Misplaced Pages

#608391

98-406: Not to be confused with the technical aspects of comics creation, comics studies exists only with the creation of comics theory —which approaches comics critically as an art—and the writing of comics historiography (the study of the history of comics ). Comics theory has significant overlap with the philosophy of comics , i.e., the study of the ontology , epistemology and aesthetics of comics,

196-399: A multimodal text which combines image and written text, for example. Visual rhetoric has gained more notoriety as more recent scholarly work started exploring alternative media forms that include graphics, screen design, and other hybrid visual representations that does not privilege print culture and conventions. Also, visual rhetoric involves how writers arrange segments of a visual text on

294-480: A BA in Comics and Graphic Novels in 2014, as well as an MA in Comics from 2018. They have since appointed a team of renowned comics practitioners including Fionnuala Doran, Julian Lawrence , Con Chrisoulis , Nigel Kitching and Tara McInerney. The University of Lancaster started offering a PhD degree in comics studies in 2015. The same year French comics studies scholar Benoît Peeters (a student of Roland Barthes)

392-677: A Belgian-market comic supplement, Le Petit Vingtième ; this was successfully collected in a bound comic album and created a market for further such works. The same period in the United States had seen newspaper comic strips expand their subject matter beyond humour, with action-adventure and mystery strips launched. The collection of such material also began, with The Funnies , a reprint collection of newspaper strips, published in tabloid size in 1929. A market for such comic books soon followed. The first modern American-style comic book , Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics (also

490-511: A German newspaper. Busch refined the conventions of sequential art, and his work was a key influence within the form, Rudolph Dirks was inspired by the strip to create The Katzenjammer Kids in 1897. The first weekly comic to feature a regular character was Ally Sloper's Half Holiday , which debuted in the British humour magazine Judy in 1867 and was created by C. H. Ross and illustrated by his French wife Émilie de Tessier . In 1884

588-403: A certain area of study that would focus attention on specific rhetorical elements of visual mediums. Historically, the study of rhetoric has been geared toward linguistics. Visual symbols were deemed trivial and subservient and thus, were largely ignored as part of a rhetorical argument. As a result, modern rhetorical theory developed with a significant exclusion of these visual symbols, ignoring

686-490: A company badge). Indexes, or indexical signs, are recognized based on understanding of a visual trace, imprint, or element that signals prior activity, or process, the agent of which is no longer visible (e.g., tire tracks in the sand). Symbols, or symbolic signs, are recognized only on the basis of a shared, learned code of visual signs (e.g., a Mercedes Benz logo, or any printed word in any written language). These three types of visual signs individually, or in combination, make up

784-443: A composition classroom to assist with writing and rhetoric development. Semiotic theory is defined as a theory that seeks to describe the rhetorical significance of sign-making. The central idea of the theory is that a sign does not exist outside of a contextual experience, but it only exists in relation to other signs, objects, and entities. Therefore, the sign belongs to a larger system, and when taken out of context of other signs,

882-427: A cross; in the same way, an artwork may employ personification by attributing human qualities to a non-human entity. In general, however, visual art is a separate field of study than visual rhetoric. Graffiti is a "pictorial or visual inscription on a publically [ sic ] accessible surface." According to Hanauer, Graffiti achieves three functions; the first is to allow marginalized texts to participate in

980-504: A double vision of literacy". Dale Jacobs sees the reading of comics as a form of "multimodal literacy or multiliteracy , rather than as a debased form of print literacy". According to Jacobs, comics can help educators to move "toward attending to multimodal literacies" that "shift our focus from print only to multiple modalities". He encourages educators to embrace a pedagogy that will give students skills to effectively negotiate these multiple modalities. §Comics historiography (the study of

1078-425: A global scale. Rhetorical choices carry great significance that surpass reinforcement of the written text.  Each choice, be font, color, layout, represents a different message that author wants to portray for the audience. Visual rhetoric emphasizes images as sensory expressions of cultural and contextual meaning, as opposed to purely aesthetic consideration. Analyzing visuals and their power to convey messages

SECTION 10

#1732782395609

1176-540: A growth of scholarly work on comics with new books from academics such as Martin Barker , David Kunzle , Thomas Inge , Joseph "Rusty" Witek, and Ian Gordon . Comics studies is becoming increasingly more common at academic institutions across the world. Some notable examples include: Ohio State University , University of Florida , University of Toronto at Mississauga , and University of California Santa Cruz , among others. In Britain, growing interest in comics has led to

