Comics Schemata

…schemata… are cognitive frameworks for the meaningful organisation of various interrelated concepts based on previous experiences… The schema expresses typical information, not the unique features of a specific thing… There are a lot of basic conditions (schemata) needed to read a comic. A crucial schema to understand a comic is the elliptic and fragmented nature of the medium. The history of comics is partly a history of the refinement of elliptic and fragmented storytelling. An extrinsic norm crucial to comics is the interpretation of a figure reappearing in several panels as one and the same figure shown at different moments in time (usually in chronological order)… Usually it is assumed that the event represented in the second panel happens after the event represented in the first one… we would expect deviations from these conventions to be clearly indicated. We assume the comic respects the extrinsic norms of traditional narration. Of course, there is a lot of trust involved in our acceptance of conventions, and artists can play with such expectations.

Lefevre, Pascal. Narration in Comics. Image & Narrative 1 (2000). (ellipses mine)