Hi, Since we will be discussing comics today, we’ve decided to transform ourselves into comic book characters.

Hopefully we can transform ourselves back

Comic is actually a very old form of art. Hieroglyphics from Ancient Egypt and Ancient Mayan Codices are technically comics in the broad sense. Both tell a story through sequential pictures. However, Mayan Codices does not break up the frames like modern comics and Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics are actually meant to be texts instead of pictures.

Here are some examples of ancient “comics”. This is a Mayan Codex. It actually narrates a continuous story, even though it is not broken up into frames like modern comics. (I can’t read it either.)

This is an example of ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics. The individual pictures are actually individual words.

The first modern comic book in America was Funnies on Parade, published in the early 1930’s

During the same period, cartoons, a remediation of print comics, became a popular form of entertainment thanks to Walt Disney. Steamboat Willie is the first Disney cartoon to feature synchronized sound.

Comics are a different form of art. Comics are products in between pictures and videos. It has the multi-frame narrative quality of a video, yet it leaves many details behind to be filled in by the readers like a picture.

In a picture, only one moment of the story is shown. Viewers must fill in their own information either through clues in the picture that implies the plot or with their own imagination.

This 1869 Edgar Degas painting (the impressionist guy who painted lots of ballet scenes), is titled The Rape. All we can see is a room with a man and a woman. Therefore we must use our imagination to figure out the rest of the story.

On the other hand, in a video, especially in a movie, the viewers are provided with almost every detail they need to know about the story. The characters, background, time frame, and setting are often revealed in the very beginning.

Comics can be seen as a hybrid of the two mediums. Comics contain many frames like a movie so it is possible to provide more details about the story and narrate a story with a sense of time instead of only one moment in time like a picture. On the other hand comics are drawn so many unimportant features are omitted and only the details that are relevant to the story are kept.

In this comic, the artist omitted many details. We know in real life human faces have much more details such as wrinkles and acnes, but these details are unimportant to the story, therefore the artist did not include them. However multiple frames are shown to give a sense that the story is moving forward in time instead of staying in one moment in time. Compare to many other comics, this comic is still very detailed.

Even though I am much more detailed in real life, you can still recognize the person on the slide as me, because the picture preserved my most recognizable features, they are relevant details in recognizing me.

A comic artist must find the balance between having too much information and too little information in his or her comic. Each frame is carefully constructed with the most relevant details so the narration runs smoothly.

As mentioned earlier, cartoons are a remediation of comics As mentioned earlier, cartoons are a remediation of comics. For example, take a look at this excerpt from Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (I mean really look at it.)

Cont.

And now watch this video from Tales of the Black Freighter based on the same book: (Click here if the video doesn’t work doesn’t work)

While it is true cartoons are essentially comic book-like frames that are projected on a screen, the truth is viewing it is an entirely different experience. A movie actually fills in the gaps between the frames. The comic on the other hand gives you a frame work of a story and allows you to “fill in the gaps” between the frames.

Therefore, we can say that cartoons represent an evolution of comics Therefore, we can say that cartoons represent an evolution of comics. Even comics existed far beyond modern-day technologies, the development of modern technologies like electricity and the projector made it possible to create movies.

Well, to quote the great thinker Porky Pig: That’s all Folks

Um…how do we get out of comic book mode?