Text and Image Relationships: Adventure Time #46

Figure 1 (Adventure Time #46, p.3)

The relationship between text and images is an interesting facet of comics study, being that it is an essential linkage between two factors that to most definitions are required of a comic. Although Douglas Wolk disagrees with Scott McLeod on crucial factors of comic theory, he presents a similar idea that drawings and text work together to create meaning and that each communicate different things more effectively (Wolk 128). Generally we might assume then, that text and images are working in harmony to achieve their effect. However, this issue of Adventure Time is an excellent of example of the creation of tension in plot because of relationship between text and images, while also being an example of the complimentary relationship mentioned earlier. This harmony is shown on page 3 (figure 1), which is one large panel with many speech bubbles

The text boxes work with the image to indicate movement of the characters as they are diving downwards in the panel, this “visual short-hand”(Wolk 120) allows the reader to feel the passage of time and movement of the characters in one panel. While this could have been done in multiple panels, the use of one large panel and text to this effect develop a sense of the setting in a more effective manner. The use of text in this panel is also an example of Wolk’s idea of “language as a timer” (Wolk 129), in that the speech bubbles descend incrementally, allowing the reader to take in parts of the panel image at a regulated pace.

Figure 2 (Adventure Time #46, p. 5)

The tension is created on page 5 (figure 2), where instead of complimenting the events depicted, the hologram character is narrating a journey that does not take place, and yet attention and equal spacing in the panel is given to the speech bubbles. I first wondered why this speech did not take up less room as it seemed secondary to the “main action”. This disconnection between image and text is effective in creating tension between the characters inaction and the seemingly urgent task they are supposed to be accomplishing. This creates a type of irony that as David Carrier mentions arises because we expect that speech balloons feature text that is heard by the characters in the panel (Carrier 34), and yet they are not listening to the speaker. This also contributes to the foreshadowing of events, as with the typical “hubris” of a character, ignoring warnings or good advice usually ends badly. And indeed the final page of the comic leaves us with confirmation that bad things are about to happen because of Finn and Jake.

J. Steinhoff

Works Cited

Carrier, David.  “The Speech Balloon; Or, The Problem of Representing Other Minds.”  The

Aesthetics of Comics.  University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000.  

27-45.

Wolk, Douglas.  “Pictures, Words, and the Space Between Them.”  Reading Comics.  New 

York: Da Capo Press, 2007.  118-34.