Comic Book Pages Research Articles

Now It’s My Time! Black Girls Finding Space and Place in Comic Books

This essay examines how Black girl narratives are finding and making space and place in the arena of comic books and television. With the rise in Black girl (super)hero protagonists on the comic book pages and adapted television shows, it is essential to explore the significance of their rising inclusion, visibility, and popularity and understand how they contribute to the discourse surrounding the next generation of heroes. Guided by an Afrofuturist, Black feminist, and intersectional framework, I discuss the progressive possibilities of popular media culture in depicting Black girlhood and adolescence. In Marvel Comics’ “RiRi Williams/Ironheart”, DC Comics’ “Naomi McDuffie”, and Boom! Studios’ “Eve”, these possibilities are evident. Blending aspects of adventure, fantasy, sci-fi, and STEM, each character offers fictional insight into the lived experiences of Black girl youth from historical, aesthetic, and expressive perspectives. Moreover, as talented and adventurous characters, their storylines, whether on the comic book pages or the television screen, reveal a necessary change to the landscape of popular media culture.

No laughing matter!? Analyzing the Page Layout of Instruction Comics

ABSTRACT The study reported in this paper analyzes the specific genre of ‘instruction comics’ with regard to typical patterns of comic book pages. As a sequential-pictorial genre with a narrative as well as instructive character, ‘instruction comics’ have recently and increasingly been used in education as a novel way to communicate, for instance, health-related information. The corpus for this study includes 37 single-page first-aid comics that all show how to help a person who is choking, i.e. how to perform what is generally known as the Heimlich manoeuvre. To understand how this procedure is presented visually and how this presentation is similar to the layout of typical pages of comic books and graphic novels, the corpus is annotated with a multi-level annotation scheme that has been developed to annotate and analyse the page layout of visual narratives. The annotation scheme includes formal descriptions to synergistically analyse the complexity and variety of various comic genres, with specifications for typical comic page grids and the use of framing, inset panels, or captions. The paper presents and critically discusses the results of the corpus annotation with regard to the specific multimodal design choices in the corpus of choking comics.

CNN-based segmentation of speech balloons and narrative text boxes from comic book page images

Most of the recent research works on comic document images have focused on the reading and distribution of comics digitally due to the evolution of technologies. In this work, the extraction of narrative text boxes and speech balloons, which contain the conversations among comic characters along with their feelings, is presented. Due to the huge variety of drawing styles, the shape of these speech balloons is complex, and extraction is difficult. We present a shape-aware dual-stream convolutional neural network for the segmentation of narrative text boxes and speech balloons of various shapes. In our dual-stream architecture, an added shape module processes edge information of the speech balloons and narrative texts with the main module. Later, the concatenation of these two modules produces more accurate segmentation of speech balloons and narrative text boxes. The proposed method achieves significant performance improvements in terms of both region accuracy (mIOU) and boundary accuracy (F-measure and Hausdorff distance) compared to other state-of-the-art methods on various publicly available comic datasets (namely eBDtheque, DCM and Manga 109 dataset subset) in different languages. In addition, we have developed a new dataset (BCBId) for comics in Bangla, the eighth most spoken language in the world, and propose a method for the development of ground-truth images in a semiautomatic way.

A economia criativa e a geração millennials no contexto da indústria cinematográfica das histórias em quadrinhos: um estudo empírico

his research aimed to learn about the comic books cinematic industry in aspects of the creative economy focused on social and cultural movements, as well as the perception of the millenials generation for being the generation that best accompanied this transition from comic book sheets to movie screens. The research is of exploratory and descriptive characteristics, based on bibliographic, documentary and field research. The field research instrument, applied to 50 (fifty) people from the millenials generation, was organized and structured to measure the profile of the participants, as well as to contextualize the conditioning paradigms of the Creative Economy variables and the millennials generation indicators. Finally, it concludes that this new culture of transforming comic book pages into cinematic adaptations is a niche market that will require a great demand from the entertainment industry in the coming decades, to continue making history in the cinema and achieving box office and public records

Hemingway in Comics by Robert K. Elder (review)

