Comics and Film

Looking at many different types and genres of comics this semester, I found that comics seem to share more in common with film than with written narratives; with such a focus on visual attributes, using panels like scenes in a film, transitions between panels just as important as transitions between shots, color palettes and speed integral to our understanding of the story, there is so much similarity between film and graphic narrative. Comics make up for our lack of audio content by filling in speech bubbles and emanata, like caption cards in a silent film. Speech bubbles serve as captions in a world where we cannot have movement and sound occurring simultaneously. 

The amount of thought that goes into every panel of a comic has amazed me - the most minute details in Watchmen have been carefully thought out and constructed, left for careful readers to scrutinize. Picking apart color palettes, panel framing, and crossing of gutters this semester left me extremely appreciative for an art form that seems extremely underrated by academia.