1274-402: A joke or put a refrain in couplets. You make a book: good or bad, sober or silly, crazy or sound in sense." In 1845, the satirical drawings , which regularly appeared in newspapers and magazines, gained a name: cartoons . (In art, a cartoon is a pencil or charcoal sketch to be overpainted.) The British magazine Punch , launched in 1841, referred to its 'humorous pencilings' as cartoons in

1372-465: A large number of audiences, and attracted mainstream media attention. Images are utilized in a variety of ways for a number of purposes. From business to art to entertainment, the versatility of images in popular culture have some scholars arguing words will eventually become outdated. Aristotle proposed three types of appeal to an audience: These techniques are a technical skill learned and utilized by visual communication designer's today, such as in

1470-568: A meme is pronounced "dead" to signify its overuse or mainstream appearance. Among the intrinsic factors of memes that affect their potential rise to popularity is similarity. A 2014 study conducted by researcher Michele Coscia concluded that meme similarity has a negative correlation to meme popularity, and can therefore be used, along with factors like social network structure, to explain the popularity of various memes. A 2015 study by Mazambani et al. concluded that other factors of influence in meme spread within an online community include how relevant

1568-421: A meme is to the "topic focus" or theme of the online community as well as whether the posting user is in a position of power within an online setting. Memes that are consistent with a group's theme and memes that originate from lower-status members within the group spread faster than memes that are inconsistent and are created by members of a group that are in positions of power. Scholars like Jakub Nowak propose

1666-445: A more complicated task. In the field of composition studies , an interest in comics and graphic novels is growing, partially due to the work of comics theorists but also due to composition studies' growing focus on multimodality and visual rhetoric . Composition studies theorists are looking at comics as sophisticated texts, and sites of complex literacy . Gunther Kress defines multimodality as "the use of several semiotic modes in

1764-546: A multi image narrative. However, the popularity of Outcalt's work and the position of the strip in a newspaper retains credit as a driving force of the form. The 1920s and 1930s saw further booms within the industry. The market for comic anthologies in Britain turned to targeting children through juvenile humor , with The Dandy and The Beano . In 1929, Hergé created the Adventures of Tintin newspaper strip for

1862-543: A narrative, for instance in Frans Hogenberg 's depictions of the Spanish Fury (1576) and the murder of Henry III of France (1589). One of the first British creators of sequential series of satirical art was William Hogarth (1697–1764). Hogarth created seven sets of sequential images on "Modern Moral Subjects". One of his works, A Rake's Progress , was composed of a number of canvases, each reproduced as

1960-500: A person to decode the text through "cultural codes" that contextualize the image to construct meaning. Because of what is unstated, memetic images can hold multiple interpretations. As groups create and share a specific meme template what is unstated becomes a fixed reading with "novel expression". Shifman, in an analysis of KnowYourMeme.com , found that popular memetic images often feature juxtaposition and frozen motion. Juxtaposition frames clashing visual elements in order to "deepen

2058-426: A picture-story does not mean you must set yourself up as a master craftsman, to draw out every potential from your material—often down to the dregs! It does not mean you just devise caricatures with a pencil naturally frivolous. Nor is it simply to dramatize a proverb or illustrate a pun . You must actually invent some kind of play, where the parts are arranged by plan and form a satisfactory whole. You do not merely pen

SECTION 20

#1732782395609

2156-536: A print, and the eight prints together created a narrative. As printing techniques developed, due to the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution , magazines and newspapers were established. These publications sometimes utilized illustrations as a means of commenting on political and social issues, such illustrations becoming known as " cartoons " since 1842. While surviving works of these periods, such as Francis Barlow's A True Narrative of

2254-406: A product is like another product or image (listed as 2,5,8,). Finally, the most rich would be opposition, which is when advertisers show how their product is not like another product or image (listed as 3,6,9). Each of these categories varies in complexity, where putting a product next to a chosen image is the simplest and replacing the product entirely is the most complex. The reason why putting

2352-401: A product next to a chosen image is the most simple is because the consumer has already been shown that there is a connection between the two. In other words, the consumer just has to figure out why there is the connection. However, when advertisers replace the product that they are selling with another image, then the consumer must first figure out the connection and figure out why the connection

2450-401: A reprint collection of newspaper strips), was released in the U.S. in 1933 and by 1938 publishers were printing original material in the new format. It was at this point that Action Comics #1 launched, with Superman as the cover feature. The popularity of the character swiftly enshrined superhero comics as the defining comics genre of American comic books. The genre lost popularity in

2548-511: A satirical reference to the Parliament of the day, who were themselves organising an exhibition of cartoons, or preparatory drawings, at the time. This usage became common parlance, lasting to the present day. Similar magazines containing cartoons in continental Europe included Fliegende Blätter and Le Charivari , while in the U.S. Judge and Puck were popular. 1865 saw the publication of Max and Moritz by Wilhelm Busch by

