The Frenzy of the Visible in Comic Book Worlds

This article argues that the comic book form is anything but static. The panels that litter its pages are riddled with a dynamism and motion that presents its own unique articulation of time and space. Some of the narrative action represented within a comic book panel can ‘freeze’ time, but other panels — while remaining visually static as still images on a page — open up complex depictions of time and space that create modes of perception that are particular to comics. The comic represents the animated flux of time and space through stasis.