Text in comics
Nov. 26th, 2007 12:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceruseeA brief summary and discussion from Neil Cohn of an article on eye-movements reading comic pages, for those interested in that sort of thing. One thing noted: participants in the study were more likely to skip past a panel if the next panel contained a block of text; modifying the page so that the text was farther away from the skipped panel resulted in less skipping. Cohn wonders what level of "comic fluency" the participants possessed, since it's not discussed in the article, and comments, "The desire to jump towards panels with dense text insinuates a focus more on text than on the visuals, which was characteristic of a naive comic reader's eye-movements compared with an expert reader in Nakazawa's eye-tracking study."
I find this all very interesting in relation to some observed differences between stateside readers of American comics vs. Japanese comics. For close to two years, I've been involved in running a (very small) graphic novel club for adolescent girls, all of whom read manga, none of whom had any experience reading American comics of any variety until the club. For them, the comics experience is manga, mostly popular shoujo and shounen series. My co-host and I are ginormous manga fans, and that's what we tend to stick to, but every now and then, we try to push their boundaries a little--we've done Dramacon, Megatokyo, Usagi Yojimbo, Runaways, and most recently, Bone. Dramacon was an unqualified success. In our discussion of the book, my co-host and I expounded at length on the similarities and differences between Dramacon and Japanese-origin comics, and we found that the likenesses of Dramacon to conventional shoujo style helped them enormously in accepting the departures. The biggest successes otherwise were Megatokyo and Usagi Yojimbo, which are fairly significant departures from shoujo & shounen manga in terms of form and storytelling style, but had appealingly familiar subject matter. Runaways was liked for the story (it's one of those rare Marvel comics actually intended for younger, newer readers, which is why we tried it), but all the girls found it immensely confusing in every respect, from the artwork, to the superhero conventions (even though Runaways plays down those conventions quite a bit), to the overall storytelling style. Bone, much to my surprise, was mostly panned. They didn't dislike it by any means, but they found it so uninteresting that we couldn't really keep them on topic.
(Bone is the most popular graphic novel series sold to kids in my store, after the general category of manga, and I had assumed there would be some overlap between the readers of Bone and the readers of manga--as of yet, though, I have no evidence that there actually is any overlap; heaven knows, no one ever buys them together. Right after Bone in popularity is Tintin, by the way. I have never, ever, even once seen a superhero trade sold to anybody younger than me in that store, and most superhero trade buyers have ten to thirty years on me.)
Anyway, I have for quite some time had a theory that part of the growing popularity of manga in the US, and its appeal to new readers who not only have never read an American comic in their life, but maybe never will, is the fact that manga is usually less text-dense than American comics. I'm speaking obscenely broadly right now, and I myself could easily cite a few dozen contradictory examples from memory--but I have read a lot of comics over the years, and really, stuff from my side of the Pacific has expodentially more text.
The more cynical assumption I might make is that manga is more appealing to unskilled or lazy readers, folks who like pictures but skip the words. It's probably true for some people, although I can't really bring myself to dismiss a twelve-year-old girl who easily reads manga but struggles with text captions; if she can read manga well, it is making reading easier and more pleasant for her, and she will get better at it.
A less cynical take on the appeal of more lightly-worded comics is that with less text, the marriage of words and pictures is a more natural and harmonious thing, easier to read, easier to understand, and more emotionally affecting. I grew up reading American comics--old stuff, too, with densely lettered narrative captions, giant white thought bubbles and speech balloons always carefully tucked away in corners, where they wouldn't cover up the art--and I'm pretty well versed in the language. Learning to read manga took quite a bit of effort. The stylistic and thematic differences are many and significant, and I started out with contempt for things I've since learned to love, like the cleanness of black and white art, or the fluidity of page layouts. Once I learned to make the adjustment, and starting reading manga with an easier eye, I began to find that I preferred it. I can still read and parse superhero comics, but I often find them jarring and awkward in ways I hadn't noticed before--they're too wordy, or trying to ape the experience of watching television (and yes, there is a difference between feeling like a TV show and being cinematic); the text and the pictures are often in competition with each other for attention, and not working together to create meaning. It's not always that way, but it is too often.
