How to Tell a Story without Words

Abstract

This paper focuses on the narrativity in wordless comics, that is, in comics that do not use words or use them only scarcely. The verbal-visual duality of comics is always semiotically challenging. The absence of words in wordless comics foregrounds their visual component which carries additional narrative or aesthetic meaning for the comic as a whole. First, several contemporary narratological models are considered. Most often narratives are considered as a description of a series of situations and events, independently of the medium in which they occur. Among scholars of comic studies, the author presents Eisner and McCloud’s concept of sequence as a focal point of plotting in comics, which has similar characteristics to narrating and storytelling in literature. The author also explores several models of medium-specific modifications such as comic focalization markers, monstration, and graphic enunciation with special attention paid to wordless comics. Finally, the author demonstrates the proposed analytical model through two examples: Mirko Ilić’s Horizontal and Vertical (1978) and Ileana Surducan’s The Quest (2014).