Focalized split panels: Bridging the borders in comics form

Abstract

Abstract Although comics scholars have examined split panels, also known as polyptychs, as a visual strategy that transforms space into time, this article establishes that split panels can also cue focalization. The first part of this article reviews current theories about sequentiality and segmentivity in comics in order to establish some of the ways in which split panels can question, or complicate, generally agreed-upon understandings of comics’ sequences in terms of time and space. The second part of this article consists in close visual analyses of several split panels taken from Craig Thompson’s Good-Bye Chunky Rice (1999), Alex Robinson’s Tricked (2010), Mawil’s Wir Können Ja Freunde Bleiben (2003, published in English in 2008 as We Can Still Be Friends) and Glyn Dillon’s The Nao of Brown (2012). This article draws from Silke Horstkotte and Nancy Pedri’s theory of focalization in comics, as well as Jan Baeten’s distinction between the suturing and individualizing function of the gutter, to argue that split panels can represent characters or narrators’ subjective experiences that inform the processing of the story by readers. They can, for instance, represent through visual means a character’s fragmented, troubled mind or hint at the likes and dislikes between characters across the gutter. This article thus demonstrates that the use of split panels is a rich visual strategy whose complex narrative function derives from the suturing or individualizing role of the gutter. Weaving together panels with gutters that at once distinguish and highlight elements of a visually coherent image, split panels allow for a meaningful experimentation with panel size, shape and position that often enhances the mental workings of the focalizing agent.