Sofia Foxtail | Comics and Illustration

1.5 hour sketch.

I read a blogpost recently by one comic artist about how he was frustrated that people assumed comics were always about stories. (The fact that I can't find the article, because it's by now long lost in my internet browser, might very well weaken my argument, but I just wanted to chew on this thought for awhile.)

Anyway, the author of this post pointed out that a succession of images doesn't always imply a story, that you can do different things with comics other than tell a story... and he huffed about how people could be so naive to have such a narrow approach to comics; he affirmed that comics itself were the goal. He gave an example of photos in high school yearbook, side by side, which ultimately tell no story (at least that of traditional beginning, middle, end). He said, in effect, that these portraits of people are comics too, because they are a succession of images.

I can't agree. Yearbook photos are not comics, but they are just that: single images slapped together in alphabetical order for the purpose of showing who is in the school at a particular year in time. The images themselves are not that important, but what they communicate.

Comics is a medium, not an end to itself. They are a tool to get a message across, and that message will always be in the form of a story, a narrative, in some way. A succession of images is not a comic unless it tells a story--- much in the same way a succession of words on a page is not a paragraph until it has some coherent meaning driving it. The two ideas (narrative, comics) are inextricably interwoven.

Much the same way books, films, plays, video games, all tell a story. (At least the good ones do.) And that is the power of them. They touch us on some human level to remind us that we share similar attributes,  struggles,  failures and victories. They remind us that we can change, and our destiny is not limited to our own little world. Or if our destiny is confined, they open our eyes to see that other people's little destinies and worlds are just as important as our own. A comic without this driving narrative force (i.e. storytelling) that connects human beings and brings understanding ... is just a succession of images on a page. Nothing more.

I like the idea of comics as a visual storytelling medium. For me, it's similar to watching or creating a film. Just like a director, you control everything: you think about scene, characters, lighting, ambience, conversation or lack thereof... and must materialize  what you see in your head to the page in a convincing enough way that the viewer can experience what you feel yourself.