I was a relatively sophisticated, adult comics reader when I picked up manga, and I still found it a very difficult leap from one set of artistic traditions to the other. I really only made it because I have a large enthusiasm for comics art (and a mad, life-long, instinctive draw to Japanese stuff. Whence it comes, I will never know). It'd be a very dedicated reader of comics indeed to do it the other way around--to go from the lively art and broad subject matter of manga to the arcane world of superhero comics. Superhero comics are an acquired taste--who's going to acquire them now? Not the girls in my club. We've found out by trying that it's not that easy to go from manga to non-superhero American comics; almost impossible--and really, rather pointless--to try to go from manga to superheroes.
There's a lot that's wrong with the American comics industry, and it's mostly to do with superhero comics. Better informed and more intelligent people than I have expounded on its flaws at length; I am left with the morbid belief that it will eventually collapse in on itself because it can't draw in new readers. I don't know what will happen to American non-superhero comics if cape comics fold, because I don't know to what extent they are either hindered or supported by capes. Indy comics like Dramacon that appropriate styles and themes from manga evidently can draw in new readers from the existing manga audience, if they want to; the dispirited reaction of my club to Runaways suggests that it takes more than a low price-point and a tankoubon-sized digest to reach the manga audience.
I find this all very interesting in relation to some observed differences between stateside readers of American comics vs. Japanese comics. For close to two years, I've been involved in running a (very small) graphic novel club for adolescent girls, all of whom read manga, none of whom had any experience reading American comics of any variety until the club. For them, the comics experience is manga, mostly popular shoujo and shounen series. My co-host and I are ginormous manga fans, and that's what we tend to stick to, but every now and then, we try to push their boundaries a little--we've done Dramacon, Megatokyo, Usagi Yojimbo, Runaways, and most recently, Bone. Dramacon was an unqualified success. In our discussion of the book, my co-host and I expounded at length on the similarities and differences between Dramacon and Japanese-origin comics, and we found that the likenesses of Dramacon to conventional shoujo style helped them enormously in accepting the departures. The biggest successes otherwise were Megatokyo and Usagi Yojimbo, which are fairly significant departures from shoujo & shounen manga in terms of form and storytelling style, but had appealingly familiar subject matter. Runaways was liked for the story (it's one of those rare Marvel comics actually intended for younger, newer readers, which is why we tried it), but all the girls found it immensely confusing in every respect, from the artwork, to the superhero conventions (even though Runaways plays down those conventions quite a bit), to the overall storytelling style. Bone, much to my surprise, was mostly panned. They didn't dislike it by any means, but they found it so uninteresting that we couldn't really keep them on topic.
(Bone is the most popular graphic novel series sold to kids in my store, after the general category of manga, and I had assumed there would be some overlap between the readers of Bone and the readers of manga--as of yet, though, I have no evidence that there actually is any overlap; heaven knows, no one ever buys them together. Right after Bone in popularity is Tintin, by the way. I have never, ever, even once seen a superhero trade sold to anybody younger than me in that store, and most superhero trade buyers have ten to thirty years on me.)
Anyway, I have for quite some time had a theory that part of the growing popularity of manga in the US, and its appeal to new readers who not only have never read an American comic in their life, but maybe never will, is the fact that manga is usually less text-dense than American comics. I'm speaking obscenely broadly right now, and I myself could easily cite a few dozen contradictory examples from memory--but I have read a lot of comics over the years, and really, stuff from my side of the Pacific has expodentially more text.
The more cynical assumption I might make is that manga is more appealing to unskilled or lazy readers, folks who like pictures but skip the words. It's probably true for some people, although I can't really bring myself to dismiss a twelve-year-old girl who easily reads manga but struggles with text captions; if she can read manga well, it is making reading easier and more pleasant for her, and she will get better at it.
