Call Me What You Want's List: Drawing (Comics)

Visual
Syntactic Structures
• Spring 2003

Straightforwardly, communication made by a sequence
of images might be viewed in terms of linear "panel transitions."
However, while intuitive, a linear approach ultimately has many
problems with it.

Part
1 addresses
the problems found in a panel transition model (22 pages,
452K)

Part 2 proposes
an alternative method of analysis in the form of hierarchic
rules, and can be found in my book, Early
Writings on Visual Language

For concision's sake, I found this image by Jack Kirby (Strange Tales #114) (above right) that contains three of the most common uses of text in one single panel (you don't see that much): text as speech, text as interior monologue, text as narration.

Text placed within the panel like this has a certain immediacy to it as a part of the visual image, existing within the same space as the characters/objects/settings.

7. Text as Label

When manual expression uses systematized signs with sequential structures—a grammar—it becomes a "sign language," found most often in deaf communities, such as those that use American Sign Language. Likewise, communication with individual drawings occurs frequently, but when put into a grammatical sequence those drawings take on the qualities of a visual language—as found in the social objects of our culture's "comics." Despite the shift towards the interactive poverty of our print culture, it has not restricted multimodality. In print, comics feature both written and visual language, both of which can take on fully grammatical forms—evidenced in their structured sequences.

The sequential aspect to language could in fact play a role in the inability to recognize older artifacts of visual language as well. Because VL is by nature visual, any temporally made sequential production of its form will be preserved statically. Thus, if a person were to "visually converse" in real-time (as we do in spoken language) but drawing only in one physical area, those images would lose their sequential characteristics. The temporal aspect of that succession would be preserved merely as a static representation: only the aftermath of that sequence would be seen. Furthermore, the accompaniment of any spoken words or gesture might also be lost because they are not physically fossilized, negating any semblance of a multimodal act.

Historical findings of graphic representation such as cave paintings, drawings by native cultures, and other such visual expressions could be instances of visual language use, though overlooked because our analysis of them sees only the finality of their static preservation (not to mention our own inability to decode their visual grammar). Our perception of them is lacking in both temporal sequence and understanding of them as potentially multimodal communicative acts. Forms such as these might very well be examples of visual languages, though unrecognizable because of our limited categorization of them. Granted, this does not prove that such fully developed structures existed, though pictures that we consider as static works of "art" may have been part of a multimodal interactive process, accompanied by speech and or gestures.

By comparison, this highlights the features of our own modern VL's structure, which mimics the spatial juxtaposition employed in written language to circumvent such real-time interactivity. By having a sequence of panels, VL in comics takes on the spatial characteristics of writing, making it understandable even when preserved temporally. Interestingly, with digital tools, the preservation of a temporally unfurling sequence has become possible, such as in Scott McCloud's The Right Number.

Our cultural views on the medium could also have contributed to the lack of the interactivity in our visual language as well. The current perception grounds VL users to the roles of a print culture—a static state emerging from an "artist" and interpreted by a "reader," most often in a separate time and place than that of the creation. This is a far cry from an interactive exchange using visual material merely as a tool for expression rather than the expression itself. Culturally, such a position comes from the perception of the form as some sort of "Art" as opposed to "Language," again resulting in inhibiting the social interactivity of VL.

Interactivity in visual creation has also been shown to aid learning as well.

However, a print culture alone does not limit widespread regularity. Take for example the generalized style that permeates most Japanese comics, with facial features like big eyes, pointy noses and slender chins. Originally, that style stemmed from the "God of Comics" Osamu Tezuka (who himself emulated Walt Disney). First, his single popular "voice" influenced the styles of several others. In time though, it spread to so many people that it no longer could be identifiable as the way a small group of individuals drew, but fossilized as a "manga style" permeating a culture. At this point, new learners (such as the American children now reading manga) become more interested in learning the generalized system, regardless of the individual authors associated to it.

In contrast, American comics authors by and large have styles that slightly resemble those of other authors, but not to the degree of allowing for a complete generalized style. Widespread regularity would have difficulty emerging in a culture emphasizing originality of style. For instance, recall the many Jim Lee clone artists from the early and mid-1990s. These people started out like those who originally imitated Tezuka—they all shared common styles derived from an individual influence. However, unlike the Japanese example, most Jim Lee clones that have survived continued to develop their own individual styles, using his as a foundation for broader personal development. As a result, they might be systematic in their own work, but have only with tenuous relations to the rest of the language group. Thus, though the print culture might play a role in the exposure that individual "voices" have on the language users, it alone does not determine how the learners of the visual language might develop.

At the same time, the print culture could also have contributed to development of a more widespread visual language. The advantage of print is its potential to reach a large quantity of people not in the same time and space as the producer. Though it may have had constraining effects on the actual structure of the VL, mass distribution has offered many people the exposure necessary for the language as a whole to flourish. Learners may need to contribute more to the language's structure during their development than in a real-time exchange, but they are still provided with stimuli that they can use to develop their own fluency.