2646-578: A text that includes an image of the bald eagle, as the main body of the visual text, questions of representation and connotation come into play. Analyzing a text that includes a photo, painting, or even cartoon of the bold eagle along with written words, would bring to mind the conceptions of strength and freedom, rather than the conception of merely a bird. This includes an understanding of the creative and rhetorical choices made with coloring, shaping, and object placement. The power of imagery, iconic photographs, for instance, can potentially generate actions in

2744-437: A typeface looks, including but not limited to concerns of functionality, emotional evocations, and cultural context. Though a relatively new way of using images, visual Internet memes are one of the more pervasive forms of visual rhetoric. Visual memes represent a genre of visual communication that often combines images and text to create meaning. Visual memes can be understood through visual rhetoric, which "combines elements of

2842-448: A visual design is a venue for calling composition scholars’ attention of the function that arrangements of images and words play out in writing practices and thus communication, emphasizing the complex relationship between verbal and visual meanings. Visual communication skills relate to an understanding of the mediated nature of all communication, especially to an awareness of the act of representation. Visual rhetoric can be utilized in

2940-452: A way that is more comprehensive and inclusive with regard to images and their interpretations. The term rhetoric originated in ancient Greece and its concept has been widely discussed for thousands of years. Sophists first coined the idea as an abstract term to help label the concept, while Aristotle more narrowly defined rhetoric as a message's potential to influence audiences. Linguists and other researchers often define rhetoric through

3038-782: A wealth of articles on approaches to comics studies and a useful history of the field by Ian Gordon. Although there has been the occasional investigation of comics as a valid art form, specifically in Gilbert Seldes ' The 7 Lively Arts (1924), Martin Sheridan's Comics and Their Creators (1942), and David Kunzle's The Early Comic Strip: Narrative Strips and Picture Stories in the European Broadsheet from c. 1450 to 1825 (1973), contemporary Anglophone comics studies in North America can be said to have burst onto

Comics studies - Misplaced Pages Continue

3136-767: Is a yearly conference at University of Florida (Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels). Additionally, there is an annual Michigan State University Comics Forum, which brings together academics and professionals working in the industry. Notable regularly held movable conferences include the Comic Art and Comics Area of the Popular Culture Association of America and the conference of the International Society for Humor Studies . The International Comic Arts Forum (ICAF), begun in 1995 at Georgetown University , has been described as one of

3234-544: Is capable of serving a rhetorical purpose. Within a more modern context, Wiens' (2014) research showed that graffiti can be considered an alternative way of creating rhetorical meaning for issues such as homelessness. Furthermore, according to Ley and Cybriwsky graffiti can be an expression of territory, especially within the context of gangs. This form of visual rhetoric is meant to communicate meaning to anyone who so happens to see it, and due to its long history and prevalence, several styles and techniques have emerged to capture

3332-595: Is central to incorporating visual rhetoric within the digital era as nuances of choices regarding audience, purpose and genre can be analyzed within a single frame and the rationale behind designers’ rhetorical choices can be revealed and analyzed by how the elements of visuals play out altogether. Visual rhetoric has been approached and applied in a variety of academic fields including art history , linguistics , semiotics , cultural studies , business and technical communication , speech communication , and classical rhetoric. Visual rhetoric seeks to develop rhetorical theory in

3430-429: Is no place either for emphasizing one mode over another. One way of analyzing a visual text is to look for its significant meaning. Simply put, the meaning should be deeper than the literal sense that a visual text holds. One way to analyze a visual text is to dissect it in order for the viewer to understand its tenor. Viewers can break the text into smaller parts and share perspectives to reach its meaning. In analyzing

3528-486: Is rendered meaningless and uncommunicable. The parts of a semiotic are divided into two parts: the material part of the sign is known as the form of expression, the meaning of the form of expression is known as form of content . In semiotic theory, the expression only has meaningful content when existing in a larger contextual framework. While studying visual objects, rhetorical scholars tend to have three areas of study: nature, function, or evaluation. Nature encompasses

3626-552: The Bayeux Tapestry and illustrated Christian manuscripts . In medieval paintings, multiple sequential scenes of the same story (usually a Biblical one) appear simultaneously in the same painting. An ancient tradition in India, possibly dating back to at least 700 BCE, had picture showmen narrating stories that were simultaneously presented in painted pictures (also the origin of shadow play with jointed puppets). It took

