How To Analyze Graphic Narratives

Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics

In the early days of ENGL 655: Comics and Graphics Narrative, Professor Monica Chiu introduced the idea of graphic narrative analysis through the assignment of two chapters from Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, which was published in 1994. McCloud’s work explains a handful of the concepts and vocabulary terms that construct the literary realm of comics. The presence of comics within society and pop culture has evolved over the last several decades, notably due to film and television adaptations of comics from prominent publishing companies, such as Marvel Comics and DC Comics. While comics have sustained years of popularity, many people often simplify the process that goes into creating, reading, and understanding the meaning behind a comic, viewing them as glorified picture books. McCloud’s ideas, which focus heavily on analyzing visual elements (panel transitions and gutter spaces) encourages readers to "think outside the box" when reading a graphic narrative, rendering the graphic narratives more robust and intricate.

McCloud’s novel is an introductory resource for readers to understand both the historical and technical components of effectively reading comics. After reading McCloud’s work, readers will be able to use McCloud’s tools and ideas to closely analyze the components of a graphic narrative, perhaps taking away new meanings and messages from the works.

Panel Transitions

How readers interpret a comic or graphic is heavily influenced by the illustrator's use of panel transitions. As a story progresses from one panel or set of panels to the next, the style of transition will fall into one out of six classifications of transitions, which McCloud highlights in chapter 3 of Understanding Comics. Comic transitions aid the reader with the ability to use "closure", or the comprehension of literary and graphic elements that are not visibly present, to fully grasp all elements of the story, regardless of their presence on the page.

Below, we have listed descriptions of all six transition classifications, as well as transition examples that McCloud uses in his novel.

Moment-to-Moment

Screenshot 2023-12-07 at 10.05.31 AM.png

Moment-to-moment transitions require very little closure for the reader to comprehend, as the panels depict seemingly minuscule elements to show a full range of movement and time. McCloud displays three different panels depicting this transition. In the first panel, a moment-to-moment transition is used to display emotion. A lady is depicted with her eyes open and a solemn face. In the second panel, the lady's eyes are closed, and her mouth, exhibited with a line, is turned up into a smile. In this two-panel sequence, McCloud displays the transition of emotions and movements that the lady displays.

Action-to-Action

Action-to-Action transitions occur when one panel's cause leads to the next panel's effect. These panels typically focus on one subject and show how one action progresses through the panels. In McCloud's two-panel spread, the action of “swinging a bat” is illustrated. The first panel draws a ball that is in mid-air, approaching a baseball player who is in a batting position with the bat raised over his shoulder. In the next panel, that action is seen by the player crossing the bat over his body with motion lines, indicating speed, with the word “WHAM!” placed above him. The usage of the onomatopoeia text graphic indicates that the bat was making a similar sound, which aids in the panel’s delivery of motion.

Screenshot 2023-12-07 at 10.14.46 AM.png

Subject-to-Subject

Screenshot 2023-12-07 at 10.23.03 AM.png

Subject-to subject transitions occur when two different panels transition into a new topic. For instance, in a panel spread, McCloud depicts a scene where a suspenseful confrontation occurs between two individuals, ending in the dramatic cliffhanger “Now you die!”. In contrast, the following panel depicts the outline of a city landscape at night, with the words “EeYAA!” in bold, suggesting that a new transition is about to incur.

Scene-to-Scene

Scene-to-scene transitions involve deductive reasoning to read. Deductive reasoning is a mental process that uses clues and details to create a conclusion based on those findings. Scene-to-scene transitions often jump large periods of time, as well as distances. An example that McCloud uses illustrates a scene-to-scene transition with two panels. The first panel displays a man on the phone stating, “He can’t outrun us forever!”. The next panel depicts a house stating, “Ten years later…”. These two panels require deductive reasoning for the reader to understand that the person who was on the run did, in fact, outrun them for ten years.

Screenshot 2023-12-07 at 10.23.12 AM.png

Aspect-to-Aspect

Screenshot 2023-12-07 at 10.25.54 AM.png

Aspect-to-aspect transitions are used to capture a certain feeling, conception, and setting. This transition is used to portray certain aspects and does not particularly adhere to time. McCloud embodies the aspect-to-aspect transition in this two panel spread. The first frame illustrates a decorated Christmas tree with presents wrapped in bows below it. The second panel then shows Santa Clause outside in the snow. From these two panels, the reader can grasp that it’s Christmas night and Santa just delivered presents under the tree. These panels capture the holiday mood and excitement of Christmas, and the reader’s use of closure ties the themes and moments together.

Non-Sequitur

Non-sequitur transitions involve two seemingly unrelated scenes juxtaposed next to each other. In McCloud’s example, a set of two panels are displayed: one panel is an extraterrestrial spacecraft with "EP! BEEP!" written above the object, and the second panel is an illustrated recreation of "American Gothic." While none of the two panels directly relates, each of them allows the reader to make their own associations between them; this technique increases visual interest and allows individuals to draw their own connections between different pieces.

Screenshot 2023-12-07 at 10.26.05 AM.png