Linguist David Wilkins has documented that the Central Australian community of the Arrernte (pronounced "Ar-un-da") create narratives by drawing in the sand, in what could be interpreted as a visual language. These narratives are sequential expressions with highly developed features. Notably, in comparison to our own culture the Arrernte have no writing system, but call their VL "writing" when asked. Their VL seems to have developed without the influence of writing, which perhaps shows in its structure—it does not feature spatially juxtaposed images like in comics. Rather, it is drawn temporally in one location with structurally simple icons. More interestingly though, these narratives are made in real-time exchanges, drawn into the culturally accessible media of sand.

Part of what makes the Arrernte system so effective is that their landscape provides them with the resource for expression—the sand allows for easy real-time interactivity, without the need for extraneous tools (such as pens or paper). Without that accessible sand, their VL would be forced to take on different structural features to adapt to a different ecological environment or might not have even developed as language at all.

Years later as an Editor at Marvel, Wood's former assistant, Larry Hama, needed a tool to give direction to his would-be artists. He had two copies of the three sheets. With the help of another ex-assistant of Wally Wood's (whom he recalls may have been Paul Kirchner), Hama reassembled the "Tri-Force" of Wally Wood sheets. On the back of a Marvel art Bristol board, Hama wrote the now-famous caption "Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work", and had Robbie Carosella and Elliot Brown stat down the sheets. He ran off 50 copies from the board, and handed them out to potential pencilers. Pretty soon, other editors were sending pencilers and even some old pros down the hall to get copies from him. Eventually, he had more master copies statted and gave them to other editors so they could make their own copies to pass out. The original paste-up, with Hama's original hand-lettering, was eventually tucked into an envelope and put in the back of a flatfile, where it stayed for more than a decade. Second, third, fourth, tenth and twentieth generation copies continue to be made and handed down. The artwork pictured here is the original pasteup, as well as the three 8x10 copies that were statted down to make the board. Some of the panels, which were lost through use, were restated to the original board over the years.

It is now my pleasure to offer these relatively high-resolution versions of "Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work" in "Unlimited Edition," scanned in from the original paste-up. The widescreen versions include the whole of the paste board, including a serendipitously open area on the left hand side of the image that makes them practical to use as desktops for your computer, despite the otherwise busy background of the rest of the piece. My scanner is not large enough to scan the entire paste board at once, so I have tried to make a reasonable effort to stitch together four separate scans, although I did not go to any great length to remove all trace of seams.

There is also a 4:3 black-and-white version, tweaked to provide a 1600 by 1200 pixel duotone that emulates the previous versions available on the internet, albeit with greater fidelity.

While I did not leave any watermark or URL on the specific image files, I would ask that you refrain from using the images for any commercial purposes without my permission. Otherwise, please disseminate as freely as you like. Part of the reason I bought the piece was to ensure that it remained available to any artists who might find it inspiring or useful.

Larry Hama, who pasted together the piece and did the lettering, was kind enough to respond to an email I had sent him after purchasing the piece. Note especially his suggestion that Wood created this piece not for others, but as a reminder to himself to not become bogged down in unproductive eddies. Hama's correspondence follows:

I worked for Wally Wood as his assistant in the early '70s, mostly on the Sally Forth and Cannon strips he did for the Overseas Weekly. I lettered the strips, ruled borders, swipe-o-graphed reference, penciled backgrounds and did all the other regular stuff as well as alternating with Woody on scripting Cannon and Sally Forth.

The "22 Panels" never existed as a collected single piece during Woody's lifetime. Another ex-Wood assistant, Paul Kirchner had saved three Xeroxed sheets of the panels that would comprise the compilation. I don't believe that Woody put the examples together as a teaching aid for his assistants, but rather as a reminder to himself. He was always trying to kick himself to put less labor into the work! He had a framed motto on the wall, "Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up." He hung the sheets with the panels on the wall of his studio to constantly remind himself to stop what he called "noodling."

When I was starting out as an editor at Marvel, I found myself in the position of having to coach fledgling artists on the basics of visual storytelling, and it occurred to me that the reminder sheets would help in that regard, but three eight-by-ten pieces of paper were a bit unwieldy, so I had Robby Carosella, the Marvel photostat guy at the time, make me re-sized copies of all the panels so I could fit them all on one sheet. I over-compensated for the half-inch on the height (letter paper is actually 8 1/2 by 11) so the main body of images once pasted up came a little short. I compensated for that by hand lettering the title.

Images:

• Original Scan, 2560 x 1600 pixels

• Original Scan, 1920 x 1200 pixels

• Original Scan, 1680 x 1050 pixels

• Original Scan, 1440 x 900 pixels

• Original Scan, 1280 x 800 pixels

• 4:3 Black and White "Clean" Scan, 1600 x 1200 pixels