3724-538: The Disney cartoons of the time. The Japanese market expanded its range to cover works in many genres, from juvenile fantasy through romance to adult fantasies. Japanese manga is typically published in large anthologies, containing several hundred pages, and the stories told have long been used as sources for adaptation into animated film . In Japan, such films are referred to as anime , and many creators work in both forms simultaneously, leading to an intrinsic linking of

3822-525: The Eagle and Eisner Awards started adding categories for digital comics . Visual rhetoric Visual rhetoric is the art of effective communication through visual elements such as images, typography , and texts. Visual rhetoric encompasses the skill of visual literacy and the ability to analyze images for their form and meaning. Drawing on techniques from semiotics and rhetorical analysis, visual rhetoric expands on visual literacy as it examines

3920-740: The International Comic Arts Forum (ICAF), the California State University, Northridge professor Charles Hatfield made a motion to create the Comics Studies Society as an interdisciplinary association open to academics, non-academics or independent scholars, teachers, and students who had the goal of promoting the critical study of comics. At a meeting inside the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum ,

4018-493: The Internet for a low cost. Hosting providers specifically designed for webcomics, such as Keenspot and Modern Tales , allow for a type of syndication of webcomics. Scott McCloud described in 2000 how creators of online comics can revolutionize the medium by embracing the digital space and making use of techniques such as infinite canvas . Webcomics became more prolific in the early 2000s, as respected comics awards such as

Comics studies - Misplaced Pages Continue

4116-602: The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong or the images of tea bags by the Tea Party Movement in 2009. According to a 2013 study by Bauckhage, et al., the temporal nature of most memes and their "hype cycles" of popularity are in line with the behavior of a typical fad and suggest that after they proliferate and become mainstream, memes quickly lose their appeal and popularity. Once it has lost its appeal,

4214-419: The history of comics ) studies the historical process through which comics became an autonomous art medium and an integral part of culture. An area of study is premodern sequential art; some scholars such as Scott McCloud consider Egyptian paintings and pre-Columbian American picture manuscripts to be the very first form of comics and sequential art. Another area of study is the 20th-century emergence of

4312-412: The phylacter , a label, usually in the form of a scroll, which identified a character either through naming them or using a short text to explain their purpose. Artists such as George Cruikshank helped codify such phylacters as balloons rather than scrolls , though at this time they were still called labels . They now represented narrative, but for identification purposes rather than dialogue within

4410-416: The subculture of comics reading, comic book collecting and comicphilia , the passionate interest in comic books. (A person with a passionate interest in comics is informally called a comicphile or comics buff .) The first attempts at comics historiography began in the United States in the 1940s with the work of Thomas Craven , Martin Sheridan, and Coulton Waugh . It was not until the mid-1960s, with

4508-459: The 1950s but re-established its domination of the form from the 1960s until the late 20th century. In Japan, a country with a long tradition of illustration, comics were hugely popular. Referred to as manga , the Japanese form was established after World War II by Osamu Tezuka , who expanded the page count of work to number in the hundreds, and who developed a filmic style, heavily influenced by

4606-438: The 1960s and 1970s, underground cartoonists used the spelling comix to distinguish their work from mainstream newspaper strips and juvenile comic books. Their work was written for an adult audience but was usually comedic, so the "comic" label was still appropriate. The term graphic novel was popularized in the late 1970s, having been coined at least two decades previous, to distance the material from this confusion. In

4704-510: The 1980s, comics scholarship started to blossom in the U.S., and a resurgence in the popularity of comics was seen, with Alan Moore and Frank Miller producing notable superhero works and Bill Watterson 's Calvin & Hobbes , and Gary Larson 's The Far Side being syndicated. Webcomics have grown in popularity since the mid-1990s . Since the inception of the World Wide Web , artists have been able to self-publish comics on

4802-911: The Associação de Pesquisadores em Arte Sequencial (ASPAS, Association of Researchers in Sequential Art in Portuguese) was founded in Brazil on March 31, 2012 during the 1st National Forum of Researchers in Sequential Art (FNPAS), an event promoted in the city of Leopoldina, Minas Gerais . In addition to regular events, ASPAS also promotes various academic activities, such as the Meeting of Comic Artists with Trina Robbins , held in 2015 at Gibiteca Henfil, in São Paulo , and in 2017 at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro . In November 2014, during

4900-1087: The CSS's first Executive Committee was officially voted and the CSS main focuses were defined as "promoting the critical study of comics, improving comics teaching, and engaging in open and ongoing conversations about the comics world". CSS also organizes the Annual Conference of the Comics Studies Society since 2018. Some notable academic journals specifically dedicated to comics studies are listed below in alphabetical order: Although presentations dedicated to comics are commonplace at conferences in many fields, entire conferences dedicated to this subject are becoming more common. There have been conferences at SAIC ( International Comic Arts Forum , 2009), MMU (The International Bande Dessinée Society Conference), UTS (Sequential Art Studies Conference), Georgetown , Ohio State (Festival of Cartoon Art), and Bowling Green (Comics in Popular Culture conference), and there

