Groensteen's Verbal in Godzilla in Hell

For my first blog post I will be looking at Godzilla in Hell in regards to Groensteen’s view on verbal context in comics. Now, while the title does explain what the comic is all about, I should mention that Godzilla in Hell is actually a collaborated piece done by a different artist and writer every issue. This makes things somewhat easier as I am able to talk about a theory can be used though also a bit harder the two volumes I currently have are quite different. With that out of the way let me discuss this theory for each issue.

The first issue of Godzilla in Hell has no dialogue in it and only a small handful of words. Those words are huge stone letters that spell out the famous “Abandon all hope ye who enters here” from Dante’s Inferno. As Groensteen mentions, these words are used to help the reader understand just where we are exactly; if the title wasn’t enough of a giveaway for you. The only other word shown is the word “Lust”, this one doing a lot more for the reader as we now know what level of Hell Godzilla finds himself in. This allows use to predict what will happen next for him.

In the second volume the verbal is used differently. Nearly all frames have a caption box that describes what is happening to Godzilla and also what he is feeling and thinking. While it could be argued that the caption boxes are also used to help the reader understand what is going on since the art is more water colours and blurry than the last volume, it seems that this time the verbal is used to set the tone for the comic. The words chosen give this issue a more epic feel to it. Fitting of the images though sometimes we are reminded of the media we are reading here.

Overall, though, both issues do rely more on the pictures to tell the story rather than using words to explain what is going on. We get this more so from the first issue where Godzilla’s expression tells us more about what he is thinking and feeling than any words. The second issue does rely more on words but even then it is to help us understand what we are seeing. Both use the verbal in a way that adds to the comic not take away from it, though I feel that the first issue did this better. 

Kristen Barney

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Bleeding Panels and Bloody Deer: Spatio-topia in "Wytches #1"

Story: Scott Snyder
Art: Jock

       I guarantee you that one of the first things you’ll notice when you pick up “Wytches #1” is its convention-defying page layouts. Not a single page of the floppy adheres to typical quadrillage, in Thierry Groensteen’s terms in The System of Comics. There are no strict multi-frames on any of the pages that contain any regularized panel structure. Instead, nearly every page contains one large bleeding panel that acts as the backdrop/gutter space for the other panels on the page as you can see below:

           In order to not confuse the background panel with any of the superimposed inset panels, the inset panels are clearly framed with straight black lines. An exception is made on the left hand page where the first panel is bordered by tree roots (but only on the bottom, right hand side; the rest of the panel bleeds off the page).

          By consistently having the pages filled edge-to-edge with images, the comic demands a more panoptic observation from the reader and less linear panel-to-panel reading. 

         This is especially true on the following two-page spread:

             The reader’s eye is primarily drawn to the close-up shot of the deer which obnoxiously takes up more than half of the page. Although the reader’s eye is drawn away from reading the page in a linear way, the deer’s head acts as a guide to redirect the reader back up to the first two panels, and also across to the right hand page. Perhaps what makes a seemingly sprawled-out page layout easy to follow and work so well is the fact that panels are used sparingly; although the events that take place across these two pages happen fairly rapidly in the diegetic world, the reader is still has time to go through each enclosed panel individually. By having the deer sequence fill the page and encroach on the bordered frames, all the diegetic action that takes place in these instances are portrayed as being simultaneous and connected.

           The comic’s panel layout also tries to counteract the tendency of readers and creators of comic to focus on certain panels that “[enjoy] a natural privilege, like the upper left hand corner, the geometric centre or the lower right hand corner – and also, to a lesser degree, the upper right and lower left corners” (Groensteen 29). The page to the left is a great example of how comics creators can use page design to guide their readers. 

            Although the bleeding panel on the upper right hand side of the page initially grabs the eye, it’s not so out of rhythm with the preceding panels that it takes over the page. Thus, I argue that the reading of the first tier is linear, left to right. The first and only panel on the second tier guides the reader’s eye back to the left side of the page because of the speech bubble coming from the small, mysterious figure in the forest. The panel placement on the third tier guides the reader back to the right. Now, although the next tier is almost identical to the third one, the placement of the figure within the panel keeps the reader’s eye on the right side of the page. This then leads the reader to the final panel at the bottom right of the page.

        Similarly, the page below shows that “key moments of the story” do not “coincide with these initial, central, and terminal positions” on the page by placing the dialogue (what we know the readers will most definitely not glance over) in the middle three tiers of the page (Groensteen 29-30).

       In this way, the comic uses techniques based on panel placement and features within the panels to control how the reader takes in the page instead of allowing the ‘privileged’ areas of the page to dominate. The creators of "Wytches #1" prove that traditional grid-like panel arrangements can be altered for artistic purposes while still maintaining their practical use in guiding narration.

Works Cited : Groensteen, Thierry. The System of Comics. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.