different perspectives?
Who is speaking?
Is the dialogue Homodiegetic (In Universe), Heterodiegetic (Out of Universe) or Meta-narration?
Are we seeing this in story order, discourse order or both?
I am hesitant to put in questions relating to Baudrillard’s work as it is a passing thought now. If it were to be used, it would be more relevant in terms of depicting events that can not be experienced in our reality, and only imagined, such as the physical act of time stopping. To do that, we would need to define the parameters of Stage one to three in Superhero comics. However, Baudrillard’s work in relation to Superheroes was discussed in ‘An Analysis of Embodiment Among Six Superheroes in DC Comics’ (Avery-Natale.2013) by Edward Avery-Natale.
‘Beginning with Jean Baudrillard’s (1995) work on simulacra and simulation, literature argues that in the Postmodern Age there is no longer any correspondence between the “real” and its signifiers. Instead, everything is a representation of a representation; reality that goes “beyond” the sign, making everything a signifier without a signified. This simulacral nature of experiential “reality” not only corresponds to illusory constructs, but also to physicality and bodies. Similarly, Judith Butler (1999) argues that the sexed body itself is also not an aspect of anything that one might call the “real”. Instead, it is a performative entity that people act out while always failing to truly achieve its hegemonic construction as a perfectly gendered presentation. Sex, like gender, is an identifier specific to a historical age that has no meaningful correspondence to what might have been called the “real”.
These two perspectives can be combined to provide a better understanding of the images present in contemporary comic books and to push comic books further into their Postmodern Age. Embodiment is clearly the basis for such a transition to the next age, because no other part of the superhero has ever corresponded to the bodies of “real” people because of their supernatural existence and artificiality. It is only the embodied artificiality and its lack of correspondence to the embodiment of most contemporary humans that has changed since the Golden Age, producing female and male heroes who appear as if they are from “different worlds [than each other], neither of which is Earth” because of their equally unreal, but drastically different presentation’ (Avery-Natale.2013:96).
While that was a long quote, Avery-Natale brings up a strong point about using Baudrillard and Judith Butler’s work to discuss superhero bodies. Avery-Natale does imply that the superhero is a perversion of reality as they do not reflect the ‘reality’ of human beings. For example, both Superman and Wonder Woman would be part of that second stage. They resemble normal human beings. Wonder Woman looks like a Caucasian, mid-twenties woman with a slim waist. Superman resembles a muscled, Caucasian, Midwest farm boy in his late twenties to early forties depending on what story you are reading. However, Wonder Woman is the daughter of Zeus and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta. She has super strength, can fly and is semi-immortal. Superman is an alien from the planet Krypton who gains powers under the Earth’s yellow sun. Namely, super strength, super speed, X-ray vision and heat vision. Both could be considered perversions of reality. With a superhero like Martian Manhunter however, you could have an example of Baudrillard’s ‘order of sorcery’. The Martian Manhunter or J’onn J’onzz is a green Martian and the last of his kind after the genocide of his people, including his wife and children. He does not look like a human; his natural state is monstrous and even the form he takes on when talking to other members of the Justice League is humanoid but is clearly not human. However, Martian Manhunter can change his form and takes on the appearance of a normal human when among the population. He “claims to represent something that is real but does not actually exist”. It might be possible to implement this into superhero study, Baudrillard’s work does not seem to specifically be used to discuss superheroes, but it is prominent in discussions of The Matrix (Wachowski & Wachowski.1999) which does have ties to superhero comics. Primarily in its connections to Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles (Morrison.1994 – 2000) or comparisons to Neo and Superman in the second film.
Upon further research, Dr Alec Hosterman wrote his doctoral dissertation on Baudrillard’s hyperreality and comparing it to comic books. His paper, Living in the Age of the Unreal: Exploring Baudrillard’s Theory of Hyperreality in Graphic Narrative (Hosterman.2013) will be looked at.
Bibliography:
Avery-Natale, E. (2013) An Analysis of Embodiment Among Six Superheroes in DC Comics. Social Thought & Research: A Continuation of the Mid-American Review of Sociology, pp. 71 – 106.
Barthes, R. (1957) Mythologies. Hill and Wang: New York.
Baudrillard, J. (1981) Simulacra and Simulation. Semiotext(e): Los Angeles.
Gaiman, N., Kieth, S. & Dringenberg, M. (1989) The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes. DC Comics: Burbank.
Groensteen, T. (1999) The System of Comics. University Press of Mississippi: Jackson.
Hosterman, A. (2013) Living in the Age of the Unreal: Exploring Baudrillard’s Theory of Hyperreality in the Graphic Narrative. (Doctoral Dissertation).
Kukkonen, K. (2013) Studying Comics and Graphic Novels. Wiley Blackwell: Oxford.
Morrison, G. (1994 – 2000) The Invisibles. DC Comics: Burbank.
Postema, B. (2013) Narrative Structure in Comics: Making Sense of Fragments. RIT Press: New York.
Rose, G. (2012) Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials. SAGE Publications: London.
Smith, M. & Duncan, R. (2012) Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods. Routledge: New York.
The Matrix (1999) Film. Directed by Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski. [Blu-Ray] Warner Bros.: USA.