Comics and Narration

Chapter Two. New Insights into Sequentiality

21 Chapter two New Insights into Sequentiality Several authors who have tried to apply the concepts defined in System 1 to a particular comic or to a larger corpus have taken me to task for the fact that they could not find in it adequate tools to describe certain specific mechanisms that had caught their attention. This does not surprise me as System 1 was never intended to be a textbook offering a ready-to-use analytical grid. And neither did it offer a research methodology. Its goal was to interrogate the basic principles of the language of the medium, to identify its functions, to study its articulations , at the most general level possible. It is obvious from the example of Daniel Blancou’s strips discussed above that authors have potentially infinite resources for inventing new, and ever more original, varieties of this language. There could be no question of drawing up some kind of predetermined list. It is in the same spirit of broad generality that I pursue in the following pages my investigations into comics as a “sequential art,” in Will Eisner’s formulation, subsequently adopted by Scott McCloud. Having discussed the borderline cases of abstract and infranarrative comics, I now return to my central subject, which is, precisely, narration. 2.1 situation and story: questioning the narrative potential oF the single image Can an isolated image narrate? Can it, on its own, tell a story? In Système 1, 121–26, System 1, 103–7, the question was posed in terms of the ontological difference between the still image (such as a drawing or a photo) and the moving image (the film shot). Some film theorists, most notably André Gaudreault, have asserted that an intrinsic narrativity is associated with movement, because it implies a transformation of the elements represented. Obviously, the same cannot be said of the still image. Given that its narrative potential is not intrinsic, it can 22 new insights into sequentiality only arise, where it does arise, out of certain internal relationships between the objects, motifs, and characters represented. My own position was intended to be open and anti-dogmatic. It was summarized in a dual conclusion: “if we cannot dismiss the hypothesis that an isolated [still] image can [also] be intrinsically narrative, we can, conversely, be certain that the juxtaposition of two images [. . .] does not necessarily produce narration.”1 Rereading this today, I am aware that I introduced a certain confusion into the debate by surreptitiously changing its terms; by referring to page 125 (106), it can be seen that I slid from the question of narrative potential to that of meaning . No longer: can a single image, on its own, contain a story, but instead: how does the single image produce meaning—which, as I now acknowledge, is not quite the same thing. However, the issue of the narrative potential of the single image was taken up later, on page 130 (110). The analysis of a page taken from Alack Sinner enabled me to infer that certain images can easily be translated into utterances of a narrative type (“Alack lights a cigarette”) whereas others can only be read in narrative terms if they are considered within a wider plane of meaning-production: “the triad composed of the panel that is currently being read, the panel that precedes it, and the panel that immediately follows it,”2 or even a still more complete sequence. I realize that these observations, however useful they may be for understanding the meaning-producing mechanisms at work in comics, do not settle the issue. This is because “Alack lights a cigarette” is, undoubtedly, an “utterance of a narrative type” (it expresses an action), but it is not, in itself, a narrative. Something like “Alack lights a cigarette, takes a few short drags, and then stubs it out in the ashtray” would look more like one (and it is obvious that a single image would be incapable of translating the whole of this utterance into visual terms). I am taking the subject up again here not only in order to clarify or complete what I wrote back then, but also to respond to Harry Morgan. In Principes des litt ératures dessinées [Principles of Graphic Literatures],3 Morgan made a case for the inclusion within the field of literature of works limited to a single image: “a daily panel, a humorous cartoon, or a single engraving from a cycle by Hogarth.”4 And Morgan goes on to recognize the...