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| Literally pointing out the characters, simple and effective [King City] |
First up is a two-page spread that shows the three characters we are following and their locations. A single panorama that runs across the centre of the pages gives all their locations and shows where they are relative to one another. It's simple and diagrammatic, with chunky floating text simply pointing each of them out. While such a technique might seem crude or obvious, it actually displays an acute understanding of the language of comics. In comics a lot of effort often goes into simply decoding the images to get a basic understanding of what is going on, and filmic techniques, which may seem intuitive in a temporal medium often are overly convoluted when applied to comics. The use of text overlays is not out of place or immersion-breaking, since the comic is already loaded with this in the form of word balloons. Graham's willingness to not merely reserve text for word and thought balloons but to free it up for use within the world is demonstrative of an artist with command of the tools at his disposal rather than beholden to strict convention.
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| Crossword in your comic [King City] |
My next example is a simple crossword puzzle. It's a fun nod to the history of comics in newspaper and the space they typically occupy (next to crosswords and other word and number games) and also a simple gesture to involve the reader interactively. As Marshall McLuhan notes in Understanding Media, comics are a cool media, involving as they do a high degree of user participation. This comes about in the way that the drawings must be read (signs and symbols are decoded, a temporal structure is understood from an simultaneous layout, etc.), but comics, at least those in newspapers, also are participatory by nature of their humour: understanding a joke often requires more comprehension (and a certain amount of inventiveness) on the part of the reader than interpretation of a dry series of events. So the interactivity here is not out of place but actually slides in quite comfortably with the rest of the comic. It helps also that it is in the same tone, that of not taking itself too seriously. What I most like about this is how simple it is and at the same time how potentially radical it seems. Here it is used simply to essentially recap some "throw-away" knowledge from prior in the book, but it could be used to any number of ends. All the while its dual nature as a picture-text object means that it is able to slot comfortably alongside the rest of the comic.
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| Clipboard word balloons, just great [King City] |
Next is a gag that I love. It's one of those solutions that is so simple that I can hardly believe I haven't seen it elsewhere. Graham perfectly attaches a sterile corporate attitude to the "cleaners" by having them speak in "clipboard". While they are holding clipboards, a filmic solution of showing them looking at the clipboard, perhaps including a closeup of the clipboard itself, is completely unnecessary. By paying attention to the simple word balloon, Graham frees up the images to communicate other details or reinforce the gag. Also displayed is a perfect comfort with communicating things in the word balloons that are easily read but that could perhaps not be spoken.
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| A neat little infographic-style illustration that emulates the feeling of perusing through a box of items [King City] |
The next one is a variation on the first technique I picked: identifying world details with text. The items are called out similar to how they would be in a diagram, providing a more natural and easier reading than a filmic sequential display of each item.
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| Connect-the-dots in your comic [King City] |
The spirit of the crossword puzzle continues, this time with a connect-the-dots game
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| A full-on board game (page game?), complete with little cut-out characters, changes up the rhythm without feeling out of place [King City] |
The interaction continues to be expanded with a monopoly-style board game, with the characters as players.
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| An infographic approach continues in this poster-style two-page spread [King City] |
The last example, "Anna's Drawers", comes after the main story and is essentially an expanded version of the "text identification of world objects" technique used throughout the book. Here, however, there are plenty of great examples of putting images inside of the text balloons so as to reveal something that is ordinarily concealed. The layout is flat and diagrammatic, which makes for easy reading, yet the feeling of browsing through someone's drawers is stronger than would be achieved by a sequence of images of drawers being opened.
There's a real joy in seeing the comics medium used in this way. Too often comics are bent into the mould cast by other mediums, or industry conventions are mistaken as part of their language (episodic storytelling for example), so it's refreshing to see a comic be so unapologetic about embracing what comics do best.
References
Graham, B. (2012) King City. Berkeley: Image Comics, Inc.
McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media. London: Routledge & K. Paul.
