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in a sequence of images gives the reader access to the story through a clear unit of attention that can be followed. The continuing character can thus be conceived as an aspect of focalisation, or more precisely, of the focalised (the object of the perception). On the other hand, a con­ tinuing character allows the reader to gradually construct a person­like entity engaged in some action or situation and have a sense of the story content: The narrative is about a particular character or group of char­ acters. Narrative events, and the experiences that stories highlight, usu­ ally revolve around people, or human­like characters, and their actions, perceptions, and experiences. Furthermore, the presentation of the men­ tal states, thoughts, feelings, and experiences of sentient beings, which many narratologists regard as key characteristics of narratives regardless of the medium, suggests the presence of some agent who acts, feels, and thinks and whose actions or thoughts and perceptions can be followed.

Therefore, characters are simultaneously salient features of narrative comics at various levels, as person­like agents, as a means of narra­ tive transmission, and as units of attention that move the story forward and allow readers to follow it. In narrative comics, salience in this sense involves the question of how something is shown, including the means of narrative drawing, layout, framing, and the juxtaposition of panels, stylistic choices, and the interplay between visual and verbal narration. However, what is considered salient cannot be merely reduced to the for­ mal features of narrative comics. Narrative salience is also an expectation that readers have of the way in which stories are constructed and told and the outcome of their active interpretation. One expectation in this regard is that characters are allocated different roles and significance in fiction, i.e. there are main and minor characters. Another significant expecta­ tion is that the depiction of person­like agency and goal­oriented action will enable the reader to become imaginatively engaged with the narra­ tive. This point is commonly made in narrative studies of film. The film scholar Murray Smith, for instance, claims that our ‘entry into’ the nar­ rative structure of fiction films is mediated by character (1995, 17–18). We will return to Smith’s argument at the end of this chapter. Similarly, many literary narratologists hold that the representation of an experien­ tial agent is a minimal requirement of narrativity and our primary access to the narrative. The mere depiction of some character’s action can say much about their intentions, thoughts or emotions, and experience.

Here, I consider a character present throughout a continuing situa­ tion, event, or action as a basic tool for building narrative continuity and coherence in comics. The point in thus focusing on and isolating the ques­ tion of the synthetic3 role of the character, i.e. their continuity­building function, from other considerations pertaining to characters, such as focalisation, characterisation (characters’ person­like qualities), or the representation of speech and thought, is to better cover the visual and multimodal means of connectivity employed in comics, and thus further

develop the issues of connectivity and showing discussed in the previous chapters. This will also raise the issue of the relationship between visual and narrative saliency,4 which can not only overlap but can also be dis­ tinguished from each other in terms of what is central in the image (the content that is shown) on the one hand, and what is important in the im­ age in terms of the narrative as a whole on the other. Verbal narration, in captions and dialogue, can by itself select for the reader those characters, entities, or objects that are to be tracked and followed, for instance by creating a sense of a character’s continuing consciousness or a continu­ ing conversation. Verbal narration may also specify how the situation or the protagonist’s actions and movements should be understood, em­ phasise the salience of something, or point out, especially in first­person narration, that the narrator’s inner experience is more important than what he or she may be perceiving (as shown in the images). In the next sections, however, the focus will be on the visual showing of continuing characters and the reader’s spatial attachment to them.

Match on Action in Comics

The repetition of the same character in a panel sequence creates a vi­ sual bridge between the images. This basic convention can be clearly ob­ served, for instance, at the beginning of stories. In the first instalment of Saga (2012), by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, the cover image al­ ready establishes the two protagonists, Alana and Marko, as important figures in the story. The first panels of the first scene, which depict the birth of the couple’s daughter Hazel, then confirm that the story is about these two characters. Both Alana and Marko are shown in close­up images that focus on their emotional states and intimate relationship. The first panel is an extreme close­up of Alana, who is clearly suffering, while the second panel, an establishing image, shows her lying on a table with someone between her legs, helping in what is evidently a childbirth scene. The two characters’ emotional engagement with one another is then portrayed by an image and reverse image sequence where we first see the horned man Marko looking tenderly at Alana and commending the winged woman for her beauty, and then see Alana, suffering labour pains, looking less fondly back at him and responding with a sarcastic comment (Figure 3.1).

The visual bridges between the panels of this scene are based on recur­ ring characters and the sense of their continuing action. Match on action is the most common continuity editing technique in filmic narratives and extremely common in comics as a means of panel transition: to match different shots with continuing action, the basic purpose of which is “to allow space, time, and action to continue in a smooth flow over a series of shots” (Bordwell and Thompson 1986, 231). In this technique, one shot cuts to another shot portraying the action of the subject in the

first shot. Thus, the character’s (or characters’) activity creates a visual bridge between the gaps—that is, the shots—and conveys a sense of con­ tinuity in the scene. The effectiveness of this technique relies on its abil­ ity to suggest a simultaneous sense of temporal and spatial coherence. This is the reason why David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson also argue that match on action is a particularly powerful continuity editing strat­ egy: “If an action carries across the cut, the space and time are assumed to be continuous from shot to shot” (2008, 250). We could further add that match on action as it typically involves a character or characters, provides film narratives and narrative comics alike with a centre of expe­ rience that can function as an additional dimension of continuity, that is, as an experiential frame connecting the narrative units.5 This is because the character imports a sense of subjective experience to the image, un­ like in a match cut (or graphic cut) where bridging between shots, or images in comics, is based on graphic repetition and spatial matching between particular objects, shapes, spaces, or other visual aspects of the composition, suggesting thus an analogy of things seen or, possibly, a visual metaphor.6

