Groensteen (1.7.3) The System of Comics, ‘The Rhythmic Function'

 

by Corry Shores

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[The following is summary. My own comments are in brackets. Boldface is mine.]

 

 

Summary of

 

Thierry Groensteen

 

The System of Comics

Chapter 1:
The Spatio-Topical System

1.7.3
The Rhythmic Function

 

Brief summary:
On account of the temporal breaks between comics panels, there are a series of jumps that have the same sort of rhythmic properties that we find in the patterning of cuts between shots in an edited film. This is the rhythmic function of the panel.

 

Summary

 

[I do not understand the terminology in the first sentence, so I will quote it. It might be a reference to creating a rhythmic meter in writing, but I am not sure.] “To cut up a text is to scan it” (45). [We previously discussed the separative function of the frame. It creates breaks in the flow of reading. These breaks then produce a repetition of experience as we read comics, and this repetition of experience can be said to have a rhythm, like the repeating patterns or beats in music. The rhythm of comics can be modified using other visual elements that affect the way we move through the images and text.]

To cut up a text is to scan it. The “text” of comics obeys a rhythm that is imposed on it by the succession of frames—a basic heartbeat that, as is seen in music, can be developed, nuanced, and recovered by more elaborate rhythmic effects stressed by other “instruments” (parameters), like those of the distribution of word balloons, the opposition of colors, or even the play of the graphic forms.
(45)

To further characterize the rhythmic function of the comics frame, Groensteen quotes Jean-Luc Godard’s definition of the cinema as “the art of making music with painting” (qtd in Groensteen 45). Groensteen says that comics share many affinities with painting [in that they both produce still, visual, two-dimensional images often using mostly similar tools and materials], and as well comics share much in common with cinema [perhaps because they both have similar story-telling devices, including mise-en-scène, “cinematography” (in the sense of angles and other elements of perspective and focus in the comics), editing, pacing, and so on]. The other similarity is that both comics and cinema tell their story rhythmically.  He writes: “comics, in displaying intervals (in the same way as persistence of vision erases the discretization of the cinematic medium) rhythmically distributes the tale that is entrusted to it” (45). [The persistence of vision – or, as it is understood in more recent accounts of the cinematic illusion,  the  phi phenomenon – is what makes the discrete units of still imagery on the film strip appear as continuous motion when viewed at a rapid frame rate. However, films are normally not made of one continuous sequence of frames meant to seem like one solid duration from one viewer’s point of view. (Some notable exceptions are Hitchcock’s The Rope and Iñárritu’s Birdman.) Rather, they are made of smaller fragments containing continuous footage (normally seconds or so long, but sometimes much longer or very brief) each with their own distinct cinematographic properties (like different angles, lenses, and so on), and all these independent fragments are edited together to make the film. Those breaks can be meant to go unperceived, as in continuity style editing (and even The Rope and Birdman have cuts edited so to produce the illusion of unbroken continuity), or these breaks can be more apparent, as in discontinuity styles like Soviet montage, jump-cut editing in French New Wave (Godard), or more recently in  chaos editing. Nonetheless, whether the editing is continuity-style or not, it in both cases still presents breaks or punctuations in the viewing experience, and the patterns of these breaks produces rhythmic effects. See for example the snappy, perhaps “upbeat,” musical rhythm of Orson Welles’ editing in F for Fake. Comics of course do not use the persistence of vision (or the phi phenomenon) (except in flip book applications, see the examples from section 1.6). Nonetheless, each panel takes on a block of continuous duration. It is not constituted using a perceptual illusion, but is rather projected onto the image by the imagination of the reader. (See the prior section, especially Scott McCloud’s demonstration). (Note also, that Eisner considers the experienced temporality in the comics panel to be an illusion. It is illusory, in that it is not physically there. But it is not a perceptual illusion, because it is not the product of our perceptual apparatus; rather it results from the activity of our imagination). So the succession of comics panels (that is, of continuous blocks of story duration with experiential jumps between them) can have very similar rhythmic features to the succession of shots in film.] The motion in the act of reading comics, then, is “intermittent, elliptical, and jerky”:

To ignore speed — its images are immobile and no voice imprints a delivery on the dialogue — does not suggest any less of a cadenced reading, or an operation given rhythm by the crossing of the frames. Its speech in this particularity is intermittent, elliptical, jerky. Each new panel hastens the story and, simultaneously, holds it back. The frame is the agent of this double maneuver of progression/retention.
(45)

Groensteen’s next point is that when we use his own methodology,  we cannot identify standard parameters that determine the rhythmic function of the panel to be applied to any and every comic book. Thus specifically we cannot say that any time a panel is longer it encompasses a longer duration of action. [Perhaps Eisner was making such point that Groensteen is against in his Comics and Sequential Art, especially section 3.3. Recall for example this analysis where Eisner said the narrower panels accelerate the pace and the longer ones create pauses or portray longer moments of story duration.

] For Groensteen, the rhythmic function is something that depends more on the actual contextual factors rather than on universalizable ones.

At this time, I want to register myself against a false temptation to which, in the past, more than one specialist has succumbed: that of establishing an automatic | correspondence between the form and the dimensions of the frame and the length of the supposed action that it enframes. One finds, notably in Pierre Masson, several indications along these lines: thus “a frame stretched in height . . . suggests a suspension of rhythm, the discovery of a high point,” while the “juxtaposition of several panels of the same format” will translate into “a rapid succession of actions or of replies.”²⁹ The same author has also written that “the greater the number of panels, the stronger the impression of rapidity.” All normative propositions do not do justice to the diversity of the expressive techniques and to the aesthetics of the authors, and it would be easy to oppose a quantity of counter-examples (beginning with the pages by Gabrion, Baudoin, and Del Barrio reproduced above). Against the dogmatism that has sullied too many theoretical structures, the comics system that is outlined here is meant to contrast a resolutely pragmatic approach, summarizable in these terms: the function of a parameter, of a unit or a figure is not prejudiced to its usage and to its signification in a given context (narrative, artistic, editorial).
(45-46)
[Footnote 29: Lire la bande dessinée, op. cit., p. 21. (“Notes” 171)]
[From p.27: Pierre Masson, who divides his Lire la bande dessinée (Presses Universitaires de Lyon 1985) into two parts respectively entitled “Morphology” (on the “material of the image” and the “reading ofa panel”) and “Syntax” on the page, the continuity, and the scenario). (27)]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From:
Thierry Groensteen. The System of Comics. Translated from French to English by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. Originally published as Systém de la bande desinée. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999.

Image Credits:

Will Eisner. Comics & Sequential Art. Copyright Will Eisner. Tamarac, Florida: Poorhouse Press, 1985.

