Comics and Diagrams: An Introductory Overview

Although both so-called 'data comics' and 'comics geographies' fields have been defined as emerging, there is a lack of structured and multidisciplinary studies that deal with comics' diagrammatic nature. The parallelism between comics and diagrams, dear to many comics makers and some scholars, is more than a mere graphic suggestion or similarity. Unlike the written word and other visual art forms, comics, through the multi-vectorial narrative skills typical of the page layout, overcomes alphabetic writing's linearity to open up to synchronic and parallel space-time narratives. Comics also favours ellipses, spatial dislocations, and micro-narrations in larger narratives more naturally than in other artistic and narrative forms. Moreover, comics make possible, differently than in literature, a strong involvement of the reader in constructing alternative paths. The grid is the element that brings comics back under the category of diagrams through its ability to temporalize space and create hierarchies and relationships between the parts (panels). Through some examples, this paper offers an introductive overview of the many possibilities offered by a diagrammatic reading of comics, demonstrating how even the most straightforward grid configurations can convey complex concepts.