Stylistics and comics

Comics is rapidly developing into a scholarly discipline in its own right, with a growing output of books, journals, and conferences. Two practitioners have been crucial influences. Eisner (1985) and McCloud (1993, 2000, 2006) have done much to aid the understanding of how comics create meaning. But unsurprisingly their work does not show the rigour and systematicity of academic scholarship, and this is what we aim to provide.
This chapter presents a survey of visual stylistic devices specific for the medium of comics to communicate information and generate meaning. The authors discuss categories of devices, such as balloons, pictorial runes, and panel arrangements, thereby building a checklist that can help comics scholars and others interested in visuals to detect stylistic patterns and idiosyncracies.
The chapter focuses on visual dimensions of comics, and has little to say about its verbal contributions; and discusses European rather than American or Japanese ones.