Comic books are truly a hybridization of pictorial storytelling and traditional fiction. That is, comics rely as much on their visual storytelling abilities as their narration and dialogue. In his book Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud defines comics as “juxtaposed pictorial and/or other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.” This tends to be a broad definition that can also include media like graphic novels and storyboards. While there is some controversy over the “definition” of a comic, I like to stick with the generalist stance that a visual/dialogue storybook made of panels constitutes a comic.

The comic book plays upon the language of words and pictures, forcing the reader to actively form meaning between the literary dialogue or narration and the visual cues. Hillary Chute, in her book Comics as Literature, defines comics “as a hybrid word-and-image form in which two narrative tracks, one verbal and one visual, register temporality spatially. . . . [A] reader of comics not only fills in the gaps between panels but also works with the often disjunctive back-and-forth of reading and looking for meaning.” This meaning is created through visual comic mechanics through the play of colour, text style, page style, panel size, shape, tempo, gutters…

The comic book is deceptively intricate, and when illustrated successfully, creates a deep and immersive world for the “reader” to find and create story meaning.