A less cynical take on the appeal of more lightly-worded comics is that with less text, the marriage of words and pictures is a more natural and harmonious thing, easier to read, easier to understand, and more emotionally affecting. I grew up reading American comics--old stuff, too, with densely lettered narrative captions, giant white thought bubbles and speech balloons always carefully tucked away in corners, where they wouldn't cover up the art--and I'm pretty well versed in the language. Learning to read manga took quite a bit of effort. The stylistic and thematic differences are many and significant, and I started out with contempt for things I've since learned to love, like the cleanness of black and white art, or the fluidity of page layouts. Once I learned to make the adjustment, and starting reading manga with an easier eye, I began to find that I preferred it. I can still read and parse superhero comics, but I often find them jarring and awkward in ways I hadn't noticed before--they're too wordy, or trying to ape the experience of watching television (and yes, there is a difference between feeling like a TV show and being cinematic); the text and the pictures are often in competition with each other for attention, and not working together to create meaning. It's not always that way, but it is too often.
I was a relatively sophisticated, adult comics reader when I picked up manga, and I still found it a very difficult leap from one set of artistic traditions to the other. I really only made it because I have a large enthusiasm for comics art (and a mad, life-long, instinctive draw to Japanese stuff. Whence it comes, I will never know). It'd be a very dedicated reader of comics indeed to do it the other way around--to go from the lively art and broad subject matter of manga to the arcane world of superhero comics. Superhero comics are an acquired taste--who's going to acquire them now? Not the girls in my club. We've found out by trying that it's not that easy to go from manga to non-superhero American comics; almost impossible--and really, rather pointless--to try to go from manga to superheroes.
There's a lot that's wrong with the American comics industry, and it's mostly to do with superhero comics. Better informed and more intelligent people than I have expounded on its flaws at length; I am left with the morbid belief that it will eventually collapse in on itself because it can't draw in new readers. I don't know what will happen to American non-superhero comics if cape comics fold, because I don't know to what extent they are either hindered or supported by capes. Indy comics like Dramacon that appropriate styles and themes from manga evidently can draw in new readers from the existing manga audience, if they want to; the dispirited reaction of my club to Runaways suggests that it takes more than a low price-point and a tankoubon-sized digest to reach the manga audience.
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no subject
on 2007-11-26 09:20 pm (UTC)The articles on eye movement were fascinating; I've always wondered about that, if certain panel juxtapositions were easier to read than others, and how much mere microseconds of attention can make difference in the way we read comics.
As to the manga and American comics thing-- I grew up on manga and only recently began reading American comics. I read superhero comics
because I have no taste, but they have definitely been more difficult to read and, when given the choice between a trashy manga and a trashy American superhero comic, I will always go for the former. Now, I started reading American comics in high school and I would like to say that I don't believe myself to be an "unskilled reader" in my preference for manga. I think that manga and its low-density text is more appealing as a format to me because it's inevitably a bit more realistic timewise-- while American comics might be closer to a picture book, manga is closer to cinema. The pictures and the words move more in close to real-time, whereas with big, thick speech bubbles, the reader is presented with a static image and little progression while information is being conveyed-- sort of the difference between "show" and "tell." Because I'm more used to manga, I prefer the cinematic approach that I'm used to. I don't think it's a matter of impatience-- I mean, I CAN read prose, if I really want to, thank you very much-- but I personally feel that if I'm going to read comics, they should BE comics, a medium that should intrinsically rely on images just as much as if not more than text, and text should never dominate.The other reason that manga might be more "readable" to those who are used to it isn't even related to text; manga (especially shoujo manga) has more fluid and natural panel and image movement, allowing a very smooth, often interrupted visual flow, whereas American comics and shounen manga might be more choppy, focusing mostly on presenting lots of information rather than making that information easily accessible. Some American comic storyboarders don't even pay heed to speech bubble placement-- they draw the art first and Photoshop bubbles in later to accomodate space rather than to enhance flow, so it's naturally more difficult to follow. Also, manga tends to have greater negative space while American comic images might be more cluttered, so it's easier to find the focus in manga, which results in a faster read.
