Understanding Comics (3 points)

 I have recently gotten more interested in comics, hence why I chose to take this class, but I never imagined the complexity that goes into making one, more specifically, the structural complexity. I know now that comics are way more than a simple story with sequential pictures inside panels. I see it now as a form of universal communication even though they come in different languages. What I found most interesting was how different comics by even more different artists follow a similar, if not the same, transitioning tools. His example where he takes Jack Kirby's and Stan Lee's The Fantastic Four comic and Herges's 

Tintin. In Fantastic Four, Kirby's transitions consist of 65% action-to-action, about 20% subject-to-subject, and roughly 15% scene-to-scene. Now, even though Tintin comes from a different culture and both comics' styles are wildly different, their transitional tools are still the same. And that applied to American comics such as X-men, Donald Duck, Betty & Veronica, amongst others. 

 

Another cool find was the meaning and purpose behind the white space between panels. I never paid much mind to that space, only thinking of it as a result of the panels being arranged on the page. That space is referred to as the gutter and I think that's an unexpected name, however, the purpose of it I found to be very cool. It is meant for our brains to connect the one panel from the next therefore making it into one single idea. The images could go from dialogue to a shot of a background, and when going from one panel to the next, your brain subconsciously connects the two to form the big picture. Pretty neat!