This week’s reading had us delve into the matter of media interpretation by exploring the comic ‘Blood In the Gutter’ by Scott McCloud. When referring to ‘blood in the gutter’ McCloud is giving an analogy of the act of ‘reading between the lines’ to construct meaning or ‘filling in the gap’. In his example, we see a victim being chased by a man with an axe followed by a frame of screaming above the skyline. We are not shown who is screaming, or even if the victim is struck by the axe, yet we know what has happened due to our relationship with iconography, and being able to recognise the signs of the impending action; our minds creating a full scene of action from just two panels via our almost instinctual ability of closure.

The basis and structural use of closure in comics in the West stays consistently present in similar forms among varying artists, despite being of different genres and styles. In reference to the cuts between frames/panels in a comic, the mode of cut appears in patters, and follows:
1)  moment to moment – slight differences
2)  action to action – larger differences in action  %65
3)  subject to subject – cuts between relavent items/people in the scene %20
4)  aspect to aspect – different views within the one scene (show reverse shot) %15
5)  non-sequitur –similar to aspect to aspect although  “not concerning narrative or story”*.

Although Japan follows a similar structure in its own comics, there are some significant differences. This is seen mostly due to their approach and view on comics.
In Japan comics are more than a mode of storytelling; it’s an art form, with emphasis on the ‘journey’ over the ‘destination’, unlike their Western counterparts.
This is attributed to Japanese culture and the upbringing of children in the Pacific compared to those in Western culture. Having been brought up among vastly different influences, mediums, faiths, food, and almost every other aspect of culture itself, the Japanese have come to hold different views, thus different interpretations of semiotics and the structure of comics through their own history and culture of iconography.
According to McCloud, “If visual iconography is the vocabulary of comics, closure is its grammar”, and like with any form of language, there’s always going to be translation errors.
If we extract this argument and similar statements from the example above, then we can see how semiotics have a large impact of everyday life the relationship between texts and various nations; each maintaining a different interpretation within their own cultural context.

Reference: ‘Blood In the Gutter’ by Scott McCloud.