Narrative, Time, and Space

Abstract

Abstract This chapter addresses the ways in which the arrangement of media characteristic of comics exerts strong pressures toward narrativity: storytelling is perhaps the most natural organizing principle for a comic. The main media that comics use for storytelling produce a verbal dimension and a pictorial dimension. It is shown how each of these guides the reader’s perception and understanding of narratives. Comics employ a range of complex techniques in order to portray temporal and spatial relations within the diegetic world. During explanation of these techniques, it is shown how narrative is constructed within individual panels, in the gutter between panels, and through the layout of panels on the page. Finally, the impacts of serial publication on narrative structure in comics is investigated.