The Patterns of Comics

Abstract

Comics 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 350+ comics from Asia, Europe, and North America. 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 of comics, but shows how these regularities in the visual languages of comics connect to the organizing principles of all languages. Comics are a global phenomenon, yet we can recognize the visual styles originating from comics in Asia, Europe, or the United States. Yet, might these visual narratives differ in more subtle ways? Might comics actually be drawn in different visual languages that vary in their structures across cultures, just like the variation in spoken languages? To address these questions, The Patterns of Comics carries out a sustained analysis on data of more than 36,000 panels from over 350 comics from Asia, Europe, and the United States. This data-driven approach reveals the balance between cross-cultural diversity and universals in the visual morphology, layout, and storytelling of various visual languages used in comics. It shows how comics from the United States and Europe have changed across 80 years, compares the differences within types of 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 hidden complexity in the structures of comics, but reveals how these regularities in the visual languages of comics connect to the organizing principles of all languages. Just what are the patterns of comics?