Eisner (Ch3.3) Comics and Sequential Art, ‘Framing Time’

 

by Corry Shores

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[The following is summary. My commentary is in brackets, and boldface is my own.]

 

 

 

Will Eisner

Comics & Sequential Art

 

Ch.3
Timing

3.3
Framing Time

Brief summary: 
The events of a comics story take place within the story’s own fictional temporality. Reading the comics takes place within the reader’s actual conscious temporality. Comics present their events in small time-blocks with temporal gaps left out between the panels. These temporal jumps produce a pattern to the story time’s exposition, and as well they generate a rhythm to the reader’s experience of that story temporality. The flow of time in the story can be modulated so that it seems to accelerate or decelerate, pause, become choppy or smooth, become dense and frantic or rarefied and calm, and so on. These effects are accomplished in part by visual modifications to the panel frame itself. For example, a series of square frames sets a metered pace, and when followed by a long panel, creates the feeling of a pause in that flow. Or, by inserting a series of tall narrow panels, the pace of the story’s time will seem to accelerate and condense. The comics artist makes these choices to modulate not only the temporal experience in the reader but also to bring about the desired emotional responses to the story events.

Summary

[The diagram below was found in the prior section, but it seems to refer to a point made now in this section too.]

 

[Eisner’s first point is a bit hard to decipher, because it draws an analogy between Einstein’s Special Relativity theory and the temporality involved in comics stories and our experiences of them. (By the way, my best simplified explanation and understanding of the theory is found at this post, which contains animated diagrams). His point will be that somehow on account of the comics panel, time (in the story) is relative to the position of the reader. I will only be able to give wrong guesses as to what he means. Judging from the rest of the paragraph, he might be saying that were we to live inside the comic story world, we could only live within each panel. We would not be able to see the page layout of many panels and their respective sizes and shapes. And since each panel is a still image, were we a character in one such image, we would not experience or be able to measure the passage of time between panels. The reader, however, takes up a spatial position outside all the panels, and can judge one panel being beside another. So relative to the viewer’s spatial location, the panels’ spatial features and organization serve as temporal indicators in the story development. But hopefully the analogy with relativity is not essential to the main ideas here. The other points are also a little hard for me to grasp. He seems to be saying that we judge the time in a panel not merely from the frame itself. For, if we look at a blank enframed panel, we cannot judge the temporality inside it just from its size and shape. Instead, there is a cooperation of the visual contents, the dialogue, and the panel frame to indicate to us the duration of the panel. And although the images are frozen, we perceive them as expressing a block of continuous duration, which is the illusion of time in comics. The frame serves to punctuate the temporality, as it separates the panels temporally. Thus we obtain the illusion of time by making judgements regarding the duration implied by the boxes in their sequence. I probably have this wrong, so let me quote.]

Albert Einstein in his Special Theory (Relativity) states that time is not absolute but relative to the position of the observer. In essence the panel (or box) makes that postulate a reality for the comic book reader. The act of paneling or boxing the action not only defines its perimeters but establishes the position of the reader in relation to the scene and indicates the duration of the event. Indeed, it ‘tells’ time. The magnitude of time elapsed is not expressed by the panel per se, as an examination of blank boxes in a series quickly reveals. The imposition of the imagery within the frame of the panels acts as the catalyst. The fusing of symbols, images and balloons makes the statement. Indeed, in some applications of the frame, the outline of the box is eliminated entirely with equal effect. The act of framing separates the scenes and acts as a punctuator. Once established and set in sequence the box or panel becomes the criterion by which to judge the illusion of time.
(28)

[I also am not sure I completely understand the analogy laid out in the figure illustrations that follow. But it seems he is saying that Morse code requires a passage of time, and certain durational properties of the code sounds are inherent to their meaning. Also, music is something whose parts can vary temporally, and they require the continuous passage of time to unfold. Likewise, comics, although entirely occupying space, carry with them a temporal passage through which their development unfolds.]


[Recall from section 3.1 that timing is the manipulation of the visual imagery and of its panelization so to alter the temporal features of the story and of the reader’s emotional experience of the story. He now says that the main feature of the modern comic for transmitting its timing is the frame or box. Presumably this is because it creates segments of duration blocks that imply durations transpiring between them. Here we note Eisner’s emphasis on the separative function in creating temporality. He includes speech balloons, which further section-off the panel’s imagery into other internal duration blocks. (Normally one speech balloon ((or balloon subsection)) is experienced as occurring not during but after another one beside it.) Other visual clues which indicate movement or other temporally-extended occurrences serve as “symbols” for the passage of time in the panel.]

In the modern comic strip or comic book, the device most fundamental to the transmission of timing is the panel or frame or box. These lines drawn around the depiction of a scene, which act as a containment of the action of segment of action, have as one of their functions the task of separating or parsing the total statement. Balloons, another containment device used for the entrapment of the representation of speech and sound, are also useful in the delineation of time. The other natural phenomena, movement or transitory occurences [sic] deployed within the perimeter of these borders and depicted by recognizable symbols, become part of the vocabulary used in the expression of time. They are indispensable to the story teller, particularly when he is seeking to involve the reader. Where narrative art seeks to go beyond simple decoration, where it presumes to imitate reality in a meaningful chain of events and consequences and thereby evoke empathy, the dimension of time is an inescapable ingredient.
(28)

Eisner then illustrates how these variables work in practice to produce the comic’s timing. Along the right side he shows a clock, which measures the time that we ascribe to the series of events. The contents include the image (or idea) of papers burning. Our knowledge of how long it takes for papers to burn informs us of how the time is progressing in and between the panels. [Using Eisner’s terminology, the burning paper might then become a “symbol” for time, but I am not sure. He also says that the shape of the panels contributes to the rhythm. He does not say more here about that. But perhaps we might make some guesses. The first panel when he crashes through the window is a narrow panel. As well, the time seems sudden and brief there, even though the word balloon takes a little time to read. The next longer and squatter panels seem to involve a little more time passing within each of them. In the next row, again, a crashing through the window moment occupies a narrow panel and does seem to have a briefer duration than the surrounding panels. In the third row there are no frames around the panels. They also seem like a rapid succession of instants. Then, the final row of panels has more space between them. That perhaps lends to a sense of a dramatic pause and suspense as we are made to wait anxiously to see what the result of the situation is.]

Thus

Both of these critical devices, panel and balloon, when enclosing natural phenomena, support the recognition of time. J. B. Priestley, writing in Man and Time, summed it up most succinctly: “. . . it is from the sequence of events that we derive our idea of time.”
(30)

[Eisner then shows an illustration where we gauge the pacing by the dripping of a faucet. We know already how fast faucets drip, so we know it is a matter of a few seconds before the bomb explodes. Thus we do not even need to see the fuse burn, although it confirms our temporal assumptions. This is an especially good illustration for the “illusion” of time in comics, since we can feel the thickness of time, which is enriched and phenomenalized by the suspense of the situation.]