4998-714: The Gilbert Seldes Prize for Public Scholarship, the Charles Hatfield Book Prize, and the CSS Prize for Edited Book Collections. The nominated scholars do not need to be CSS members, but only members can send the nomination letters. All first-time publications during the previous calendar year are eligible (in case of translated books, is considered the year of English publication). People History of comics The history of comics has followed different paths in different parts of

SECTION 50

#1732782395609

5096-482: The Horrid Hellish Popish Plot (c. 1682) as well as The Punishments of Lemuel Gulliver and A Rake's Progress by William Hogarth (1726), can be seen to establish a narrative over a number of images, it wasn't until the 19th century that the elements of such works began to crystallise into the comic strip . The speech balloon also evolved over the centuries, from the medieval origins of

5194-827: The Study of Comics (CSSC, created in October 2010 by Sylvain Rheault). The first learned society about comics in American continent was the Canadian Society for the Study of Comics (CSSC), also known as Société Canadienne pour l'Étude de la Bande Dessinée (SCEBD). It is a bilingual community of academics focused in discuss all aspects of comics as an art form and cultural phenomenon founded in October 2010 by University of Regina professor Sylvain Rheault. On March 31, 2012,

5292-621: The academic scene with both Will Eisner 's Comics and Sequential Art in 1985 and Scott McCloud 's Understanding Comics in 1993. Continental comics studies can trace its roots back to the pioneering work of semioticians such as Roland Barthes (particularly his 1964 essay "Rhétorique de l'image", published in English as "Rhetoric of the Image" in the anthology Image—Music—Text ) and Umberto Eco (particularly his 1964 book Apocalittici e integrati [ Apocalypse Postponed ]). These works were

5390-426: The attention of an audience. While visual rhetoric is usually applied to denote the non-textual artifacts, the use and presentation of words is still critical to understanding the visual argument as a whole. Beyond how a message is conveyed, the presentation of that message encompasses the study and practice of typography . Professionals in fields from graphic design to book publishing make deliberate choices about how

5488-414: The audience. The choice and arrangement of the elements in an image should be used to achieve the desired rhetorical effects and convey messages accurately to specific audiences, societies, and cultures. The use of images is a conscious, communicative decision as the colors, form, medium, and size are each chosen on purpose. However, a person may come in contact with a sign, but if they have no relation to

5586-434: The combination of text and images, though there are prominent examples of pantomime comics throughout its history. Other critics, such as Thierry Groensteen and Scott McCloud, have emphasized the primacy of sequences of images. Towards the close of the 20th century, different cultures' discoveries of each other's comics traditions, the rediscovery of forgotten early comics forms, and the rise of new forms made defining comics

5684-459: The complexity is increased with fusion, which is when an advertiser's product is combined with another image (listed as 4,5,6). The most complex is replacement, which replaces the product with another product (listed as 7,8,9). Each of these sections also include a variety of richness. The least rich would be connection, which shows how one product is associated with another product (listed as 1,4,7). The next rich would be similarity, which shows how

5782-494: The consumer will find a connection between the two. Advertisers also find ways to make sure that the consumer creates a positive association between what they are selling and whatever they are associating their product with. In advertising, there are nine main classifications for how ads incorporate visual rhetoric. These classifications vary in complexity with the least complex being when advertisers juxtapose their product with another image (listed as 1,2,3). After juxtaposition,

5880-423: The content, as with the initial five canons, Scott's focused on the visual medium's ability to invent and argument, arrangement of the item, and all coupled with a meaningful delivery of presentation. Since its inception, popular studies have appeared in published works to discuss the role of visual rhetoric in many facets of human life, especially advertising. The term emerged largely as an effort to set aside

5978-477: The design of a semiotic product or event, together with the particular way in which these mode are combined" or, more simply as "any text whose meanings are realized through more than one semiotic code". Kristie S. Fleckenstein sees the relationship between image and text as "mutually constitutive, mutually infused"—a relationship she names "imageword". Fleckenstein sees "imageword" as offering "a double vision of writing-reading based on [the] fusion of image and word,

SECTION 60

#1732782395609

6076-501: The earliest academic initiatives for the study of comics. The German Gesellschaft für Comicforschung (ComFor, Society for Comics Studies) has organized yearly academic conferences since 2006. The Comics Arts Conference has met regularly since 1992 in conjunction with San Diego Comic-Con and WonderCon . Another important conference is the annual International Graphic Novels and Comics Conference held since 2010 organized by British academics. This conference has been held in conjunction with

