Question 1

In considering what a comic does better than any other form of visual media, I can't help but look back to our earliest readings.  Scott McCloud differentiates the medium from all others through his discussion of closure.  McCloud and I agree that a comic connects more completely with its audience than a film, a painting, or a photograph could ever hope to.  Though the process of closure is often dependent upon the reader's knowledge of cinematic or literary tropes, the reader holds a lot of responsibility.  The power of suggestion is a potent force when used cinematically.  Horror films especially are notable for their use of the viewer's imagination.  Comics play upon our imagination with far more regularity.  Comics necessitate an especially active kind of reading that encourages attention to the most minute of details.  Like other solely visual media, comics must contend with a lack of sound.  I see this as less a limitation than an opportunity.  A comic must use the tropes of painting and silent cinema to suggest emotion and provoke the appropriate reader response.  Cinematic adaptations of comic books so often use their music as a lazily manipulative device that I found the silence of printed comics quite pleasant.