Fink "Comics"

Abstract:
                Margaret Fink’s essay, simple named “Comics,” dives into the history of comics way back to the first comic and how different cultures adopted and adapted this medium for separate tastes an ideologies. Fink goes on to explain how comics imply certain things through structure and symbolism and how comics function as a whole. First and foremost, Fink attempts to define what exactly a comic is.
Key Concepts:
                Fink writes that what makes a comic a comic is through the use of the different panels adding up to a whole. She references heavily on Scott McCloud’s book “Understanding Comics” including in deciding what exactly a comic is. “McCloud defines comics as ‘juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence’. . . comics is a language, and happens when two or more panels work together to contribute to a whole” (Fink). Fink’s essay places the first modern comic in the middle of the 1800s with Rodolphe Topffer’s “Histoire de M. Vieux Bois” which was a full thirty pages of around six panels each. Since then, comics have been used for many different purposes such as satire, comedy, and more artistic forms which are often more serious in nature.
                Fink also gets into how the level of realism affects a comic. “[McCloud] uses realistic and iconic to denote the two ends of the spectrum. Furthermore, McCloud argues that the cartoon, by virtue of its greater iconicity and abstraction, is something we are compelled to identify with” (Fink). Comics use this spectrum to help us chose who or what to identify with. “Main characters with whom one is to identify are often drawn more schematically, as a cartoon; on the other hand, other characters or villains can be drawn in great detail, which has the effect of objectifying them as ‘other’” (Fink).
                Also in “Comics,” it’s explained how words and visuals fit together and how time can appear to be lengthened or shortened in a comic. Not only that, but there are other ways in which additions and subtraction from visuals can make implications. “Through formal elements such as line and color, as well as more complex visual cues, comics can convey sensations of temperature, motion, affect, and paralingual cues normally occurring in the auditory register. . . Now mature as a medium, comics has also developed its own Piercian symbols: flies circling over a nondescript heap describe the heap as having a rotten odor; birds circling around someone’s head describe the person’s psychological state as dazed and disoriented; likewise, tightly parallel diagonal lines superimposed on the region around a character’s eyes signifies embarrassment or blushing”(Fink). Through these affordances, authors can give comics life.
Key Words:
“The Vocabulary of Comics” by Scott McCloud
Affordances
Citations:
https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/comics/