6174-746: The establishment of a center for comics studies, the Scottish Centre for Comics Studies (SCCS) at the University of Dundee in Scotland. Beside formal programs and degrees, it is common to see individual courses dedicated to comics and graphic novels in many educational institutions. Sol M. Davidson's New York University thesis , Culture and the Comic Strips , earned him the first PhD in comics in 1959, while in France, Jean-Christophe Menu

6272-504: The field of advertising. Each of these methods of appeal have the ability to influence their audience in different ways. Methods of appeal can also be combined to strengthen the underlying message. Visual literacy is the ability to read, analyze, and evoke meaning from visual text through the means of visual grammar . Visual Communication Designers depend on their audience having visual literacy to comprehend their outputted materials. Research has shown that there are ethical implications to

6370-413: The field of visual rhetoric as a separate area of study. Scholars of visual rhetoric analyze photographs, drawings, paintings, graphs and tables, interior design and architecture, sculpture, Internet images, and film. From a rhetorical perspective, the focus is on the contextual response rather than the aesthetic response. An aesthetic response is a viewer's direct perception with the sensory aspects of

6468-472: The first attempts at a general system of comics semiotics . More recently, analysis of comics have begun to be undertaken by cognitive scientists , the most prominent being Neil Cohn , who has used tools from linguistics to detail the theoretical structure of comics' underlying "visual language", and has also used psychological experimentation from cognitive neuroscience to test these theories in actual comprehension. This work has suggested similarities between

6566-434: The image serves its function. Visual rhetoric studies how humans use images to communicate. Elements of images, such as size color, line, and shape, are used to convey messages. In images, meanings are created by the layout and spatial positions of these elements. The entities that constitute an image are socially, politically, and culturally constructed. The same image may represent different rhetorical meanings depending on

6664-504: The implied and interpreted messages from the work, yet these bigger messages often extend beyond the initial superficial interpretation. Visual rhetoric uses a variety of tools to hook readers within its mediums (e.g. gifs). Although similar in nature, one striking difference between visual and classical rhetoric is the newfound outlook on Aristotle's original canons. Linda Scott created a newfound audience by constructing new cannons exclusive to visual rhetoric. Instead of closely monitoring

6762-557: The introduction of visual elements. The field of composition studies has recently returned its attention to visual rhetoric. In an increasingly visual society, proponents of visual rhetoric in composition classes suggest that increased literacy requires writing and visual communication skills. In relation to visual rhetoric, the composition field positions itself, more broadly, into challenging reductive definitions of composing and rhetoric that gravitate toward verbal communication only. Touching upon rhetorical processes/decisions that affect

6860-641: The invention of modern printing techniques to bring the form to a wide audience and become a mass medium . Early printed material concentrated on religious subjects , with densely illustrated versions of the Bible as a widely distributed medium that combined many images with text in order to bring the teachings of Christianity to the illiterate. Through the 17th and 18th centuries, prints began to tackle aspects of political and social life , and also started to satirize and caricature . Occasionally, prints would contain several images to relate multiple scenes of

6958-459: The literal components of the artifact. This is a primary focus of visual rhetoric because in order to understand the function of an image, it is necessary to understand the substantive and stylistic nature of the artifact itself. Function holds a somewhat literal definition—it represents the purpose an image serves for an audience. The function, or purpose, of an image may be to evoke a certain emotion. The evaluation of an artifact determines if

7056-551: The longer running International Bande Dessinée Society conference. Comics Forum , a UK-based community of international comics scholars, also holds an annual conference at Leeds Central Library ; the first was held in 2009. Since 2018, Comics Studies Society awards comics studies, books and articles with five annual prizes: the CSS Article Prize, the Hillary Chute Award for Best Graduate Student Paper,

7154-529: The medium itself, defining comics entails cutting a Gordian-knotted enigma wrapped in a mystery ..." — R. C. Harvey , 2001 Similar to the problems of defining literature and film, no consensus has been reached on a definition of the comics medium, and attempted definitions and descriptions have fallen prey to numerous exceptions. Theorists such as Rodolphe Töpffer , R. C. Harvey , Will Eisner , David Carrier , Alain Rey , and Lawrence Grove emphasize

7252-530: The page. In addition to that, visual rhetoric involves the selection of different fonts, contrastive colors, and graphs, among other elements, to shape a visual rhetoric text. One vital component of visual rhetoric is analyzing the visual text. The interactional and commonly hybrid nature of cyber spaces that usually mixes print text and visual images unable some detachment of them as isolated constructs, and scholarship has claimed that especially in virtual spaces where print text and visuals are usually combined, there