Eisner finishes this chapter by analyzing the timing and pacing of one of his complete Spirit stories, “Foul Play,” from 27-March-1949. He selected it because “time is critical to the emotional elements in the plot.” For the story to work as he intended, he needed to “frame a period of time that would encompass the plot” (30). [I am not entirely sure what that means, but I think he is saying that the story has a certain duration that he wants the reader to feel.] But if he merely just tells the reader the duration by having a narrator make statements about the time, then it would be too formal and specific, which would “mitigate the reader’s involvement. A ‘time rhythm’ that is very believable had to be employed” (30).

In order to get the reader be aware of how the time is passing, he depicts certain actions that the reader is familiar with, so they can measure the depicted time on the basis of their own past experiences of these activities. In this case, Eisner will depict faucet drips, a match strike, teeth brushing, and the usage of a staircase to create the impressions of duration (30).

Eisner will also comment on how his changes to the frequency, shape, and size of the panels “contribute to the story rhythm and passage of time” (30). So in some cases, he will need to “compress” time [that is, fill the duration with more event-content], and to do so, he will increase the number of panels used to depict the segments of the event. Were he instead to put a lot of event material into one panel, that would make the time seem like it is stretching out. But, by increasing the proximity of the panels [and by increasing their frequency], he increases the speed of time’s pace.

The number and size of the panels also contribute to the story rhythm and passage of time. For example, when there is a need to compress time, a greater number of panels are used. The action then becomes more segmented, unlike the action that occurs in the larger, more conventional panels. By placing the panels closer together, we deal with the 'rate' of elapsed time in its narrowest sense.
(30)

Eisner then comments on how the panel sizes influence the pacing. When he wants an even or “metered” pace of the action, to make the events seem deliberate and mechanical, he uses perfectly square panel frames. Then, to create a suspenseful and more elongated moment, he will suddenly use a longer panel coming after many smaller ones [as if hitting the brakes on the movement of time].

The shapes of the panels are also a factor. On a page where the need is to display a 'deliberate' meter of action, the boxes are shaped as perfect squares. Where the ringing of the telephone needs time (as well as space) to evoke a sense of suspense and threat, the entire tier is given over to the action of the ringing preceded by a compression of smaller (narrower) panels.

In comics, timing and rhythm are interlocked.
(30)

[Eisner’s part-by-part analysis of his own entire story gives us a privileged glimpse into not only his own thinking as a visual still-image story teller, but as well it will equip us with analytical tools for studying other comics. For that reason, forgive me for walking through his entire, wonderful analysis.]

We begin with the first page of the story. The plot revolves around what seems like a man falling to his death upon the sidewalk, having fallen from somewhere out of the building above. Eisner’s first observation is that he wanted that central plot element to be presented as a surprise. So he begins with two expository panels that contain little event material and thus have a calm pace. This makes the sudden arrival of the fallen body come as a shock. It as well has a comic effect [perhaps because it is such a terrible thing that happens just as a matter of course in the life of the main character who seemingly gives the shocking event no significance.]

At the top of the next page, the faucet dripping serves to set the pace and length of the duration. Two rows down we get an illustration of what he meant before by “In comics, timing and rhythm are interlocked.” He writes, “the sudden introduction of a large number of small panels brings into play a new ‘beat’” (32). [I am not exactly sure yet how the rhythm and the time are interlocked. It could be that the accelerated rhythm tells us that less or maybe more time is passing, but I am not sure.]

The character then begins to worry that the fallen figure’s death might be blamed on him. [When something makes us panic, it is as if time is speeding up, since we become frantic.] To create the “rising tempo of panic,” he used tall, narrower panels. [This makes the time itself seem crowded and dense].

 

At the top of the next page, Eisner creates a “staccato” rhythm by placing a series of narrow panels that for some reason read like a series of small sudden jumps. Then, we have the long panel he mentioned before, which extends the duration.

Eisner then increases the pace, since the man is panicking again, and Eisner does so by creating a series of narrow panels. At the bottom panels, it seems as if the “camera” angle changes to low and high angle “shots”. Eisner says that the changes in perspective “add time lapse without altering rhythm”. [I do not understand this point. Perhaps the idea is that the pace retains a hastened rhythm on account of the panel shapes. But since the perspectives change, that might give us the impression that it is like us being viewers who must move great distances to attain those different angles, and thus to consume more time in making the movements. I am just guessing. My impression while reading those parts is that it is a little disorienting, and so that confusion might add the impression of more time is passing.]

At the top of the next page, he uses again a series of narrow tall panels to maintain the quickened rhythm. In the middle of the series is a wider panel which causes the sequence of beats to pause briefly.

‘

After the man jumps out the window, there is no longer the need for suspense and excitement. So Eisner slows the pace down by using larger panels.

      

 

Works cited:

Will Eisner. Comics & Sequential Art. Tamarac, Florida: Poorhouse Press, 1985.

 

 

Image Credits:

Will Eisner. Comics & Sequential Art. Copyright Will Eisner. Tamarac, Florida: Poorhouse Press, 1985.

This entry’s URL: 
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Eisner (Ch3.2) Comics and Sequential Art, ‘Framing Speech’

 

by Corry Shores

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Will Eisner

Comics & Sequential Art

 

Ch.3
Timing

3.2
Framing Speech

Brief summary: 
To show speech and its sonic qualities, comics artists use speech balloons, which may take on different shapes and lettering types to indicate different things about the nature and sonic qualities of the speech. As speech requires time to be spoken, speech balloons add a dimension of temporal duration to the comics panel.

Summary

Eisner will discuss the function of speech balloons in comics timing (see the prior section, section 3.1, on timing). [He calls speech balloons a “desperation device,” but I am not sure what he means with that term. Perhaps he means that the cartoonist would prefer some better way to communicate dialogue, but they have little other recourse than to use balloons. Perhaps they are problematic because they confuse the visual imagery with imaginary or artificial looking elements.] “The balloon is a desperation device. It attempts to capture and make visible an ethereal element: sound.” [And since these sounds can only occur through an enduring duration,] “The arrangement of balloons which surround speech – their position in relation to each other, or to the action, or their position with respect to the speaker, contribute to the measurement of time” (26). [He also says that word balloons are “disciplinary” but I again do not know exactly the meaning of the term in this usage. I suppose it means that the word balloons in a way command the reader to read the contents exactly as they are written in the balloon, to read the balloons in the proper order, and to hear the sounds in their head, rather than I suppose how the rest of the visual imagery invites the reader to explore it at one’s own leisure. Also, it seems he is saying that we have an implicit understanding of how speech fills temporal duration, which we then project onto the visual imagery, as if the still image were occupying a block of time during which activity is taking place.] “They are disciplinary in that they demand cooperation from the reader. A major requirement is that they be read in a prescribed sequence in order to know who speaks first. They address our subliminal understanding of the duration of speech” (26).

