Teaching an Old Bat New Tricks about Comics

Writer: Paul Pope

Colourist: Jose Villarrubia

Publisher: DC 

Post by Jamie Adam

When you imagine comics, what do you think of? Thierry Groensteen argues, in his book System of Comics, that most people envision panels on a page. However, there is a crucial element frequently overlooked in this conception—the gutters. The imagined panels could not exist if there were no gutters, also known as the space between panels. This crucial space often goes unnoticed, so this post will shed some light on the function of the margins and gutters of a comics page.

Working from the outside in, the margins are usually comprised of the white space surrounding the page. Groensteen argues that the dimensions of a margin affects a reader’s perception of the page, as well as enhance the contents of the page (31). 

Moreover, when panels are lined up evenly, they form a border, or a frame, so Groensteen calls this effect the hyperframe. Groensteen writes, “the hyperframe separates the useable surface of the page from its peripheral zone, or margin” (Groensteen 31). He also says that “the hyperframe is to the page what the frame is to the panel” (31), but with one crucial difference—usually the hyperframe is intermittent. Again, the hyperframe is the space around the edge of the panels; it can be thought of as the inside border of the margin. Further, there are gaps in the hyperframe where the gutters between panels lie, making the hyperframe more conceptual than physical, as it is not a solid line, nor really an intentional element. 

So now that you know what the margin is, what the hyperframe is, and what gutters are, let’s look at an atypical example from Batman Year 100 to see how these aspects work in tandem to affect the reading of a comic.

Here’s page 169:

Now, the border you see is added automatically when uploading a photo to the blog--the panels go right to the edge of the page in the book. It’s a subtle fact that you probably wouldn’t have noticed were we not discussing margins. So what effect does this have? Subconsciously, the reader takes note that there is so much action that it cannot be contained by traditional paneling, but goes right to the edge of the page on every side. Now look at the gutters—they’re not white. They’re a very light brown or beige. This lends the story a somewhat dirty, grimy feel. Think about the impact this scene would have if it had crisp, white margins and gutters. Not the same, is it? A one final point: if there are no margins, where’s the hyperframe in this example? I’ll tell you—it’s the outside edges of the page. Even if there are no margins, the hyperframe still exists.

Maybe now the gutters, margins, and hyperframe will get the recognition they deserve when thinking about and reading comics.

-Jamie Adam

Movement in The Killing Joke

The Killing Joke is an origin story for the famously known Batman villain, the Joker. The story follows the clown in a pre-Joker era, where he is a family man attempting to make ends meet. He then begins to roll with the wrong crowd in a desperate attempt for money and tries to break into the chemical plant he used to work at. A confrontation with police officers ensue, to which the man panics and runs, falling into toxic waste just inches before Batman is able to catch him.

Movement throughout The Killing Joke, according to Wolk, movement of a comic in general is strongly in one direction, panel to panel flow—but not exclusively. When this flow is interrupted, however, the effect it has on the comic as a whole is that it makes readers pause to take in the shift/change of flow. This can be done, as it is in the above two page spread, with placements of character in panel space. It is evident that Batman is interrupting the flow of comics temporarily to prevent the would-be Joker from falling into the toxic waste. The irony of this is that Batman is usually the one trying to prevent Joker from causing mayhem in Gotham, thus creating another layer of meaning in the placement of characters in this space. Furthermore, Moore and Bolland’s choice of doing this creates another added tension in the sequence, and as Hatfield would describe, comics is the art of tensions. 

- Alyssa Litynesky

The Choice of Moment in Batman: Year One

In Making Comics, Scott McCloud outlines the five kinds of choices that communicating through comics require. One of these choices in particular, the "choice of moment," was a major focal point in my paper about condensed storytelling in comics. To date, one of the finest examples of condensed storytelling I've experienced lies in Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One. The page in question was used previously in my annotated comics page assignment, where I did manage to slip in some discussion on condensed narrative and choice of moment. However, this blog seems like the perfect platform to provide a deeper look into the choice of moment present in the origin story of Batman: Year One.