7350-483: The presentation of visuals. "Visuals present the risk of, all too easily, swaying their audiences in an unethical fashion." Advances in technology have made it easier to manipulate and distort visuals. Visual communicators are expected to accurately portray information and avoid misleading or deceiving viewers. Advertisers know that their consumers are able to associate one thing to another; therefore, when an ad shows two things that seemingly different, they know that

7448-478: The public discourse, the second is that graffiti serves the purpose of expressing openly "controversial contents", and the third is to allow "marginal groups to the possibility of expressing themselves publicly." Bates and Martin note that this form of rhetoric has been around even in ancient Pompeii, with an example from 79 A.D. reading, "Oh wall, so many men have come here to scrawl, I wonder that your burdened sides don't fall". Gross and Gross indicated that graffiti

7546-530: The publication of Jules Feiffer 's The Great Comic Book Heroes , that the field began to take root. Historiography became an accepted practice in the 1970s with the work of Maurice Horn , Jim Steranko , Ron Goulart , Bill Blackbeard , and Martin Williams . The late 1990s saw a wave of books celebrating American comics' centennial. Other notable writers on these topics include Will Jacobs , Gerard Jones , Rick Marschall , and R. C. Harvey . The 1990s also saw

7644-542: The relations and connections between elements in visual images. Visual structure refers to the way that the elements are visually displayed. Rhetorical critics have borrowed analysis terminology from C.S. Peirce to accomplish direct analysis of visual messages. Icon (or iconic signs), index (or indexical signs), and symbol (or symbolic signs) are three basic categories of recognizable characteristics of visual messages. Icons, or iconic signs, are recognized based on resemblance to known elements or items (e.g., one's ID photo on

7742-550: The relationship between comics and other art forms, and the relationship between text and image in comics. Comics studies is also interrelated with comics criticism , the analysis and evaluation of comics and the comics medium. Matthew Smith and Randy Duncan's 2017 book The Secret Origins of Comics Studies contains a useful overview of early scholarship on comics with standout chapters by Ian Horton, Barbara Postema, Ann Miller , and Ian Gordon . Frederick Luis Aldama 's 2019 book Oxford Handbook of Comic Book Studies also contains

7840-414: The ridicule" with a large incongruity or diminishes the original contrast by taking the visual object into a more fitting situation. Frozen motion pictures an action made static, leaving the viewer to complete the motion in order to complete the premise. Considered by some scholars to be a subversive form of communication, memetic images have been used to unify political movements, such as umbrellas during

7938-430: The same points as other Enlightenment scholars—mainly that art was beneficial to the public—and worthy of note and praise—if it was encouraging a moral improvement of its audience. French theorist Roland Barthes in 1977 brought to light a new way to evaluate other communication means, showing the relevance of traditional rhetorical theories to the still photographic medium. Barthes explained visual rhetoric generally as

8036-426: The semiotic and discursive approaches to analyze the persuasive elements of visual texts." Furthermore, memes fit into this rhetorical category because of their persuasive nature and their ability "to draw viewers into the argument's construction via the viewer's cognitive role in completing "visual enthymemes" to fill in the unstated premise." The visual portion of the meme is a part of its multimodal grammar, allowing

8134-657: The sign, its message is arbitrary. Therefore, in order for artifacts or products to be conceptualized as visual rhetoric, they must be symbolic, involve human intervention, and be presented to an audience for the purpose of communicating. In "The Rhetoric of the Image", Roland Barthes examines the semiotic nature of images, and the ways that images function to communicate specific messages. Barthes points out that messages transmitted by visual images include coded iconic and non-coded iconic linguistic messages. Visual rhetorical images can be categorized into two dimensions: meaning operation and visual structure. Meaning operation refers to

8232-404: The structure of an image with the focus on its persuasive effects on an audience. Although visual rhetoric also involves typography and other texts, it concentrates mainly on the use of images or visual texts. Using images is central to visual rhetoric because these visuals help in either forming the case an image alone wants to convey, or arguing the point that a writer formulates, in the case of

8330-423: The then highly popular character was spun off into his own comic, Ally Sloper's Half Holiday published by Dalziel Brothers, eight pages long and printed in black and white at tabloid size. The magazine was extremely popular with the working class and may have had a circulation as high as 350,000. In 1890, two more comic magazines debuted to the British public, Comic Cuts and Illustrated Chips , establishing