[Eisner then shows some cartoon illustrations, but he seems to make a point through them that is not made in the rest of his text. (Of course, as a cartoonist, the visual components are not supposed to do nothing more than visualize the text, but rather image and text cooperate or take turns in conveying the information, in comics) This is a fascinating speculation to explain how word balloons are not entirely an arbitrary form but rather have some origin in actual physical experience. We might think of how when outside on a cold winter day we can see our breath while speaking. A cloud of mist literally billows out of our mouths as we speak. Word balloons, then, can be thought of as the breath clouds that normally go unnoticed when people talk to each other.]

Eisner then notes two important ways that word balloons in comics are read: {1} in the same order across the page as text (thus for Westerners, left-to-right while top-to-bottom), and {2} “in relation to the position of the speaker” (26) [... by which I think he means that we read each balloon as being the speech of the figure it seems to be emanating from, and perhaps the position of the speakers in relation to one another indicates who is speaking first, but I am not sure. In the Little Nemo example we examined before in section 1.7.2 of Groensteen’s System of Comics, it seemed like there was background dialogue that is to be read first, and then foreground dialogue second, after the sonic atmosphere is established.

]

Eisner notes that the earlier known word balloons were ribbons emanating from the mouth of the speaker. [I think of very ribbonlike ones from Medieval works. Here is a detail from Bernhard Strigel's The Annunciation to Saint Anne (ca. 1505-1510). (Full image can be seen here.).

[From Wikimedia Commons]

The Wikipedia page for “Speech Scroll” shows some other examples. Here for instance is a  “Teotihuacan stick-ball player with a bi-color speech scroll”.

[From wikipedia]

] Eisner even draws an ancient Mayan frieze to show how brackets served as speech indicators (see the curly-brackets pointing out from the figures’ mouths).

He explains that as the word balloon evolved, it came to take on more sophisticated roles in the story telling.

As his illustrations demonstrate [although it is not stated in the text], the shape of the balloon tells us whether the dialogue is normal speech, thinking, or sound coming from a technological device.

Eisner then discusses the lettering inside the balloons. Although its style indicates something of the personality and artistic style of the creator, they also can have stylized features which tell us something about the character who is speaking and the way they sound while speaking making those utterances. For example, by using foreign lettering styles we might “hear” their foreign accent (27). Comics might also “provide dignity” by using type-set lettering. Yet, while “Typesetting does have a kind of inherent authority” to it, it also “has a ‘mechanical’ effect that intrudes on the personality of free-hand art.” Thus “Its use must be carefully considered because of its effect on the ‘message’ as well” (27).

 

Works cited:

Will Eisner. Comics & Sequential Art. Tamarac, Florida: Poorhouse Press, 1985.

 

 

Image Credits:

Will Eisner. Comics & Sequential Art. Copyright Will Eisner. Tamarac, Florida: Poorhouse Press, 1985.

Bernhard Strigel. The Annunciation to Saint Anne (ca. 1505-1510). Cropped from this detail on wikimedia commons:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Annunciation_to_Saint_Anne_by_Bernhard_Strigel,_detail,_c._1505-1510_AD,_oil_on_wood_-_Museo_Nacional_Centro_de_Arte_Reina_Sof%C3%ADa_-_DSC08588.JPG

The full painting can be viewed here:
http://www.museothyssen.org/en/thyssen/zoom_obra/112

Winsor McCay. Little Nemo in Slumberland. 1906-07-01. Obtained gratefully from the Comic Strip Library.
http://www.comicstriplibrary.org/images/comics/little-nemo/little-nemo-19060701-l.jpeg

 

Teotihuacan stick-ball player. Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Two_Teotihuacan_Stick-ball_players_Tepantitla_1.svg

This entry’s URL: 
http://piratesandrevolutionaries.blogspot.com/2016/01/eisner-ch3-comics-and-sequential-art.html

Eisner (Ch3.1) Comics and Sequential Art, ‘Timing [introductory material]’

 

by Corry Shores

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Will Eisner

Comics & Sequential Art

 

Ch.3
Timing

3.1
[Introductory section of the chapter]

Brief summary:
Comics need the element of temporality within the story itself, so that events can unfold, and also it is needed in the reader’s experience of the story, so that the reader’s emotional reactions can develop along with the dramatic unfolding. To produce these two sorts of temporality, comics use the visual space of the page. A panel in the next spatial location in the reading succession also takes (normally) another block of time in the story. Time in comics is that space-created temporal dimension. Timing is the manipulation of the visual imagery and of its panelization so to alter the temporal features of the story and of the reader’s emotional experience of the story.

Summary

Eisner is discussing sequential art, which includes primarily comics media. He now will deal with the element of timing. Eisner understands the experience of time as involving its mixture with space and sound.

The phenomenon of duration and its experience – commonly referred to as ‘time’ – is a dimension integral to sequential art. In the universe of human consciousness time combines with space and sound in a setting of interdependence wherein conceptions, actions, motions and movement have a meaning and are measured by our perception of their relationship to each other.
(25)

Eisner says that because we live our lives “immersed [...] in a sea of space-time,” we must at a younger age have spent much of our development coming to grips with these dimensions (25). Space is something we perceive directly through our vision. But “Time is more illusory,” because its experiential parts are not immediately given but rather only mediately so through retentions: “we measure and perceive it through the memory of experience” (25). Earlier peoples measured time through natural cycles, like those of the sun’s and moon’s rotations in the sky and the cycles of the seasons. But with the invention of the mechanical clock, time came to be measured more visually [and thus spatially]. Eisner thinks that this change is significant for two reasons: 1) the visual way we measure time affects our psychological experience of it [thus perhaps we have come to experience time in a more spatial way], and 2) “it enables us to deal with the real business of living. In modern society one might even say that it is instrumental to survival” (25)  [I am not sure I have that point exactly. The mechanical measure of time allows society to function more efficiently. I am not sure what he means by the “real business of living”.] But in comics, the visual measure of time is “an essential structural element” (25).

A visual narrative must convey time if it is to be successful. For, we need the element of time in order “to recognize and be empathetic to surprise, humor, terror and the whole range of human experience” (26). [Perhaps the idea is that all the types of human experience necessarily involves temporal variation. Surprise needs at least two moments: the one creating an expectation and the one defying it. Also, humor needs shifts in meanings and expectations, which requires time, as do many other emotions. Thus, if comics wants to incorporate these emotional elements of human experience into the story experience, they need to create the temporality required for these emotions to unfold within the reader theirself.] [His next point seems to be is that this temporality that unfolds in the comics experience is a product of the workings of the perceptual apparatus that is found in common in all of us. But I am not exactly sure what that would mean, and in fact, I am probably misreading this sentence:] “At the heart of the sequential deployment of images intending to convey time is the commonality of its perception” (26). [He then distinguishes time and timing. Time is this dimension through and by which emotions unfold and develop. Timing is the manipulation of visual elements so to modify that temporality and affect the desired emotional outcome in the reader. In his visual demonstration, displayed below, we compare time and timing in comics. The “time” figure just shows the moments of the event. One man raises his knife to stab another. The other man shoots him before the knife lands. And we then see the first man lie shot-dead on the ground. Here, we have a couple seconds of time of the story event. It is mostly just information, with little emotional impact. In the second figure, “timing,” we have those three panel parts still, but with the addition of the shot man’s agonized collapse into death. These added panels are expressive of the torment of that dying man. Without other story experience, we might just simply be shocked by the raw agony of dying, whose only relief is the non-existence that is sure to come. It is perhaps like watching an animal die and to reflect on the mortal limitations of life. However, were we to have previously come to regard this dying as man a morally reprehensible villain, then seeing his agony and death might make us feel relief as if justice were rendered. Or if we came to identify previously with that dying man and to see him as a heroic and moral character, his death would seem like a tragic and sad misfortune to us. Whatever that emotion is, because of the additional panels playing out dramatically the agony of his death, we have a much richer emotional experience of the event.]

to convey ‘timing,’ which is the manipulation of the elements of time to achieve a specific message or emotion, panels become a critical element.
(26)

Eisner then says that comics obtain their “reality” through their time and timing. [Perhaps by this he means that without the temporal element, they cannot portray events and thus they cannot exist as stories.] He then says that in other auditory art forms like music, time is created using actual durations of time. But in comics, temporality is achieved through illusions and symbols. [We learn more of this in the next sections.]

A comic becomes 'real' when time and timing is factored into the creation. In music or the other forms of auditory communication where rhythm or 'beat' is achieved, this is done with actual lengths of time. In graphics the experience is conveyed by the use of illusions and symbols and their arrangement.
(26)

 

 

Will Eisner. Comics & Sequential Art. Tamarac, Florida: Poorhouse Press, 1985.

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Groensteen (1.7.2) The System of Comics, ‘The Separative Function'

 

by Corry Shores

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Summary of

 

Thierry Groensteen

 

The System of Comics

Chapter 1:
The Spatio-Topical System

1.7.2
The Separative Function

 

Brief summary:
The second function of the comics frame is to separate one panel from the others. This is necessary for there to be segments that make up the series of scenes that constitutes a comics story. It also is inherently a part of the prior function of closure, since the operation that unifies the contents of a panel is also what makes one distinct from the others. This working of the frame is similar to how punctuation marks separate sentences, and in fact, frames may create the experiences of pauses or breaks in a similar manner. There are three main components in every conventional frame separation. There is (a) the boundary of one panel, (b) the boundary of a neighboring panel, and (c) the blank space between them. However, there are three unconventional sorts of framing that do not exhibit these three parts. There are (1) singular lines that divide two panels, (2) merely a blank space between panels, and (3) the interprenation of neighboring panels. Nonetheless, the separative function still holds in all three cases. In the first case, the visual separation is there even though it is quite narrow. In the second situation, the reader still regards the blank space as something dividing the opposing panel contents. And for the third case, other visual elements often work to indicate the frame separations, even though the way they operate becomes more difficult to discern immediately. Thus regardless of whether the frame is conventionally or unconventionally used, its separative function is found in all cases of comics stories.

Summary

 

We previously discussed the way that the comic’s panel frame encloses the contents within the panel. But it is not a reductive enclosing, like how film framing is a matter of selecting what in front of the camera is captured and what is left out of the image. Rather, what is shown is already a self-contained unity. However, there is still the out-of-panel, you might say, which is evoked as a virtual extension of what is shown. He now notes that in addition to this imagined or virtual out-of-panel, there is the actual visual out-of-panel which is the other panels surrounding any given one (43). But what will be under our analysis here is not the out-of-panel but rather the separative function of the panel frame. [Consider if there were no segments in the comics story. This is very hard to imagine. Can it still be a story if there is not different parts with different temporal meanings? It would seem to need temporally distinct parts in order to have the events that make up a story. The question we then ask is, are those events continuously variable or discretely variable? In a sense, film can show the continuous variation of story events through time, since the film medium is itself in continuous motion, and it also creates the illusion of continuous motion in the viewer’s visual perception. Printed comics, with the exception of those with a potential flip-book function (see the examples we discussed in section 1.6), are still (that is, motionless)  images. As such, their event parts would seem to be discrete units. This should not be seen as a limiting factor in their ability to tell a story, however. What is cut out and left as implied in the gutter between panels is still present in the experience of the story. Each panel normally gives us an abrupt difference from the prior panel (And even if two or more successive panels are identical and thereby give us the impression of eventless duration, they still probably have their effect in the context of surrounding panels which are not eventless. And thus it is their abrupt difference against that context which makes them stand out). As such, when reading comics panels, we experience a series of narrative ‘shocks’ or jumps. Phenomenologically speaking, comics are experienced like a strobe light, as a series of narrative flashes or glimpses. The lack of continuity is more than made up for in the intensification of each moment, as each panel presents a condensation of narrative material, and implies the narrative developments happening between the panels. But with regard to the point that we still read a discrete sequence even in a single panel with its own duration, we might consider this example from one of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland. (Click and enlarge at photobucket if it is too small here).

The song that it evokes might progress continuously in our mind, and lend to the sense of a continuous duration in the panel. However, the staccato rhythm of the comics experience is still in some senses fundamental. This is evident with each little temporal jump in the series of song word ballons. But also the two forground character bubbles seem to present two more discrete units of story event perhaps occuring during the singing, but read afterward, as if the song provides a sonic background within which the primary dialogue takes place. Scott McCloud, in Understanding Comics, draws this panel to demonstrate one of the ways that dialogue helps constitute the thickened temporality in a comics panel.

