The Vocabulary of Comics #1
Gutters
The Vocabulary of Comics #2
Lines, Time, and Movement
Maus Facts
100
Any image used to represent a person, place, thing or idea.
What is an icon?
100
This is the phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole.
What is closure?
100
This term refers to the dots, lines, exclamation marks, tear drops, etc. that depict emotion, motion or sound in a drawing.
What are emanata?
100
In the panel below, the author has lengthened the amount of time passing by using this type of panel.
What is an elongated panel.
100
This is the name of Richieu’s Polish governess.
What is Janina?
200
In this process, the author does not just eliminate details, but rather focuses on specific details.
What is abstraction?
200
This is an example of this type of panel transition.
What is moment to moment?
200
These are a form of direct narration, where the reader reads what the characters say, word for word.
What are speech bubbles?
200
In this type of combination of words and images, pictures illustrate but don’t add to a largely complete text.
What are word specific combos?
200
This is the name of Vladek’s second wife.
What is Mala?
300
This is the absence of drawn objects. It helps the reader focus on what’s important in the panel.
What is negative (or blank) space?
300
These transitions feature a single subject in distinct progressions.
What are action to action?
300
This term, often used in film, show us the narrator’s words above, below or on top of a panel.
What is a voice-over?
300
In this type of combination of words and images, words do little more than add a soundtrack to a visually told sequence.
What are picture-specific combos?
300
This is what Artie calls Vladek when he discovers that he has destroyed Anja’s diaries.
What is a murderer?
400
These are icons that represent concepts, ideas and philosophies.
What are symbols?
400
These types of transitions stay within the same scene but move to different people or areas of focus within the scene.
What are subject to subject?
400
This is the space between panels in which the reader has to actively fill in the gaps.
What is a gutter?
400
This type of picture/image combo is the most common. Words and pictures go hand-in-hand and together portray something neither could do alone.
What is an interdependent combo?
400
This causes Vladek’s death in 1982.
What is congestive heart failure?
500
While not literal, this is a term for analyzing the angle and perspective from which a cartoonist depicts a subject.
What is camera angle?
500
These type of scene transitions often require deductive reasoning as they transport us across significant distances of time and space.
What are scene to scene?
500
This is a term for a panel that runs off the edge of the page. This technique often provides the reader with a sense of timelessness.
What is a bleed?
500
This is the term to describe a moving figure imposed over a continuous background.
What is a polyptych?
500
This is the title of the comic strip Art made about Anja’s death.
What is “Prisoner on the Hell Planet”?