8428-516: The times. It had most of the elements that make up the modern comic, including pictures with captions that display a continuous narrative told often in installments, and the use of speech bubbles, satire and caricature. Rodolphe Töpffer , a Francophone Swiss artist, was a key figure in the early part of the 19th century. Töpffer's sequentially illustrated stories, with text compartmentalized below images, were reprinted throughout Europe. In 1837, he published Histoire de Mr. Vieux Bois which

8526-453: The tradition of the British comic as an anthology periodical containing comic strips. In the United States, R. F. Outcault's work in combining speech balloons and images on Hogan's Alley and The Yellow Kid (appearing in 1895) has been credited as establishing the form and conventions of the comic strip, though academics have uncovered earlier works that combine speech bubbles and

8624-479: The two forms. During the latter half of the 20th century comics became a very popular item for collectors and from the 1970s American comics publishers have actively encouraged collecting and shifted a large portion of comics publishing and production to appeal directly to the collector's community. The modern double use of the term comic , as an adjective describing a genre, and a noun designating an entire medium, has been criticised as confusing and misleading. In

8722-421: The visual design elements of nearly all visual messages. Visual images have always played a role in communication; however, the recent advancements in technology have enabled users to produce and share images on a mass scale. The mass communication of images has made spread of news and information a much quicker process. As a result, certain images may go "viral", meaning the image may have been shared and seen by

8820-404: The visual, whereas with a rhetorical response, meaning is given to the visual. Every part of the artifact has significance in the message being conveyed; each line, each shading, each person has a purpose. As visual rhetoricians study images and symbols, their findings catalyze challenges to the linguistic meaning altogether, allowing a more holistic study of the rhetorical argument to emerge with

8918-401: The way that the brain processes language and the way it processes sequential images. Cohn's theories are not universally accepted, with other scholars like Thierry Groensteen , Hannah Miodrag, and Barbara Postema offering alternative understandings. "Comics ... are sometimes four-legged and sometimes two-legged and sometimes fly and sometimes don't ... to employ a metaphor as mixed as

9016-415: The well-known five canons of rhetoric . Over time, this definition has evolved, expanded, and raised serious debate as new digital mediums of communicating have developed. In his book Elements of Criticism , rhetorician Lord Kames (also known as Henry Home) laid the groundwork for later rhetoricians by taking the controversial stance of including visual art in his theory of criticism. Kames argued many of

9114-401: The work, and artists soon discarded them in favour of running dialogue underneath the panels. Speech balloons were not reintroduced to the form until Richard F. Outcault used them for dialogue. The Glasgow Looking Glass , published in 1826, was arguably the first comic magazine. A satirical publication, later known as The Northern Looking Glass , it lampooned the fashions and politics of

9212-563: The world. It can be traced back to early precursors such as Trajan's Column , in Rome , Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Bayeux Tapestry . The earliest examples of humans using illustration for storytelling purposes goes back to cave paintings over 50,000 years ago. Examples of early sequential art can be found in Egyptian hieroglyphs , Greek friezes , Rome's Trajan's Column (dedicated in 110 AD), Maya script , medieval tapestries such as

9310-429: Was also published in the United States in 1842 as The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck . The lack of copyright laws at the time meant that pirated editions proliferated, and translated versions created a market on both continents for similar works. In 1845, Töpffer formalised his thoughts on the picture story ( French : histoire en estampes ) in his Essay on Physiognomics ( Essai de physiognomonie ): "To construct

9408-690: Was appointed as the UK's first ever comics professor at Lancaster University. In addition to its presence in academic institutions, comics have also been studied in interdisciplinary learned society . The first US association dedicated to supporting the study of graphic narrative and sequential art was the Comics Studies Society (CSS), launched in 2014 at ICAF. Other anglophone societies that can be mentioned are British Consortium of Comics Scholars (BCCS, created in 2012 by Paul Davies), Scottish Centre for Comics Studies (SCCS) and Canadian Society for

9506-568: Was awarded a Doctorate in Art and Art Sciences in 2011 from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne after defending his thesis The Comics and its Double: Language and Frontiers of Comics: Practical, Theoretical and Editorial Prospects . In 2012, the University of Oregon offered the first Comics and Cartoon Studies minor in the United States. This Comics Studies program is currently directed by Benjamin Saunders . Teesside University began offering

9604-484: Was made. Visual tropes and tropic thinking are a part of visual rhetoric. While the field of visual rhetoric isn't necessarily concerned with the aesthetic choices of a piece, the same principles of visual composition may be applied to the study and practice of visual art . For example, figures of speech , such as personification or allusion , may be implemented in the creation of an artwork. A painting may allude to peace with an olive branch or to Christianity with

#608391