Spectator Subjectivity, The Comic Book, The Cartoon

So yeah, I post about comics a lot, but in my defense they can be really interesting, especially when looked at in relationship with film. In a way, the conventions around the construction of comic diegesis are the same as those of film. Readers look at images on panels, almost as if they were looing at a really slowed down film. Comics, however, are way less successful (in an economic context) than film, and while film is occasionally viewed as high art, comics are viewed as lowbrow entertainment. Why is that? I think it’s because comics are so much more self-aware of their construction.

Let’s cross-compare X-Men the film to X-Men the comic. In the film, images are sped up until they blur together so that viewers view it as an actual moving image. Special effects are used to make Halle Berry, who is suspended in mid air by wires in front of a green screen look as though she’s floating and projecting lightning. Sound editing projects her voice and adds on the sounds of thunder and the bzzt of her enemy being shocked. 

In contrast, the comic draws individual panels. There can be as many or as little as the medium allows, and there’s significant elliptical (ellipsicle?) jumps in between the paneling. The images are not usually hyper-realistic because people understand caricatures to signify humans and other objects. Sound is drawn onto the page through the conventions of speech bubbles or the always-appreciated sound effect iconography. Everything about a comic’s construction is very obvious. As the medium’s fan, I’m still very much involved with the diegesis, but I also way more aware of the use of different illustrators and how much work went into the image’s construction.

I’m not trying to privilege comics as a higher form of art than film, but I do think it’s interesting how many people find the more blatant convergence of the image and the text to be less enjoyable. Comics have huge potential to construct alternative forms of diegeses. In We3 for example, a comic about weaponized animals, Grant Morrison chose to distort conventional paneling in order to contrast how humans and animals perceive time. A cat is able to jump through the panels while “humans” are stuck within them. What’s interesting about this is that this blatant exposure of the conventions of comics was done by one of the most popular comic book writers ever.

Anyhow, people simply don’t like being exposed to the construction of film. It’s why forms of art like comics are ignored. It also serves to explain why cartoons that, although also create a moving image are more explicitly the product of editing and hard work, are less popular with people other than young children. I’m not exactly sure what I’ve been trying to argue here, but I think there’s an interesting comparison to be made between cartoons, comics, and abstract films like the ones we saw at the Walker. I’m not by any means saying that comics don’t fall into the same traps of film and aren’t incredibly problematic in representation (just look at Storm), but they’re still an interesting medium through which to challenge common sense spectatorship.