Reviewed by: Hemingway in Comics by Robert K. Elder Wayne Catan Robert K. Elder. Hemingway in Comics. Kent State UP, 2020. 274 p. Hemingway in Comics discusses Ernest Hemingway's worldwide reach through the medium. The writer from Oak Park, IL appeared in 120 comics in myriad languages. It turns out that "comic book creators and Hemingway share a natural kinship. The comic book page demands an economy of words, much like Hemingway's less-is-more 'iceberg theory,' only in graphic form" (1). Therefore, artists, like Hemingway, urge readers to become part of the story. Robert Elder's exhaustive research shows Hemingway combatting fascists with Wolverine, "leading a revolution in Purgatory in The Life After" (X), starring with Mickey Mouse, and at the center of a Peanuts strip. "In comics, the Nobel Prize winner is often treated with equal parts reverence, curiosity, and parody" (X). Although Hemingway read multiple newspapers daily, he did not write about or read the comics; he was doodler though, and he appeared as a character in his high school yearbook in 1917. The study begins with a chapter about the famous Hemingway photo in which he dons a Christian Dior turtleneck sweater. The artist is Yousuf Karsh, a preeminent portrait photographer, who also conducted sittings with Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, and authors Thomas Mann, Somerset Maugham, Pearl Buck, and Albert Camus. Elder believes it is an important photo: "For Superman, it's the giant S on his chest. For John Lennon, it's a New York City T-shirt. For Ernest Hemingway, it's a bulky turtleneck sweater" (1). This iconic photo was published in numerous publications including Atlantic Monthly. Additionally, the Karsh photo is featured on a 1989 US postal stamp. Elder's assertion about Hemingway donning the sweater bears fruit: in February of 2019 Jef Mallett's Frazz comic strip features a character in the sweater up to his eyeballs, stating "Check it out! It's an Ernest Hemingway sweater." In the next panel, the character states: "Kind of a bulky sweater for a writer considered minimalist … who lived in Cuba. Then Frazz, a janitor in an elementary school, states, "Who am I talking to?" (2). Hemingway's first appearance in a mainstream comic was in Captain Marvel Adventures (July 1950). Readers can barely see [End Page 226] Hemingway, featured on a panel, as Captain Marvel and President Harry Truman tour the Half-Century Fair of 1950, the same year that Charles Schulz's Peanuts premiered in seven newspapers. Hemingway makes only one appearance in Peanuts – August 28, 1984. In the strip, Lucy reads Snoopy a review: "Listen to this… It's a review of your latest novel. Your writing has been compared to Faulkner and Hemingway. Unfavorably!" This is an impressive feat. At its height, Peanuts was printed in 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries and in 21 languages. Like Hemingway, Schultz regards himself as a "precisionist in the selection of words. It is a subject on which he stands his ground. 'Nobody tells Hemingway [what words to use],' says Schulz" (27). Two rather funny spoofs appeared in 1955 and 1958. First, Hemingway is the subject of a caricature in "Mad's first issue as a magazine, after 23 years as a comic book. 'Pappa' Heminghaw—finds himself in the jaws of a lion" (8). Then, in a rather funny parody in Frantic, a Mad knockoff, Cuban-born creator Ric Estrada writes a fullpage story titled "The Old Man and the She," by Ernest Heminghay. It begins "He was an old man who lived alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four years now without taking a wife" (9). When readers compare this spoof to Hemingway's seminal and rhythmic first sentence of the Pulitzer winner—"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish" – they will respect Estrada's powers too. Elder's study also supports Hemingway's continued worldwide reach. Cartoonists and graphic artists from many countries are fascinated with Hemingway's stories and his persona, but artists in Italy, in particular, adore the author...

Comics at the surface: Michael DeForge’s Ant Colony

The comics artist and illustrator Michael DeForge published his first graphic novel, Ant Colony, in 2014. The sophisticated combination of verbal and visual storytelling in his work has earned him the admiration of readers and critics alike, and makes him one of the most compelling practitioners of the “literary comic.” This article applies surface reading theory to reading contemporary comics, also referred to as graphic narratives or novels, taking the work of DeForge as its case study. It analyzes Ant Colony as a work of narrative art, and also as a theory of narrative art that draws our attention to the process of surface reading: whether to the surfaces of bodies, the surfaces of language, or the surface of the comic book page. Running counter to a close reading practice that assumes that a deeper meaning is hidden in the text, DeForge’s work redirects the reader’s eye to the form of the text itself. This redirection posits an open acceptance, and scrutiny, of the surface: close reading through attention to form.

Memory for biopsychology material presented in comic book format

This study investigated the influence of format of presentation on memory for undergraduate level biopsychology material. Ninety participants read either seven comic book pages explaining the rudiments of sleep, the same material presented in text-only format or seven pages where the original images were replaced with random incongruous images. Participants were tested on the material using ten multiple-choice questions. Results showed significantly higher memory scores in the comic condition compared with both the text-only and the incongruous comic condition. Furthermore, the text-only version showed significantly higher memory scores than the incongruous comic condition. It was concluded, that while there were some limitations to the study, the findings provided preliminary evidence to support the general idea of using comic books to create instructional materials. Results also provided some support for dual coding theory as a theoretical basis for the use of comics in educational contexts.

