Comics and Multimodal Storytelling

doi:10.1017/9781009255653.010

Chapter 6 - Comics and Multimodal Storytelling

from Part II - Readings

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2023

Blair Davis

Edited by

Maaheen Ahmed

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Maaheen Ahmed: Affiliation:
Universiteit Gent, Belgium

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Summary

Comics inherently encompass multiple modalities and are published across numerous platforms, whether in print or digital form. In its distinct combinations of words and images, the multimodal medium of comics has encompassed numerous formats throughout its long history – typically appearing in numerous forms simultaneously in any given era. Comics exist in single-panel and multi-panel strips within newspapers and magazines, in single-issue comic books and longer graphic novel formats and in new digital forms such as webcomics and motion comics. Comics have also been adapted to cinema and television, in both live-action and animated incarnations – often drawing on the original words and imagery of their source material in direct ways. This essay traces the history of comics as a multimodal experience from the 1800s through the twenty-first century; it also examines how other media have translated them onto various types of screens while still drawing on the specific formal qualities used by comics to tell stories. Regardless of the particular format through which readers engage with the medium, comics offer amalgamations of two separate modes of content which allow for unique meanings via the unification of words and images.

Keywords

animation comic book movies comic strips comics history motion comics remediation television transmedia storytelling

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Companion to Comics , pp. 125 - 142

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009255653.010 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2023

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