I began to read American comics because I liked the stories; I am probably in the minority, seeing as superhero comics aren't exactly the most compelling and original narratives in existence. It was very hard for me to come over the boundary, and even after trying to read American comics for 2 years, I find myself having to stop and backtrack and reread things, and I find it annoying to have to keep my eye still and read an entire speech bubble when the images aren't moving. To me, it sort of feels like reading PowerPoint slides at a slower pace because a presenter reading out loud off the slides talks much slower than I can read.
pt 1
on 2007-11-28 02:19 am (UTC)I'm inclined to say yes, but that's an answer borne out of personal experience and my sitting and nodding at
If certain panel juxtapositions are easier to read than others, there's probably some degree of cultural variance. I remember while I was a student in a film class, being absolutely thrilled to realize that saccadic patterns in the American version of The Ring were mirror-reversed from the original Japanese Ringu (left-to-right is natural for Americans; right-to-left is natural for Japanese, although I've been told there's some funky text tricks depending on whether the text is horizontal, vertical, romanji, or not romanji. Japanese seems to be fiendishly difficult).
Now, I started reading American comics in high school and I would like to say that I don't believe myself to be an "unskilled reader" in my preference for manga.
God forbid that I should give the impression in this post that I think manga is less inherently sophisticated than American comics, or that preferring manga marks one as immature or naive as a reader. I have had experience with both, and though I deeply love American comics (especially capes), and all their weird idiosyncrasies, I prefer manga; I find manga to be, on the whole, a more fulfilling comics experience than western comics. I've seen a lot more manga achieve that sublime harmony between word and image that sets comics apart from novels and cinema than I've ever seen in western comics; if I step very carefully around text-heavy western comics, it's because I have a lurking suspicion that an illustrated text story is in some kind of class of its own, and I'm reluctant to dismiss it as an artistic aim.
The word easy is a dangerous one, and I've used it to my own peril: easy is wonderful if you're in advertising, deadly if you're a critic.
I'm thrilled that the audience for manga has many people who have never read, and may never read American comics. I'm glad it can reach a new audience, a healthy audience that isn't dependant on the precarious American comics industry; when I speculate about the reasons why it can reach that audience, it's fueled by curiousity about what it is in comics that reaches readers, and not by a desire to pass judgement on those readers.
Some American comic storyboarders don't even pay heed to speech bubble placement-- they draw the art first and Photoshop bubbles in later to accomodate space rather than to enhance flow, so it's naturally more difficult to follow
True. I think this is greatly a product of the way so many American comics divide responsibilities between writers, pencilers, inkers, and letterers. Of course, many solo indy artists share the tendency to shove text off in a corner where it won't interfere with the art, but I tend to believe that's mostly an aesthetic legacy; it's something that American (and, for chrissakes, all the other western comics artists that I'm lumping together in my own ignorance) artists and readers can and maybe should learn to overcome.
pt 2
on 2007-11-28 02:19 am (UTC)You fascinate me, as you are exactly the opposite of me, and what I have never elsewhere encountered: someone who went from manga to American comics, instead of the other way around. I can tell you that I had a similarly slow learning curve from comics to manga: my first encounter with manga was probably in 1997, and I would have considered myself an enthusiast no sooner than 2005 or so; it's taken a lot of manga, and a lot of really good and interesting manga, to win me over from what I read as a child. It's a radically different experience, isn't it? Yet, I can't dismiss that PowerPoint slide experience as an inferior one. I remember reading reprints of original Hal Foster Prince Valiant comic strips when I was a kid, and maybe it was just the practice with comic books that enabled this, but I was totally engaged by those Prince Valiants; as utterly enthralled as I would have been with any book, with no sense of distance, no processing time. Those, somehow, managed some real fusion of word and image, despite the fact that text was always confined to narrative boxes, even the dialogue, and image always illustrative.
Re: pt 2
on 2008-12-02 05:28 pm (UTC)And I still get confounded by manga speech bubble sequence sometimes, even in my tenth year of reading it. (Doesn't stop me from loving manga, of course!)