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The Language of Comics: Word and Image
With essays by Jan Baetens, David A. Beronä, Frank L. Cioffi, N. C. Christopher Couch, Robert C. Harvey, Gene Kannenberg, Jr., Catherine Khordoc, David Kunzle, Marion D. Perret, and Todd Taylor
In our culture, which depends increasingly on images for instruction and recreation, it is important to ask how words and images make meaning when they are combined. Comics, one of the most widely read media of the twentieth century, serves as an ideal for focusing an investigation on the word-and-image question.
This collection of essays attempts to give an answer. The first six see words and images as separate art forms that play with or against each other. David Kunzle finds that words restrict the meaning of the art of Adolphe Willette and Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen in Le Chat Noir. David A. Beronä, examining wordless novels, argues that the ability to read pictures depends on the ability to read words. Todd Taylor draws on classical rhetoric to demonstrate that images in The Road Runner are more persuasive than words.
N. C. Christopher Couch―writing on The Yellow Kid ―and Robert C. Harvey―discussing early New Yorker cartoons―are both interested in the historical development of the partnership between words and images in comics. Frank L. Cioffi traces a disjunctive relationship of opposites in the work of Andrzej Mleczko, Ben Katchor, R. Crumb, and Art Spiegelman.
The last four essays explore the integration of words and images. Among five comic book adaptations of Hamlet , Marion D. Perret finds one in which words and images form a dialectic. Jan Baetens critiques the semiotically inspired theory of Phillippe Marion. Catherine Khordoc explores speech balloons in Asterix the Gaul . Gene Kannenberg, Jr., demonstrates how the Chicago-based artist Chris Ware blurs the difference between word and image.
The Language of Comics , however, is the first collection of critical essays on comics to explore a single issue as it affects a variety of comics.
In our culture, which depends increasingly on images for instruction and recreation, it is important to ask how words and images make meaning when they are combined. Comics, one of the most widely read media of the twentieth century, serves as an ideal for focusing an investigation on the word-and-image question.
This collection of essays attempts to give an answer. The first six see words and images as separate art forms that play with or against each other. David Kunzle finds that words restrict the meaning of the art of Adolphe Willette and Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen in Le Chat Noir. David A. Beronä, examining wordless novels, argues that the ability to read pictures depends on the ability to read words. Todd Taylor draws on classical rhetoric to demonstrate that images in The Road Runner are more persuasive than words.
N. C. Christopher Couch―writing on The Yellow Kid ―and Robert C. Harvey―discussing early New Yorker cartoons―are both interested in the historical development of the partnership between words and images in comics. Frank L. Cioffi traces a disjunctive relationship of opposites in the work of Andrzej Mleczko, Ben Katchor, R. Crumb, and Art Spiegelman.
The last four essays explore the integration of words and images. Among five comic book adaptations of Hamlet , Marion D. Perret finds one in which words and images form a dialectic. Jan Baetens critiques the semiotically inspired theory of Phillippe Marion. Catherine Khordoc explores speech balloons in Asterix the Gaul . Gene Kannenberg, Jr., demonstrates how the Chicago-based artist Chris Ware blurs the difference between word and image.
The Language of Comics , however, is the first collection of critical essays on comics to explore a single issue as it affects a variety of comics.
222 pages, Paperback
First published January 15, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 10, 2017
Very useful
November 7, 2023
not bad, really dumbed it down for me (as needed) not super exciting tho
October 12, 2008
From my blog: Reviewing Comics
Following McCloud's groundbreaking work, comics gradually gained acceptance and popularity among academia. In the Language of Comics, published in 2002, editors Varnum and Gibbons present a collection of essays that further McCloud's analysis of the special relationship between word and image in comics. Mostly written by authors who are very well versed in the literary and semiotic theory, essays presented in the book offer different perspectives into the issue while also concentrating on diverse parts of the history of comics.
Editors has succeeded in collecting essays that are about as diverse topics as the Wile E. Coyote animated series and the silent Chat Noir comics. This diversity of the subject matter is very refreshing as most of the later literature will focus on more mainstream works.
Although not a book to be read from cover to cover, Language of Comics is an important collection with a rare academic depth and diversity of subject matter. Maybe after a initiation period with the comics history and an introduction to theory by McCloud, it would make a very effective illustration of how to broaden and deepen one's knowledge and present examples of very interesting and creative places to apply in the comics history.
Following McCloud's groundbreaking work, comics gradually gained acceptance and popularity among academia. In the Language of Comics, published in 2002, editors Varnum and Gibbons present a collection of essays that further McCloud's analysis of the special relationship between word and image in comics. Mostly written by authors who are very well versed in the literary and semiotic theory, essays presented in the book offer different perspectives into the issue while also concentrating on diverse parts of the history of comics.
Editors has succeeded in collecting essays that are about as diverse topics as the Wile E. Coyote animated series and the silent Chat Noir comics. This diversity of the subject matter is very refreshing as most of the later literature will focus on more mainstream works.
Although not a book to be read from cover to cover, Language of Comics is an important collection with a rare academic depth and diversity of subject matter. Maybe after a initiation period with the comics history and an introduction to theory by McCloud, it would make a very effective illustration of how to broaden and deepen one's knowledge and present examples of very interesting and creative places to apply in the comics history.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews