Understanding Comics - Closure

While reading through Understanding Comics, the chapter that caught my attention the most was the Chapter 3, concerning the gutter between frames in a comic. McCloud went into the difference of visible vs. invisible, and the give and take that is unique to comics. I found myself relating this heavily to the kinds of work I do photographically. My work has always had a huge emphasis on sequence and order. As McCloud pointed out, the viewer is left to decipher what is meant to go in between the frames, using their own familiar experiences and senses to fill in the blanks. I think the use of gutter is something that can be carried over to different media outside of comics and graphic novels. Rather, I feel the idea of finding the right balance of visible and invisible storytelling is something important even outside of comics.

I appreciated his breakdown of the different types of associations one can make in the gutter. It was also nice seeing how these were used across the spectrum in comics, really further identifying the way that the authors sequence things in their head, and furthermore how they might want the reader to piece things together. Again, I think that the idea of closure is something that all artists should have some grasp of when piecing together their works. Especially during senior year when working on thesis, a project specifically geared towards cohesive imagery, knowing how to create sequences that properly use gutter or blank space is key.
--David

Shaun Tan - The Arrival

Shaun Tan’s “The Arrival” utilizes wordless sequence as a method of telling a story. The layout of the imagery is varied, some pages containing uniform rows of squares, some with a mixture of sizes and some with a large single image. The style reads as a collection of photographs in a scrapbook, cleverly placed in a readable sequential fashion. As a reader, the aforementioned variance in layout is what makes this sequence understandable. Tan directs the point of focus to characters based on the background behind the images. Throughout a majority the imagery is focused on the main character’s journey into this new land, but as he meets people the background changes to show their journey; I see this as a scrapbook within another scrapbook; a short but necessary diversion from the main plotline. Background change is also used a device to indicate time and mood change. During the scenes where the characters go into hiding, the background shifts to black, indicating a shift to a darker side of the story in this area.

Immediately this pictorial sequencing style reminded me of photographer Duane Michals, who has notably created many works of worldess sequential imagery. While his stories are not nearly as long or developed as Shaun Tan’s, his format remains similar.

--David