How to Tell a Story without Words

Abstract

This paper focuses on the narrativity in wordless comics, that is, in comics that do not use words or use them only scarcely. The verbalvisual duality of comics is always semiotically challenging. The absence of words in wordless comics foregrounds their visual component which carries additional narrative or aesthetic meaning for the comic as a whole. First, several contemporary narratological models are considered. Most often narratives are considered as a description of a series of situations and events, independently of the medium in which they occur. Among scholars of comic studies, the author presents Eisner and McCloud’s concept of sequence as a focal point of plotting in comics, which has similar characteristics to narrating and storytelling in literature. The author also explores several models of medium-specific modifications such as comic focalization markers, monstration, and graphic enunciation with special attention paid to wordless comics. Finally, the author demonstrates the proposed analytical model through two examples: Mirko Ilić’s Horizontal and Vertical (1978) and Ileana Surducan’s The Quest (2014).

Keywords

• wordless comics
• narrativity
• graphic enunciation
• monstration
• sequence