Friday, February 24, 2006




All of these things took place on the stated day (Wednesday), but not necessarily in that order. And the given sequence is not vital to the desired effect (save the coupling of the third and fourth panels and the placement of the last panel). So is this still a comic? The space=time equation doesn't exactly fit here (except in that each panel is a discrete temporal "event"). Even in the third and fourth panels the sequence is a completion of an idea rather than a temporal instance (finishing the sketchbook and starting another actually occurred several hours apart). Closure (or whatever you want to call it) still occurs, but not in the panel-to-panel way that it's usually described. You take in all the parts (including the title) before you reach the central theme of the strip.

This could be read as an illustrated list with the last panel serving as a summation. If I drew pictures for my grocery list would it then be a comic?

1 comment:

Neil Cohn said...

Great observation about the "list" type quality of this. I agree wholeheartedly – its one of those variant types of sequences, just like the wacky "non-syntax" or "syntax only" ones.

As for whether its a "comic"... uh... sure?

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