Reading or Comic-Reading? – Robb Garner

McCloud’s breakdown of the cognitive process involved in reading comics was quite illuminating.  I certainly agree with his use of the word “faith” in chapter three to describe the process by which we conceive of a single reality from our innumerable but fragmented observations and experiences.  Chapter 4 felt a little flat to me; the assumption that a photograph represents only a single moment in time doesn’t seem to be especially relevant.  I have no photographical skill myself—which is really a bummer—but I appreciate photography precisely because it is capable of presenting so much in what seems like so little (i.e. a single second); every photograph is a story In Medias Res and the best ones expand into both the past and future exponentially.  In chapter five, about the use of lines, this seems to be something left unsaid; while Chester Gould was able to help create his character Dick Tracy with bold lines and excessive shading (in the picture on p. 126 Dick Tracy explodes out of the netherworld of his blazer) these were also presented in tandem with Tracy’s dialogue and situation.  Moreover, Dick Tracy himself is found in a context of the hard-broiled American hero.  Dick Tracy, the comic, helped establish this genre, of course, but it also played off of previously established roles—most notably the cowboy myth.

Rabkin seemed like a good example of the strong apologist movement, defending the validity of comic books against their poor reputation in a way that doesn’t seem totally authentic to me.  For one, I don’t think that reputation actually exists in my generation.  For another, we might not read comics in schools, but that doesn’t mean it’s because we think they are below education.  It’s quite likely because comics are 1. New 2. Untraditional and 3. Not universally popular; many teachers don’t like comic books, so why would they go out of their way to teach them?  I’ve read one or two graphic novels, which I enjoyed to some extent, but I’ve never considered comics lowly or foolish.  I think one thing that might betray comics is that since we use the same inferential-interpretation method for reading them as we do constantly to make meaning (reality) in our lives the impetus is to read a comic quickly; it doesn’t take the time that reading a traditional narrative does, and because the comic is a series of images (a strip) we aren’t asked to patiently go through each image in the way that being at a museum asks us to look at each painting even though there are many.  As Cohn says, it’s easy to forget that a comic strip occurs on a page.

The readings this week have really got me thinking about the difference—if there is one—between interpreting words and interpreting pictures.  Comics blur the line that does, in some small but pragmatic way (the respective medium of presentation), exist between them, but they also ask us to ask the question, “Do we read comics?”  This question, in turn, makes us stop to think about our definition of reading.  I keep thinking about the cliché, “A picture speaks a thousand words.”  I wonder.  Like interpreting a poem, skilled interpreters engaged simultaneously in an interpretation will find a considerably larger amount of meaning / potential meaning than a single, isolated, and otherwise untrained interpreter.  This suggests that a picture speaks as many words as the interpreter is capable of reading into it.  Moreover, we’d all probably describe the same picture definitely, just like we’d draw the same description differently (though our artistic abilities would differ significantly).  Not only are the amount but the type of words will also be different.  The same, though, is true with interpreting a poem (as we have seen).  Is there any essential difference in the means of interpretation?  What if we did a comic strip for the Ball Turret Gunner poem?

I’m inclined to conclude—however hastily—that the distinction between interpreting pictures and literature is mute, and that because reading is, at least in my viewed, an act of interpreting words the term “reading” itself could be applied to interpreting comic books or picture books without much controversy.  Thinking about that, maybe Rabkin’s right and I am wrong: Maybe the reason we don’t spend time interpreting comic books is that while we’re capable of agreeing that graphic novels (for instance) are a legitimate form of art we’re still not going to approach them with the methods we have learned and practiced from and for tradition models.  For example, on p. 89 in Nat Turner we see young Nat reading the bible.  This is the first image of the bible we have in the novel, and the cross on the cover is upside down.  On the next few pages it is right-side up.  Now, is this original inversion because Nat Turner, trying to teach himself to read, probably first didn’t understand which way the letters / words were oriented?  Or is Kyle Baker indicating the cross on purpose to indicate that Nat Turner was destined from the beginning to be like Peter rather than Christ?  (In Catholicism, the Petrine cross is an inverted cross which represents Peter, the first Pope [who was given “the keys of the kingdom” by Christ], who was crucified upside down.)  I thought about the second possibility first, but I ruled it out almost immediately.  Why?  I suppose because I was reading a comic book and not a poem.  On the other hand, one of the problems we face with comic books could be that we non-comic book readers don’t know the tradition that comic book writers come out of.  When I read a published poem, I have an idea about what the poet has read and some conventions that will be used or ignored—these will help me interpret the poem.  With comic books I don’t know any of this.  Is the tradition employed that of comic books themselves (do comic books reference previous comic books the way literature references previous literature), or the traditions of photography, or literature, or all of them?  Can I really be asked to juggle all these different mediums and their traditions?  Taking comic books too lightly might be a problem, but the prospect of taking them seriously presents its own problems as well.

2 thoughts on “Reading or Comic-Reading? – Robb Garner

  1. ssexton2

    Prior knowledge is powerful! I was perplexed when I saw the first image of the cross upside down, but I did not know the information about Peter or the Bible to even make that connection. I viewed it as, (1) Nat was not able to make sense of the letters or the positions of the letters – like you stated, or (2) Nat was interpreting the Bible the wrong way, or the messages/visions he supposedly received were interpreted wrong.

  2. Professor Sample

    A lot to mull over in this post. I really like your idea of turning “The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner” into a comic. There are applications like Comic Life that would make this a very doable assignment for a class.

    As for what to make of the image of young Nat looking at the upside down Bible (89), I think the answer lies in the preceding 4-5 pages. This highlights the point of some of the theorists we read for today: it’s all to easy to focus on individual panels or even pages, but often overall meaning is constructed from a larger sequences of panels and pages. In this particular case, the panel with the Bible must be put in dialogue with what comes immediately before, and even what comes way before, like on the book’s frontispiece.

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