Description
Book SynopsisComics are a global phenomenon, and yet it's easy to distinguish the visual styles of comics from Asia, Europe, or the United States. But, do the structures of these visual narratives differ in more subtle ways? Might these comics actually be drawn in different visual languages that vary in their structures across cultures? To address these questions,
The Patterns of Comics seeks evidence through a sustained analysis of an annotated corpus of over 36,000 panels from more than 350 comics from Asia, Europe, and the United States. This data-driven approach reveals the cross-cultural variation in symbology, layout, and storytelling between various visual languages, and shows how comics have changed across 80 years. It compares, for example, the subtypes within American comics and Japanese manga, and analyzes the formal properties of Bill Watterson's
Calvin and Hobbes across its entire 10-year run. Throughout, it not only uncovers the patterns in and across the panels
Trade ReviewIn previous innovative publications, Neil Cohn has provided a framework for understanding the visual language of comics across languages and cultures. In this magisterial volume he provides readers with tools for continued research. In essence, this is a carefully constructed handbook for in-depth exploration of visual narrative. -- Dan I. Slobin, Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Linguistics, UC Berkeley, USA
Table of ContentsList of Figures and Tables Preface 1. Visual Language 2. Corpus-Driven Comics Research 3. Morphology 4. Page Layout 5. Situational Coherence 6. Framing Structure 7. Narrative Structure 8. Visual Languages across Time 9. Cross-Cultural Visual Languages? 10. The Visual Language of
Calvin and Hobbes 11. Towards a Visual Language Typology Notes References Index