Here he is discussing the constitution of continuous duration in the panel. (To be more clear, the structure of the time that we experience as being in the comics panel is different than the temporal pattern of our experience of the panel. We might ascribe to the panel a continuous duration of a block of a couple seconds. Furthermore, we might read a panel while experiencing the continuous passage of time. And so during this duration for example we might imagine the branches of a depicted tree swaying continuously in the wind. Or we might imagine the figures’ lips moving continously as they speak the dialogue in the bubble. However, insofar as one panel presents segments of action within it or insofar as a series of panels does so, we experience the panel’s continuous duration by means of a discrete series of mental experiences, which clear breaks between each segment of that story experience. Again, refer to the McCay panel above where we might have in mind the continuous playing of the song, but we experience the song’s parts by discrete steps.)  Yet, regarding the experience of each balloon in McCloud’s panel, like in the Nemo Slumberland example, we have a series of discrete experiences of the story, which could if the author wanted, involve placing more panel lines within the larger panel to designate those narrative sub-partitions. But this is superfluous, since those subdividing framing lines are inherent to our experience of the panel’s contents. At times, however, that superfluous line is in fact drawn into a scene, to notable effect. Consider this panel below from a superhero comic.

Now, for further comparison, consider also some interesting instances of framing in Dave Sim’s and Gerhard’s Cerebus #75, “Terrible Analogies.”

In the first panel, we have what appear to be two moments in Cerebus’ seemingly slow and crestfallen pacing away from the woman, sitting on the bed, who just then gave Cerebus heartbreaking news. In this first panel, no frame is used to determine that there are segments of movement and time, although those segments are still discerned in their discreteness. The last panel, however, shows a blur of continuous motion. We might experience it as one unified event. Or perhaps we divide it into two different moments for each time the blade strikes the ground, as impact makes its own sound. At any rate, in the first place we have discrete phases of motion and discrete moments of time presented in continuous visual space, but that discreteness carries with it an implied and invisible frame. Following Groensteen’s analysis in the prior section, we would say for the first panel that the internal sub-framing is implied but still present, because the contents of the panel contains two seperate unities. The first pose gives us one coherent distinct event or phase of the event, and the second pose gives us the other one. But what is notable in this panel and in others that we will examine is the way the framing alters our experience of the temporality. Even though the frame here is implied, we still juxtapose the moments, perhaps giving the event more of a timeless or eternal feel to it.

Now consider many pages later, after Cerebus offers a sack of valuables to the woman with whom he must part ways.

Consider especially panels 3 and 4. With regard to the background, it is almost as if both panels are spatially continuous, and the panel divider was placed overtop of that unified setting. (Note also that there are no outer boundaries on those panels, which perhaps emphasizes the role of the visible boundary in the center.) However, the contents of the panels do not suggest that the frame only spatially divides a singular moment, even though it visually divides a singular space. There is the offer and then the rejection. The frame boundary in the center both divides the event into two poles of motion, and at the same time, it places into the forground two different characters. So on the one hand, as we go from one frame to the next, it is as if the “camera” stayed in the same place, since the background does not change. But since we get two different moments of the action, it is as if the “camera” has changed positions to give a close up of each character individually. This of course creates this potent tension between their intimate relational bond that at the same time is being split apart into two different directions. Now finally let us look at page 17, after the woman has departed, and Cerebus watches her leave from the window. In the central panels, we seem to have something like a mixture between what we saw on page 6 and also on page 15. Like on page 15, we have what seems to be a singular background underlying the panel divisions. The four window panels seem to be the same as those shown in the prior panel of Cerebus looking out the window. And like from page 6, we have different moments of the walking motion, shown independently and without indication of the movement between those moments. But here we have the panel divisions (the two virtical black lines that might be mistaken for window frames), which perhaps make the moments seem more segmented and temporally sequential. It might give us the impression that every moment of her leaving held great weight for Cerebus.

] As Groensteen explains, the panel frame function of isolating panels is like punctuation that divides sentences into complete discrete units.

If the panel is equipped with a virtual diegetic off-screen, it also possesses a physical off-screen, which is composed of the bordering panels.²⁶ Also, it is a condition of reading that the panels are physically isolated from each other, or cognitively isolatable, of the sort that they can be read separately. In this consideration, the panel frame plays an analogous role to that of punctuation marks in language (here comprised of the elementary sign that is the blank white space that separates two words), these signs that divide, within a continuum, the pertinent units, thus allowing—or facilitating—the comprehension of the text.
(43)
[Footnote 26: Benoît Peeters suggests giving this surrounding space the name “péri-field,” cf. Case, planche, récit, op. cit., p. 15. (“Notes” p.171)]
[From footnote 7 of chapter 1: Benoît Peeters’ book, Case, planche, récit. Comment lire une bande dessinée (Tournai-Paris, Casterman, 1991). (“Notes” p.169)]

 

 

There is a convention for panel separation. We have the boundaries of each panel and the third element, the blank space between them.

The dominant usage similarly rests on an insistent separation, to the limit of the tautology. That which separates two panels is indeed nothing less than the triple frontier constituted by the frame of the first panel, the inter-iconic blank space that follows, and the frame of the second panel. Undoubtedly, frames are so well perceived as an integral part of panels that it is necessary to distinguish the one from the other; it is initially to the interstitial space (notably termed, depending on the author, “intericonic space,” “interframes,” “between images,” or “gutter”)²⁷ that the reader recognizes a separative virtue. But it would not appear like this if it was not bordered, on both sides, by the thin lines of the frames of the panels. Gutters are not framed themselves, but all the same they are calibrated with precision and, it can be said, “protected” against the hegemonic pressure of the image.
(44)
[Footnote 27:  Cf. Jan Baetens, “Pour une poétique de la gouttière,” Word & Image, vol. 7, no. 4, October– December 1991, pp. 365–376. (“Notes” p.171)]

[Recall from section 1.3 that the “multiframe” is the system of interrelated panels in a comics work, and the panels in the multiframe may be nested within enlarging scales of organization.] Now, this “ordinary apparatus of compartmentalization in the ‘multiframe’” that we mentioned above need not have the three parts we identified (the two borders of neighboring panels and the space lying between them). Rather, the structure may be simplified or bypassed. Groensteen then identifies “three important breaks with respect to the dominant usage” (44).

1. The first break with the conventional panel separative structure is a simple outline that “simultaneously and indistinctly belongs to the frames of each of the two adjacent panels” (44). He cites Töpffer as a historical case.

Groensteen also mentions Mutt and Jeff.

And as well he cites Krazy Kat.

He also mentions the more recent example of Claire Bretécher.

 

2. Another unconventional framing technique is merely to rely on the white space between the panels.

Similarly, often nothing tangible separates the different elements of the narrative sequence, nothing except the white of the paper, or the space that the drawing does not occupy. In Reiser, Copi or Wolinski, the narration concentrates itself generally only in the characters, solitary figures developed in an empty décor or one that is minimally suggested by a few elements. The repetition of the same figure suffices to signify the passage from one “panel” to another (if we can be allowed to use this term).
(44)

Here for example is a page of Copi.