The Video game debate: unravelling the physical, social, and psychological effects of digital games

The Video Game Debate: Unravelling the Physical, Social, and Psychological Effects of Digital Games Rachel Kowert and Thorsten Quandt, eds. New York, NY: Routledge, 2016. Acknowledgments, contributors, index. 196 pp. $39.95 paper. ISBN: 9781138831636During U.S. Senate hearings in 1954, legislators warned the public of the sadomasochism being taught to our children in colorful comic book pages by Wonder Woman, the dangers inherent in Superman, and the homoerotic perils posed by Batman. Thirty years later, Senate hearings focused on the hazards of Cyndi Lauper's She Bop and Madonna's Dress You Up. Politicians and lawmakers have now shifted their focus from paper comics and pop music to video games. In the past twenty years, dozens of laws have been passed, federal hearings have been held, presidents have expressed their fears, and cases have been presented before the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to protect our society from the digital menace. In many ways, The Video Game Debate: Unravelling the Physical, Social, and Psychological Effects of Digital Games presents a rebuttal to the rising moral panic surrounding video games. Editors Rachel Kowert and Thorsten Quandt have gathered a group of top scientists in order to create a book with ten chapters addressing a diverse selection of related video game topics. Written primarily for an academic audience, this book is packed with references, theory, research, and statistics.The Video Game Debate starts off strong with a discussion about the history of video games. This is no ordinary history lesson; instead, the author of this chapter presents a very compelling and original discussion about the evolution and intermixing of video games and other forms of media that have occurred over the last forty years. The remaining chapters maintain this level of insight and focus on issues that are often of concern to the public, such as gaming addiction, online game play, education, cognitive skills, physical health, and violence.It is worth not ing t hat none of these chapters sensationalizes the topic it addresses. In fact, all of the chapters hold that worries about video games are overstated (e.g., there is little evidence to suggest a link between video game use and body weight) or that such fears are simply wrong (e.g. playing World of Warcraft will probably not harm your interpersonal skills or real world friendships). Although such carefully written chapters are appreciated, the reader should be cautioned that The Video Game Debate does not offer much of a debate. …

Balloon extraction from complex comic books using edge detection and histogram scoring

Extracting balloons has been a challenge in digital comics, in particular for complex comic books. In fact, current algorithms are seemingly adequate for simple comics, but not for complex ones. This paper proposes an algorithm based on the Sobel operator plus a modified flood fill operator to identify and extract balloons in comic book pages. Unlike other approaches, our algorithm applies to any sort of comics, no matter they are simple or complex comics, without making any assumptions regarding the line continuity of the image, color depth of the image, orientation of the text, and language. Experimental results show that our algorithm significantly improves the rate of correctly detected balloons, and simultaneously decreases the number of false positives, when compared to other algorithms.

Don’t pay attention to what you see! Negative commands and attention bias

Abstract The paper presents research into the effects of the use of negations in directives (orders, suggestions, requests). Three experiments are described that tested the effects of instructions formulated in various ways: direct (pay attention to) and negated (don’t pay attention to) commands to focus the attention. Indicators of attention focusing that were used include: the correctness of answers to questions about a selection of comic book pages (Experiment 1); the time needed to name the colours of stimulus words and the level of recall of these words after completion of the colour naming task (Experiment 2 and 3). The results showed that a direct command influenced all indicators of attention focusing. However, a negated command increased the level of recall of details about the comic book pages, as well as the level of key word recall. Both the automatic process that generates the paradoxical effects of negated commands, as well as the controlled process of reasoning, may be responsible for the results of the memory task.

Navigating comics: an empirical and theoretical approach to strategies of reading comic page layouts.

Like the sequence of words in written language, comic book page layouts direct images into a deliberate reading sequence. Conventional wisdom would expect that comic panels follow the order of text: left-to-right and down – a “Z-path” – though several layouts can violate this order, such as Gestalt groupings of panels that deny a Z-path of reading. To examine how layouts pressure readers to choose pathways deviating from the Z-path, we presented participants with comic pages empty of content, and asked them to number the panels in the order they would read them. Participants frequently used strategies departing from both the traditional Z-path and Gestalt groupings. These preferences reveal a system of constraints that organizes panels into hierarchic constituents, guiding readers through comic page layouts.

A Critical Study of Comics

The paper describes a project for Liverpool John Moores University PGCE Art and Design students in which they carried out practical research into comics and graphic novels as part of their preparation for teaching. The students were encouraged to investigate the history of the genre, its formal properties as well as its potential as a vehicle for social realism. The practical task was to prepare a single comic book page design, in the course of which they explored a range of possibilities from imaginative children's stories to serious issues such as illness and abuse. They took the opportunity to investigate the potential of this sequential medium to construct narratives using devices such as sequence, repetition and multiple perspectives as well as the juxtapositions of image and text. The paper contains examples of students' work where the investigations yielded interesting and innovative results.