Page 21 opens with a scene of Bruce Wayne sitting with his parents in some kind of theatre. The text boxes drop the time of the event (eighteen years ago) and the name of the play that they attended (The Mask of Zorro). This panel is a wide shot showing a large number of audience members but focusing in on the family of three. It fulfills the role of establishing the family dynamic and presenting a once-happy Bruce in his childhood.

What follows is a scene transition to (what readers can assume is) outside the theatre. The man with the gun is introduced accompanied by a small description via text box. Within two panels, the characters and central conflict of the scene have been established.  

By the third and fourth panels, readers have already reached the climax of the scene. Both panels, featuring the murders of Tom and Martha Wayne respectively, are squared and coloured predominantly in white. The eye is drawn immediately to these center panels upon flipping the page, alerting the reader of what's to come and allowing them to fill in the blanks at their own pace.

The next panel is once that completely bleeds into the gutter, showing Bruce kneeling besides his parents as their killer gets away. This point in the page is meant to give the reader a chance to breathe and take in the previous events, reflecting upon the plot thus far and perhaps ponder the possibilities of what could come next. From a purely narrative perspective, what's important to note is that the killer escapes and Bruce is distraught over his parents' deaths.

The final panel is an extreme close-up of Bruce's face with a focus on his eyes. The text box makes note of "all sense" leaving his life, and both the angry look in Bruce's eyes and the subtle change in colour help drive that point home. The story has come full-circle in a sense with Bruce starting on his path towards becoming Batman. This event was the turning point in his life which would eventually lead him to dawn the mask and cape, and it is thoroughly communicated to the reader in one neat page. This is thanks to a number of smart decisions made by Miller and Mazzucchelli, not the least of which was the choice of moment when constructing the narrative. 

Written By: Andrew Masse 

Works Cited:

McCloud, Scott. Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels. Avon, 2006. 

Speech Bubbles and Caption Boxes - Arkham Knight Genesis #2

WARNING: This post contains spoilers from Arkham Knight Genesis 2.

            Taking place before the final video game of the Arkham franchise, the Arkham Knight series follows the villain on his journey to overtake Gotham from the hands of his arch-nemesis, the Batman,(of which the Knight has a psychological fixation on). It was Carrier who mentioned the significance of speech bubbles in the comics form, noting the way words in speech balloons function much like the interior monologue in the novel--speech in any language, real or made up, can be attributed to depicted characters. We see how identifying speech bubbles in Arkham Knight work to represent certain characters, and how they would sound in real life. The speech bubble closes the gap between image and word, giving the reader more information to the comic.

Normal dialogue, as depicted in the first three panels, does not cue anything other than speech between Deathstroke and the Arkham Knight. However, something interesting happens in the first panel on the third tier that makes us reconsider what came before. The perspective is shifted from the Arkham Knight to then Deathstroke, where the words of the Arkham Knight now appear in blue speech bubbles with a much more straight-edge, rectangular shape bubbles. Audiences will read speech bubbles differently due to the fact, and it gives the Arkham Knight a robotic-type voice, very similar to the one heard in the game. Other than the obvious visual cues and reveal of who the character of the Arkham Knight is; if readers didn't see who was under the mask, it might be assumed that this character was indeed a robot. The effect of this is to humanize this character of the Arkham Knight to us, to show us what is under the costume; whereas the rest of the characters in the novel only see robotic-type, ruthless super-villain.

The creators of this comic also use boxes that almost appear to be like ripped out pieces of paper for the caption boxes of the comic. These boxes are the inner monologue of the Arkham Knight himself, and choosing the caption boxes to appear like pieces of paper ripped from a book hints that this comic is indeed meant to be the story of how the Arkham Knight came to be—and the ripped pieces of the page could signify the hardships the character has faced. We expect this kind of meaning from comics, according to Carrier, because we expect every picture element to contribute to the meaning of the image, and so read words within the frame as represented elements. This is definitely the case for Arkham Knight, wherein the reader is rewarded for viewing what is simply beyond the surface of the comic.

Written by: Alyssa Litynesky.