Here below is one of Reiser.

And lastly here is Wolinski.

3. The third possibility is that the different panels on the page interpenetrate one another, and Groensteen cites recent works by Will Eisner. [Below are some pages from his The Name of the Game. On the first page shown,  at the top right we see two moments of the man entering the room. It is almost as if in the right-most panel he is introding into the panel happening sequentially prior. As well, in the rest of the panels we see word balloons and other visual elements crossing into other panels. In the second page displayed below, the intepenetration is so continuous that it even appears as if the man is entering the floor of the panel above him, since that floor above seamlessly becomes the wall below.]

Groensteen still thinks that even in these cases of interpenetration, the function of panel separation remains, for the following four reasons. (a) The pages often still have at least one framed panel, “where the regular form structures the totality of the surrouding space of the page. (b) Certain elements of décor, like door and window frames, often serve the panel separation function. (c) And, “the contrasts between the background blacks, whites, and greys (gross-hatched) reinforces the differentiation of the images.” Also, (d) we still read the panels left to right and top to bottom, and that ordering sequence also helps segment the interpenetrating images. [In the case of the floor of one panel becoming the wall of the panel below it, we come to the lower panel after reading through other panels to the above right, and so the distinction is made more clearly].

 

Groensteen then notes that just like Eisner, Wollinski’s panels lack the “artificial” and superfluous framing border that signifies which parts are “organic units”. However, such a boundary still exists as an implicit outline, even if it is not visually rendered (45).

So after showing the separative function of the frame in both obvious and non-obvious cases, we are led to conclude that it is found in all cases of comics, no matter what. This function is also essential for the way that the parts of comics connect like joints (anthrology); for, you can only have connecting parts if in the first place you have distinct parts that can be connected.

Thus, the principle of the separation of images can never be truly denied. The spatio-topia, let us not forget, is a part and a condition of arthrology: one could not connect the visual utterances if they were not distinct. The separative function is always in the work, even if the frame, which is ordinarily its privileged instrument, finds itself deliberately dismissed.
(45)

[I think Groensteen’s final point is something like the following. The prior panel function of closure was the principle that coheres the panel contents into a unity. As such, closure also makes one unit distinct from other such unities, for otherwise it would not be a coherent whole unto itself (even though it serves as a part in a larger system of other self-sufficient unities). Therefore, these two functions in a sense are one in the same, since to enclose a unity is in the same operation to separate one unity from another actual or possible one.]

The function of closure and the separative function are, in truth, nothing but the same function, successively envisaged as it exerts itself on the interior space of the frame and toward the exterior field.
(45)

 

 

From:
Thierry Groensteen. The System of Comics. Translated from French to English by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. Originally published as Systém de la bande desinée. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999.

 

 

Images taken gratefully from:

Winsor McCay. Little Nemo in Slumberland. 1906-07-01. Obtained gratefully from the Comic Strip Library.
http://www.comicstriplibrary.org/images/comics/little-nemo/little-nemo-19060701-l.jpeg

Dan Jurgens (story and layouts), Trevor Scott (finishes), John Costanza (letterer), and Glenn Whitmore (colorist). "Vanishing Point.” In The Legacy of Superman #1. March 1993. DC Comics.

Scott McCloud. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Kitchen Sink Press, 1993.

Dave Sim and Gerhard. Cerebus #75. "Terrible Analogies." June 1985. Aardvark-Vanaheim.

Rodolphe Töpffer. Histoire de M. Jabot. Genève. 1833. Available online at the Internet Archive.
http://archive.org/details/gri_33125008487627

Bud Fisher. Mutt and Jeff. 3-Nov-1911. "If Someone Doesn't Turn off the Gas, It's All off with Mutt and Jeff." Obtained gratefully from Ben Welter's article at the Star Tribune.
http://www.startribune.com/nov-3-1911-suicide-in-the-funnies/133043843/

George Herriman. Krazy Kat. 30-April-1916. Obtained gratefully from the Comic Strip Library.
http://www.comicstriplibrary.org/
http://www.comicstriplibrary.org/images/comics/krazy-kat/krazy-kat-19160430-l.png

 

Claire Bretécher. Les mères. Copyright Claire Bretécher, 1982.

Jean-Marc Reiser. C'est beau, une femme! Copyright Reiser and Albin Michel, 1996.

Copi. Vive les pédés et autres fantaisies. Éditions de l'Oliver, 2014. Here taken gratefully from Cornélius.
http://www.cornelius.fr/blog/index.php?post/2014/11/04/Vive-les-p%C3%A9d%C3%A9s

 

Will Eisner. The Name of the Game. Copyright Will Eisner and DC Comics, 2001.

Georges Wolinski. Je ne veux pas mourir idiot. Copyright Wolinski and Éditions Denoël, 1968.

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Eisner, Comics and Sequential Art, entry directory

 

by Corry Shores

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Entry Directory for

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Comics & Sequential Art

 

 

Ch.3
Timing 

3.1
[Introductory section of the chapter]

 

3.2
Framing Speech

3.3
Framing Time

 

 

 

 

 

Will Eisner. Comics & Sequential Art. Tamarac, Florida: Poorhouse Press, 1985.

Will Eisner, entry directory

 

by Corry Shores

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[Image obtained gratefully from Montilla Pictures]

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[Image obtained gratefully from Comic Vine]

 

 

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Groensteen (1.2) The System of Comics, ‘The First Spatio-Topical Parameters’

 

by Corry Shores

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Summary of

 

Thierry Groensteen

 

The System of Comics

Chapter 1:
The Spatio-Topical System

1.2
The First Spatio-Topical Parameters

 

Brief summary:
We might think of the spatio-topical framework of comics panels as if the page were made of blank boxes that can be filled with visual content. There are three parameters to the spatio-topical features of a comics panel: 1) its form (that is, its geometrical shape), 2) its area (the amount of space extending within the panel), and 3) its site (its location on the page and within the work at large). The site’s importance can be seen in cases where the location on the page is important for dramatic effect or for “rhyming” with other parts.

 

Summary

 

Recall from section 1.1 where Groensteen makes the point that the panel is the smallest irreducible unit; for, panels can be rearranged in different editions, but the contents of the panel must remain intact. Groensteen then says that “it is the frame that makes the panel,” while “At the same time, the page, this conglomeration of juxtaposed panels, is easily reduced to its framework, which we have called the multiframe” (27-28). He continues: “The traditional schematic representation of a comics page is nothing more than a grid where the compartments are left empty, the ‘skeleton’ being only the body of the evoked object,” citing an instance from Will Eisner’s The Dreamer. Perhaps this scene is what Groensteen is referring to:

 

Such a depiction of empty frames highlights for Groensteen what is most essential to the medium of comics.

