Comic Book Glossary: Transitions, Part 2

Welcome to a new installment of Comic Book Glossary! One of the aims of the Comics Cube! has always been to help out the newer readers who may be interested in, but aren't all that knowledgeable in comics, and one thing everyone needs to know if they're interested are the terms. Click here for the index!

Last week, we talked about the three most often-used transition types in comics. Now, we'll look at the other three transition types that aren't so widely used.

The moment-to-moment transition is like action-to-action, except that it comprises more moments and shows the action slower. So, for example, where an action-to-action transition may show a guy about to throw a punch in one panel and actually throwing the punch the next, the moment-to-moment transition would show each stage of the punch being thrown. Here's an example from Alex Toth's rare Batman work. From a certain perspective, this may look like action-to-action, but consider that most artists would probably omit the third panel, and it becomes moment-to-moment.

The aspect-to-aspect transition is one where a bunch of panels take place in one given moment. In this one-pager by Art Spiegelman ("Don't Get Around Much Anymore"), he shows a person's apartment and the various things in it. Each panel takes place in the same moment as the one before, and with this technique, he shows us the entire apartment unit. (On a side note, take note of the fact that each caption refers to the previous panel, which causes some disorientation.)

These two transition types are seen rarely in American and European comics, but very often in Japanese comics. A part of the reason is that manga is just typically produced in larger products than American and European comics, but another reason is just cultural. Western culture is very goal-oriented, while Japanese culture very much emphasizes the journey over the destination. Here's an example from Osamu Tezuka's SWALLOWING THE EARTH, which could be either moment-to-moment or aspect-to-aspect, dependingon whether or not time is passing within these panels.

The final transition type is the one least-used, pretty much anywhere and by anyone. This is the non-sequitur, where the panels in sequence don't have any sort of logical connection. This is used mainly usually in experimental comics, and quite honestly, the only comic I can think of that actually uses it to service a longer narrative is the adaptation of PAUL AUSTER'S CITY OF GLASS, by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli. In this sequence, Peter Stillman is narrating the backstory of the book. Stillman's not exactly all right in the head, and Karasik (who did layouts) and Mazzucchelli (who actually drew it) expressed this by attributing his speech to various non-sequitur materials.

I'd be hard-pressed to think what else the non-sequitur could be used for.

These definitions are, once again, from Scott McCloud's UNDERSTANDING COMICS!

Comic Book Glossary: Transitions, Part 1

Welcome to a new installment of Comic Book Glossary! One of the aims of the Comics Cube! has always been to help out the newer readers who may be interested in, but aren't all that knowledgeable in comics, and one thing everyone needs to know if they're interested are the terms. Click here for the index!

Last time, we discussed a gutter, and how the reader interaction with comics comes from it. Today, we'll discuss some of the transitions that take place in those gutters. Scott McCloud defined six main transition types in UNDERSTANDING COMICS (essential reading for those who want to know more about the technical aspects of the medium), and we'll look at three here.

The most often-used transition type by any storyteller is the action-to-action transition. This is pretty self-explanatory. It's when you show one character doing something in the course of two panels. This is essential for anyone who wants to tell a story properly. Case in point: Wonder Woman flips Superman, drawn by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. (Read my analysis of the execution of this scene here.)

The next most used transition type is subject-to-subject. This is when you keep things in the same scene, but the subject of the panel changes. Obviously, this is important to keep the scene interesting (especially, I'd argue, when people are talking).  Here's a sequence from THE ESCAPISTS, written by Brian K. Vaughan and drawn by Steve Rolston.

And the next most-used type is the obvious scene-to-scene. Unless your story all occurs in one place and no one moves (it's happened), the scene has to change. Here, you've got Steve Ditko jumping around the Marvel Universe for an opinion on Spider-Man (note the lack of borders, although the gutters are implied, to show a montage effect).

Comics can and have been told using just these three transition types. But what if you want to achieve another effect? Say, a larger sense of place, more buildup? Well, next time, we'll look at the three scene transitions that are used significantly less!

Thanks to Scott McCloud and UNDERSTANDING COMICS for his definitions!

Comic Book Glossary: Gutter

Welcome to a new installment of Comic Book Glossary! One of the aims of the Comics Cube! has always been to help out the newer readers who may be interested in, but aren't all that knowledgeable in comics, and one thing everyone needs to know if they're interested are the terms. Click here for the index!

Last time, we discussed what a panel is. All right, you know that space in between two panels? That's called a gutter, because, well, it looks like a gutter.

From NEW TEEN TITANS #38, by Marv Wolfman, George Perez, and Romeo Tanghal

There's the easy part. The more complicated part is what I'm going to say next, and that's the fact that gutters are the foundation of comics.

See, one drawing, that's a drawing. An editorial cartoon? That's a cartoon. FAMILY CIRCUS? That's also a cartoon. Those aren't comics - at least not the way that "comics" are defined, which is a sequential combination of words and pictures, or, as Scott McCloud put it in UNDERSTANDING COMICS, "juxtaposed pictoral and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer."

The word "sequential" is key here, and it means that one picture has to follow another and tell the story. Okay, so Roy Lichtenstein's stuff, even though they were copied from comics? They're not comics.

Well, except for this one. See, this one involves a gutter.

Granted, Lichtenstein didn't seem to understand that for a foot to press down on the pedal to open the garbage can, you actually have to, you know, press down on the pedal. But hey, hacks will be hacks.

Okay, so, anything that delineates the separation of one moment from the other is a gutter, whether you're as straightforward as Ty Templeton:

Or as fancy as this scene by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez (the purpose of this scene being to be disorienting anyway):

Essentially, just because you can't see the gutters doesn't mean there aren't any there - they're just tiny and you can't see them, but if you can delineate one moment from the other, they're there.

Gutters can also be used to split a panel with just one background, to imply the passage of time between both panels, as demonstrated here by Craig Thompson and GOOD-BYE CHUNKY RICE:

Okay, now, some comics scholars believe that the power of comics is all contained within the gutter, as it's what makes comics interactive. Comics are a big "fill in the blanks" medium, where the gutters are the blanks. For example, take this sequence from TOM STRONG #13, by Alan Moore and Pete Poplaski:

See, it's up to you to decide how hard Tom hit Paul, just how far Paul fell and how on fire he is. It's this kind of interaction between the story and the reader that sets comics apart - after all, even novels don't force you to interact in the same way. (Not that I'm saying one is better than the other.)

Obviously though, some gutters offer less interpretation than others. It all depends on the type of panel-to-panel transition, and we'll look at some of those next time!

Comic Book Glossary: Panel

Welcome to the first installment of Comic Book Glossary! One of the aims of the Comics Cube! has always been to help out the newer readers who may be interested in, but aren't all that knowledgeable in comics. Click here for the index!

We'll start out with the basics. See the boxes that contain the pictures? Those are called panels.

CALVIN AND HOBBES by Bill Watterson

Panels are, as Art Spiegelman calls them, the Ur-language of comics, the basic building blocks of the medium. They control the action. While "panels" are typically thought of as boxes, a panel can actually take on any shape, such as a television screen, seen here from Frank Miller's BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS:

To index cards, seen here in Will Eisner's THE SPIRIT.

Whatever panel you choose, just make sure it suits that particular moment in your story! For example, here's Neal Adams, tilting the panels diagonally so it gives an increased length for the falling Beast:

And changing the panel size alone can change the amount of tension in any given scene, as proven here by Steve Ditko in one of the greatest and most important Spider-Man moments of all time:

You can view some more effects of different panel shapes in some installments of Comics Techniques and Tricks!