Viewing Comics through a Film Lens

I enjoyed our guest speaker on Thursday and thought he brought up many interesting points about how graphic novels and comics have their own visual style and pacing to them. The illustrator has to train the reader to understand their distinct style and timing, and has to end each page with a frame that will tempt the reader to turn the page. I read many comics when I was growing up, including Calvin and Hobbes, Opus, and the Bone chronicles, and recalled their authors creative use of space. At times the comics would stretch outside the bounds of the normal panels to fill the whole page, typically in the beginning or ending of the narrative, functioning as an establishing shot. Our guest speaker spoke about how film's visual cues can apply to comic illustration. For example, he chose to enter a scene by beginning with a tight closeup of a man lighting a cigarette and then pulling back to a master shot of a group to build tension. Film language is just as applicable to comics, and as our speaker pointed out, many comic illustrator came from film backgrounds and are simply drawing the blockbuster films they couldn't make due to the constraints of technology.