These miniature representations of comics pages are kinds of symbolic pictograms; they give value to their signs, they express a concept, they enclose an implicit definition. Behind their apparent poverty, these pictograms bring us back to what is essential about comics. They plainly confirm the two fundamental intuitions that guide me: that comics are composed of interdependent images; and that these images, before knowing any other kind of relation, have the sharing of a space as their first characteristic. And, remarkably, they do not say anything other than that.
(28)

In fact, the gridding of the visual space is a conceptual construct that can play an influential role at the early stages of creation: “Indeed, we will see later on that this ‘grid’ effectively incarnates comics as a ‘mental form,’ and that the artist can refer to it at a very precocious stage of creation, at a stage that has been given the name gridding (quadrillage). This stage in the process of creation can be briefly described as the first appropriation of the space that is invested in” (28). Now Groensteen will describe “the spatio-topical apparatus” of comics by saying more about “the mode of division” and “the occupation of spaces upon which comics rests” (28).

Groensteen claims that in order to describe any panel in precise detail, we must “mobilize at least three parameters,” namely, its form (that is, its geometrical shape), its area (the amount of space extending within the panel), and its site (its location on the page and within the work at large).

It is necessary to mobilize at least three parameters in order to precisely describe any panel, without regard to its contents. These spatio-topical parameters are always observable, even if the panel is free from all forms of inscription and consists of nothing but an empty frame. The first two are geometric: they are the form of the panel (rectangular, square, round, trapezoidal, etc.) and its area, measurable in square centimeters. This spatial dimension of the panel is summarized | and resides in the frame. The frame is at the same time the trace and measure of the space inhabited by the image.

The third parameter, which is the site of the panel, concerns its location on the page and, beyond that, within the entire work.
(28-29)

Groensteen will return to the topic of the panel site in section 1.5. For now he notes that how Jean-Claude Raillon observes the importance of the panel’s site in issue 8 of Hergé’s The Adventures of TinTin. We are to compare two scene transitions occurring as Tintin passes through a doorway. In the first case, the transition happens as we turn the page, since he is outside the doorway at the end of one page. Then we flip the page, and he is on the inside of the building at the beginning of the next page.

 

 

What is important here is that the position creates a certain suspense. And the turning of the page is like the turning of the door in the image. [It is as if the reader participates in the action, merely through the normal physical acts of reading the book.]

Compare that to a similar doorway transition later in the story.

Groensteen quotes Raillon:

The observation, from the point of view of the topical parameter, of the panels in question shows . . . that their location on the page is not comparable from one sequence to the other. The first series is distributed over two pages, more precisely over recto and verso of the same page, while the second offers a readable denouement within the frame of the page on which it is written.

And everything changes, of course, with regard to the narrative suspense that organizes the structure of representation, but more certainly, we need to be attentive, in the rapport between the parametric compositions that they arrange. Indeed, the relation that allies the character’s movement at the instant where, arriving at the end of page 15, he crosses over the doorstep of the building, and the gesture of the reader who, accompanying him, turns the page, is remarkable. Thus one finds established, between the material framework of the drawings and the represented sequence, a double similitude: the first associated with rotation, around their respective axes, the planes that are a door and a sheet of paper; the second manifests the common displacement of the character and the reader toward another site.¹⁰ [ft 10: “10. Ibid. pp. 68 and 72.” ft 9: “9. ‘L’homme qui lit,’ Conséquences, no. 13–14, Contrebandes, op. cit., pp. 64–104.” ft 8: “8. For an analysis of this ‘meta-comics’ category and several others, cf. Thierry Groensteen, ‘Bandes désignées. De la réflexivité dans les bandes dessinées,’ Conséquences, no. 13/14: Contrebandes, Paris, Les Impressions nouvelles, 2nd quarter, 1990, pp. 132–165.” (169)]
(29)

Thus there is a great importance to a panel’s location on the page (29) [I am not sure how this squares with his prior point from section 1.1 that the panel is  the smallest irreducible unit since the order of the panels can be rearranged but their contents cannot be. He wrote: “The proof is provided when a comic, given a change in physical support (from the daily newspaper to a book, or from an album to a pocketbook edition) is subjected to a “reassembly”: it is at that moment that the order of panels is completely modified. The exercise consists of redefining their respective positions. As for the images, they are not directly touched, or, if they are, it is always with an eye toward preserving the alignment of the frames, to conserve, on the newly created page, a steady outward form. The point is to make an intervention on the frames. Every alteration imposed on the image itself, by the fact of this intervention, is of a consequential order, and can be considered as indifferent at worst, and at best (?) as a necessary evil. When an image is reframed, whether it is by amputation or extension, it appears that the publishers in charge have less respect for the internal composition (its balance, its tension, its dynamism) than for the coalescence of the page. The objective that is pursued is the maintenance of a form of geometric solidarity between the support and the panels that share the surface. In sum, it is notable that the frame dictates its law to the image. This experiential fact reinforces the theoretical privilege that must necessarily be accorded to the panel above all other interior units” (25). This seems to be contradicted by what he is saying here. In other words, with the importance of the site, why is the page not the smallest indivisible “spatio-topical” unit?  Perhaps the difference is that newspaper strips function differently than comic books. Or perhaps editorial alterations to the sites do not change the meaning of the imagery but rather only the way it is experienced. But I am not sure sure.]

As Groensteen explains:

This example will suffice (but I will verify it later on with others) to testify to the importance, for certain panels at least, of their “location on the page.” In the example of King Ottokar’s Sceptre, the panel that ends page 15 is over-determined by a concerted coincidence between its representation and its location. It is common in comics that panels find themselves “automatically” reinforced by the fact that they occupy one of the places on the page that enjoys a natural privilege, like the upper left hand corner, the geometric center or the lower right hand corner— and also, to a lesser degree, the upper right and lower left corners. Numerous artists have assimilated this fact and made, in a more or less systematic manner, key moments of the story coincide with these initial, central, and terminal | positions, to “rhyme” the first and last panels of a page, instituting a manner of looping that we will recognize further on as an effect of braiding.
(29-30)

From:
Thierry Groensteen. The System of Comics. Translated from French to English by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. Originally published as Systém de la bande desinée. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999.

Images from:

 

Will Eisner. The Dreamer. New York: DC Comics, 1985.

Hergé. The Adventures of Tintin. #8. King Ottokar's Sceptre. English translation by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1974 edn.

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