What is a Comic?

The medium of comics often finds itself in the awkward position of being labelled a genre. It is fair to say that the popular perception of what constitutes comics: men in tights with superhuman powers, evil geniuses, talking animals etc, certainly constitute a genre or genres. Such an understanding of comics can safely be used with little fear that your use of the word 'comics' will be misinterpreted, and will remain largely unchallenged by comparison to the majority of comics. However, in terms of describing what defines a comic, this view is less helpful. The commonly held view of comics only takes into consideration the dominant genres of the medium. Comics in their fullest (and most accurate) sense are a medium in their own right. The question is, what characteristics define a work as a comic?

An initial attempt to describe what a comic is might be 'pictures and text used in combination to produce a narrative'. This is certainly true, but is it an accurate enough description? If one were to remove the soundtrack from a film with subtitles, would the end result be a comic? No. Would it, then, be sufficient to define a comic as a narrative consisting of a series of static images and text? This sounds better, however, that does not really move us away from the subtitled film, as (technically speaking) films consist of a series of static images displayed in (rapid) succession. This may seem to be a pedantic distinction, however, in order to understand how the medium of comics may function digitally; it is first necessary to ascertain how it functions at all.

In addressing this issue, Carrier states that he is "unwilling to dismiss [comics] as a second-hand version of movies" ¹   on the basis that the two function in a fundamentally different manner. Scott McCloud, in his book Reinventing Comics, offers some wisdom on the subject:

What is comics?... ...If I told you that figure A wasn't comics and figure B was, would you believe me? Suppose I told you that figure A was a picture of two squares and figure B was a picture of one square, shown at one moment, then the next?  2

McCloud's point is that the essence of comics lies in the use of space to express time, and that it is the reader who translates the physical space between panels on a page into spaces of time within a narrative in their head. Thus the temporal dynamic of the narrative relies upon the input of the reader in order to function. In other words, in a comic it is the reader who moves the narrative forward, as opposed to in a film, where the creator controls the pace. This is an interesting point, and one that effectively distinguishes comics from other media.

The ability of the reader to control the pace at which you advance through a narrative is not unique to comics; the same is true of a traditional novel. However, the nature and extent of this control differs considerably. In the context of a novel there is very little for the reader to control in terms of pace. They can make a decision as to whether to read another chapter now, or go to sleep and read the next chapter on the bus the following morning, but they can exert very little control over the level at which the narrative can be read. The traditional novel offers no provision for levels of detail; every word needs to be read.

A comic does not consist only of words; there are also pictures. The old adage 'a picture is worth a thousand words' may be a tired cliché, but it is not without its wisdom. In relation to comics, it may be truer to say 'a picture is worth a thousand words, or less'. Thus, a frame of comic may contain a thousand words worth of information relating to the story, but it is up to the reader how much of this they take the time to extract. They may wish to study each frame and explore all possible significances, or they may wish to skim quickly through each frame, pausing only briefly to glean the bare minimum of narrative information. In this way, the reader controls the levels of granularity at which they wish to read the comic.

It now becomes clearer what the individual virtue of comics might be; the comic combines the narrative function of the film and the novel with the contemplative function of fine art. This combination of attributes gives comics a unique aesthetic that borrows from, but operates distinctly differently from, other media. Bearing in mind the nature of comics, how will these virtues operate in a digital environment?