Experimental Narrative Strategies in Comics

Abstract

The article is devoted to modern comics, which are considered as a kind of “laboratory” for experiments in the field of visual narratives, focusing on the construction and dynamics of their spatial-temporal continuum. The entire perceptual “space” of comics is significative (Fresnault-Derruelle); all elements of this space constitute the narrative. It is not only about the “space” of a book or a magazine; contemporary comics are intensely exploring new media, a key feature of which is interactivity. The article examines both the “classic” way of presenting visual material (comics in the form of book, “codex”), and the web-comics, which are similar to scrolls in their form, and have a new (compared to books) potential for interactivity. The article provides a systema­tic comparison of the ways of chronotope organizing in comics and screen arts (cinema, video art, media projects, etc.), and draws an analogy between the behavioral models of a comic book reader and a gamer going through the plot of a video game. One of the main theses of the article is the following: even though there are significant differences between the formats of comic books and web comics, there is a basic commonality in the nature of their impact on the rea­der. The images on the pages of comics and the spacings between them create an illusion of time through the mechanism of “closure” (S. McCloud). Therefore, the real interaction between space and time is pos­sible only with an active participation of the viewers who add their corporeality to this equation, matching it with the visual and textual register. In this way, in the process of the “assembling” perception of co­mics, the corporeal and the intellectual merge.