McCloud's Time Frames
Scott McCloud: Narrator, author, character and genius, all merged into one being!
I found Time Frames (Chapter Four) to be one of the most interesting and entertaining reads so far in Digital Narratives. Yes, comic book art is fun to look at, but to analyze time and space within the context of the comic book and correlate these notions with narrative is something that really intrigued me. As we read comics in a sequential order, we create narratives with a sequence of events, and while they do not have to be linear is their appearance, we must be able to create some linear timeline from the narrative discourse (by rearranging, rereading, etc.).
The Panel of the comic book, as an icon or skin to the text, struck me as something very similar to narrative framework, and how imperative a frame is in containing the text. The subjective motion of Japanese artists reminded me of this layering of framework, and how multiple panels force the reader to engage within the text just as multiple frameworks within literature place the reader in that realm, as if you in that pilgrimage to Canterbury- then suddenly you are reminded of Chaucer the narrator just as the comic book reader is reminded of the illustrator at the end of the last panel, seeing the artist's initials and 'to be continued'.
I'm sure we'll talk more about this in class, but the evolution of comic book art, depicting motion and time, can easily correlate to the development of the novel- how narrative formation changes within different cultures and so forth.
-Liz L.
I found Time Frames (Chapter Four) to be one of the most interesting and entertaining reads so far in Digital Narratives. Yes, comic book art is fun to look at, but to analyze time and space within the context of the comic book and correlate these notions with narrative is something that really intrigued me. As we read comics in a sequential order, we create narratives with a sequence of events, and while they do not have to be linear is their appearance, we must be able to create some linear timeline from the narrative discourse (by rearranging, rereading, etc.).
The Panel of the comic book, as an icon or skin to the text, struck me as something very similar to narrative framework, and how imperative a frame is in containing the text. The subjective motion of Japanese artists reminded me of this layering of framework, and how multiple panels force the reader to engage within the text just as multiple frameworks within literature place the reader in that realm, as if you in that pilgrimage to Canterbury- then suddenly you are reminded of Chaucer the narrator just as the comic book reader is reminded of the illustrator at the end of the last panel, seeing the artist's initials and 'to be continued'.
I'm sure we'll talk more about this in class, but the evolution of comic book art, depicting motion and time, can easily correlate to the development of the novel- how narrative formation changes within different cultures and so forth.
-Liz L.