Comics: A Unique Thought-Space for Creative and Critical Inquiry

• In Event: Comics as Research: Toward an Imaginative Methodology

Abstract

Read sequentially like text yet viewed simultaneously like visual art, comics possess a unique capacity for uniting these two distinct modes of awareness in a single form. Their dual nature corresponds to Iain McGilchrist’s characterization of how the separate hemispheres of our brains attend to experience. McGilchrist dismisses the long-held view of neatly mapping left to the verbal and the right to the visual, proposing instead that the left side is narrowly focused, for breaking down and dealing with information in isolated segments, while the right is broadly alert and outwardly directed to address the whole in its context. Thus, like our brains themselves, this weaving together of two different means of perception makes comics a richly dense, multimodal thought-space primed for conducting serious inquiry. Through a dissertation written and drawn entirely in comics form, the author demonstrates comics’ potential for critical and creative practice, and for this presentation will engage attendees in a conversation on the theoretical side of process and share practical applications for visually germinating ideas in their own work.

Specific considerations: The warp and weft of sequential and simultaneous modes provide a powerful means to get at the forking, layered, and less-than-linear ways we construct our thoughts and reconstruct our memories (Sattler, 2010, p. 207). These dual modes facilitate the spatial interplay of visual and verbal such that the two both resonate and complement the other’s limitations. Images offer a capacity for expression where words fall short and together they elevate communication – information is conveyed in two channels at the same time. Unlike text, which can wrap onto another line or following page without altering meaning, the overall composition of a comics page contributes significantly to the meaning expressed by the individual drawings and text. Form and content are inseparable. Following Suwa & Tversky (1997), who suggest drawing is like “having a conversation with one’s self” (p. 385-6), working in comics and the dual-modes they join together, multiplies the dimensionality of this conversation. Far beyond illustrating what is expressed in text, the form allows for making ideas visual and the generation of new discoveries in the process.

Select references:

Groensteen, T. (2007). The system of comics. (B. Beaty & N. Nguyen, Trans.). Jackson, MS:
University Press of Mississippi.

McCloud, S. (1993). Understanding comics. Northampton, MA: Kitchen Sink Press, Inc.

McGilchrist, I. (2010). The master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the
modern world. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Sattler, P.R. (2010). Past imperfect: “Building Stories” and the art of memory. In Ball, D.M., &
Kuhlman, M.B. (Eds.), The comics of Chris Ware: Drawing is a way of thinking. (pp.
206-222). Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.

Suwa, M. and Tversky, B. (1997). What architects and students perceive in their sketches: A
protocol analysis. Design Studies, 18, 385-403.

Author

• Nick Sousanis, University of Calgary