Fresnault-Deruelle, Pierre. “Du linéaire au tabulaire.” Communications 24 (1976): 7-23.

(One of the (THE?) first academic journal issues devoted to comics.)

If your French is good, I can send you a copy.

Question for Charles (or anyone else): Groensteen employs the terms ‘linear’ and ‘tabular’ — are these his, or Fresnault-Deruelle’s (as Charles has it in his post on Thought Balloonists)?

Hawks (again): I follow you, Craig, and I wouldn’t push my reading too far — but to me it’s remarkable how much Hawks does without such things as point-of-view shots. That seems like such a fundamental part of the CHC that its absence is noteworthy. No POV, no easy access to subjectivity — here, too, I find a similarity with Ozu… You’re absolutely right that the adults in Hawks often aspire to the condition of children, and that has a lot to do with the superfluity of, you know, ACTUAL children. Hey, same kid is in Monkey Business — leading a virtual lynch mob of other kids… So sentimental, that Hawks.

As I recall, Eddie Campbell ended his interview in TCJ #273 with a bunch of rules, and though I don’t have the issue in front of me, one of those rules went something like this: “The reader knows what happens within an entire comic book seconds after opening it. If Magneto is revealed as the surprise villain at the end of the comic, the buyer will know this before s/he leaves the comics shop.” This seems like an explicit reference to X-MEN # 17, which ends with a splash page of revealing Magneto to the reader, which undoubtedly communicates that this MOMENT IS IMPORTANT. Is this the kind of tabular information you mean?

Oh boy, Hawks. I might’ve lapsed into hyperbole when I called Hawks a “quintessential storyteller,” but even though he uses less decoupage than his contemporaries, his shot choices still follow classical Hollywood style parameters: for instance, don’t most of his long master shots frame human bodies in plan americain style? I’d agree that later Hawks films–RIO BRAVO, HATARI, MAN’S FAVORITE SPORT–are more digressive than earlier works, but I’d argue that Hawks never strays far from the goal-driven protagonist, closure and invisible style that characterize Hollywood classicism. (Not a coincidence that Hawks’ and Ford’s films get loose-limbed–I’d argue that DONOVAN’S REEF is less classical than anything Hawks ever made–as classical Hollywood dies a prolonged death.)

Hawks and kids: that’s fascinating. The only example of an actual kid I can think of is Foghorn in GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, and he acts like a horny adult male), but there’s are plenty of adults who want to be kids, like Susan (and eventually David) in BRINGING UP BABY and Grant and Rogers in MONKEY BUSINESS. Ozu’s characters reluctantly embrace mono no aware and get on with the business of being parents and salarymen, but Hawks seems to be saying that a return to childhood is a dangerous but highly desirable state…

I agree that the grid has been naturalized for us — I’m reminded of a Cul de Sac from a year or two ago in which Alice doesn’t yet know that the cat in one panel is the same cat as in another. While the grid can be played with in many things, you’re also right to note that it seems to be the condition of the medium that many of the works in AC address — that’s a really valuable point.

I’m not sure, however, that saying that comics are predominantly linear is tantamount to saying that comics are *innately* narrative — that they’re predominantly narrative would seem to be self-evident (hence Abstract Comics as a new field, coming in from another direction), but that’s not the same as saying that they have to be. Narrative, in comics and in film, becomes a way of organizing a progression through time, or an exploration of space. It’s an anchor as much as a reason for being.

Craig: “Are you (and Derik) saying that when we read a traditional comic, our linear reading of the panels is supplemented by a further apprehension of the tier, the layout of the page, the double-page spread, etc.?”

I think I *am* saying that, but I’m not committed to it. Someone above mentioned that McCloud might put too much weight on the inferential activity that the reader performs, and I think that’s true. Readable comics (and I mean that term descriptively, not as an assignation of value) lead the reader very carefully from panel to panel, and employ a battery of techniques to cover the “gutter.” Just as in film, techniques were developed to compensate for the violence of the cut between one shot and the next. The page is definitely part of our experience of the comic, but our focus is pulled from panel to panel (*most* of the time).

Re Hawks: But Hawks is rarely exemplary of the classical Hollywood cinema — look again. Very little decoupage: he uses much longer takes and far fewer close-ups. He does not look like either Cukor or Ford… His work has been described as a kind of cinema verite (Wollen) or home movies (Thomson), and these comparisons actually make some sense. Truffaut noted that films like Hatari (and by extension To Have and Have Not, Only Angels Have Wings, and Rio Bravo) are really like film shoots — people hanging out, waiting for the next day’s shoot… The emphasis is on multiple people in the frame, reacting to one another within a single shot. Of course, that’s totally different from Ozu stylistically, but thematically, I think they have much in common — an interest in exploring relationships re-using casts and story situations. On the other hand, there are no children in Hawks, and therefore no parents. Unlike Ozu.

I’d suspect the grid-like layouts of much of the AC work is a result of the creators western (comics/bd) roots. I don’t think any of the contributors are drawing on a manga tradition.

While I’m on that, something else I forgot to throw out there during the conversation is this manga by Maki Sasaki, which has an abstract quality more like the Crumb piece than other, though still leaning more towards narrative (though an abstract narrative):
http://pinktentacle.com/2010/01/desert-eyeball-manga-by-maki-sasaki-1970/