Blood in the Gutter
Brief notes
Reoccurring dream that the world disappears when you don’t see it. “our perception of reality is an act of faith, based on mere fragments.”
Babies don’t understand the concept of faith yet, so when their mother disappears behind their hand in a game of “Peekaboo”, the baby truly thinks their mother has disappeared.
We rely on “closure”, something to piece the gaps together to make things make sense, even when most of the closure is based on nothing seen. Closure is based on knowledge and experience.
Media communicates closure, pixels or blobs which our mind constructs as an image of a person or reality
Our brain constructs ideas based on our experience, such as a space between two cartoon panels in a comic, called commonly as “the gutter”
Here’s a few techniques that are comic book writers use:
- Moment to moment, played out as it happens,
- Action to action, beginning and end of action, quick, lots of story
- Subject to Subject, change of subject, advancement of story.
- Scene to scene, transporting ideas to an entirely different area or time.
- Aspect to aspect, evaluates the scene picture by picture showing a range of views within the scene.
- Non sequitur- no logical relationship between the two images/resources
The vast majority of comics use an overabundance of action to action, and some of subject to subject and scene to scene. But not much else.
Looking into the difference between western culture (American) and eastern culture (Asian) we notice that western comics are very goal orientated, but this isn’t the case in Eastern culture, as they often take the time to establish the scene with long drawn out moment to moment and aspect to aspect shots.
This can also be seen in other arts, like painting, the use of negative space, and music, the use of silence.
Discusses a kind of ying and yang, and about having not too much of a story, but not too little.
“Comics are a mono-sensory medium, it relies on only one of the senses”
The comic finishes exclaiming that much of life is based off assumptions, and how so much of life is dependent on faith.
