One of the key threads which ties all form of comic book together is sequence of images. Trying to communicate a message through a single image can be difficult, especially if the message is complex. By adding a second or third image to the series, the artist can expand upon the message that the reader will receive. This also makes it easier for the reader to determine what the message is and what tone an event should have. This method of communication through sequential images has been around for hundreds upon hundreds of years stretching back to the beginnings of communication. Don’t believe me? Go look up an image of Egyptian murals. Go ahead, I’ll wait here.
Back already? See what I meant? Even the ancient Egyptians knew to put images one after the other to help get the point across. This trend continued throughout the ages and into modern comics and graphic novels. Take Art Spiegelmans Maus for example. By the end of the first page the reader has been told a story about a young man who fell down while playing with friends, and when they left him behind he went home. It doesn’t show every single second of this happening that would take too much paper. Instead, it shows key events in the sequence such as the boy falling and watching his friends leaving, and then arriving at home, in order to tell the entire story. And it doesn’t stop there either. Through the entire story events are shown in little flashes like that in order to convey all the important details while skipping over some of the everyday things like on page 32 with the train ride. The entire journey isn’t shown but the distance involve is conveyed to the reader through the view out the window, the train stretched across the top of the page, and the dialogue. By doing this the entire trip from Poland to Czechoslovakia takes place over the course of two pages.
This method of communications is vital to a successful graphic novel or comic book because otherwise it would just be a very long novel with illustrations.
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