One key difference with regard to match on action in comics and films is the so­called 180° rule, which can be seen as the very basis of conti­ nuity editing in film narration,7 but which plays a more limited role in comics. This rule dictates that in a film the scene’s movement—a person walking, people meeting, a car racing along a road, someone swimming laps in a swimming pool—is assumed to take place along a clear­cut vector or axis of action. In other words, the axis of action determines a semi­circle or 180° area where the camera can be placed to present the action. The rule is not absolute in films—it can be broken for specific effects without necessarily undermining the coherence of the shot—but

Figure 3.1 Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. Saga © 2014 Brian K. Vaughan &

avoiding placing the camera beyond the line of action is a powerful means of reinforcing the impression of the continuity and coherence of action. The rule guarantees that the participants in a scene have a con­ sistent eyeline direction and the same left to right relationship, and thus a shared notion of what may be off­screen, and it creates the impression that their movement has a continuous sense of direction.

In comics storytelling, the axis of action can also function as an import­ ant structural principle. Traditional comic strips, where the characters and their action are systematically seen from a steady angle somewhere to the side of the action, follows this rule strictly, thus providing the reader with the experience of stage­like action. However, the lack of perspectival changes in such strips likens the viewing experience to the­ atre rather than modern cinematic fiction. In modern comics that may alter the angle, focus, and width of the perspective, the logic of direction in movement also often respects the culturally bound rule of depicting forward movement from left to right (in a panel as on the page) whereas movement from right to left typically denotes return.8 For instance, in Rob Davis’s graphic novel The Motherless Oven (2014), where the story involves a considerable amount of walking and running—the charac­ ters peregrinate in the streets, walk to school, or escape from school, fleeing from the police, the provost, or their mechanical and sometimes monstrous parents—movement is invariably depicted from left to right (from different angles) with very few exceptions. When the characters appear, unusually, to be moving from right to left, they are forced to run (anywhere) for their lives or save each other, or seek shelter from a rain of knives (literally a rain of knives). The changed direction of movement, thus, stresses the exceptional situation. In turn, panels that show charac­ ters moving towards the reader allow us to concentrate on their facial ex­ pressions, eyeline, and dialogue. In contrast, the movement of characters away from the reader tends to reinforce different perspectival effects, such as establishing an over­the­shoulder perspective, i.e.  sharing the character’s perspective, or emphasising distance, such as the changing distance between characters.9

In today’s longer comics and graphic novels, such as The Motherless Oven, which employ alternating perspectives, the logic of narrative space and the direction of action are seldom challenged by changing the angle across and around the axis of action. However, at the same time, the axis of action is a highly flexible and relative notion in this context.10 The angle can move around the characters and the scene without undermining the sense of logic in the narrative space, the di­ rection of movement, or the relative positions of and distance between the characters. It is, in fact, a kind of default expectation in much of the storytelling in contemporary comics that every panel in a scene changes the angle and field of vision by moving around the characters, their action, or the whole scene. Such constant shifts and contrasts of

perspective are often employed, for instance, for scene­building in con­ versational scenes.

Another medium­specific means of connectivity through the characters in comics is to place and orient the characters in the panel in such a way that their gaze points to the next panel, thereby prompting the reader to look the same way. This may be particularly effective in cases where the or­ der of the panels diverges from the most conventional forms of linearity.11 Awareness of a panel connection may thus be inbuilt into the representa­ tion of the characters through the direction of their movement and gaze.

In this double spread from the fourth instalment of The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (“The Heart’s Desire”, 2005), the story is dominated by a large, panoramic panel which stretches over both pages and ‘bleeds’ to the sides of the pages and which is surrounded at the top and bottom by smaller panels (Figure 3.2). One of the top panels also partly extends over two pages, and the order of reading in the upper strip is reinforced by speech bal­ loons that are superimposed onto the gutters. The double spread port­ rays the moment when the occupants of the prison, who had just been engaged in a leadership dispute, realize the approaching attack of the living dead from another prison block. The living are thus forced to join forces to protect themselves. Here, the protagonist, Rick Grimes, is shown from different angles in three corners of the double spread, as

Figure 3.2 Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn. The Walking Dead4 (2005) © Robert Kirkman.

well as from above and behind (turned towards the right) in the pano­ ramic panel. The constantly changing perspectives and positions do not undermine continuity in the passage; on the contrary, they add to the sense of fast­paced action and decision­making in the scene.

The double spread is unusual to the extent that panels or tiers of panels rarely extend over one page in The Walking Dead series. However, the ar­ rangement is not so extraordinary given that in The Walking Dead, page layouts are dynamic and constantly change according to the action and the dramatic situation. The panel sequences in this double spread are highly typical of the series in terms of their perspectives, i.e.  how the angle of vision constantly shifts from panel to panel around the characters of the scene, with the perspective sometimes focusing on a parti cular character, or approximating their perspective, before panning out from them once more.

The flexible, dynamically changing angle of vision around the characters and their action, irrespective of the 180° rule, does important narrative work in many genres and works of contemporary comics. Unlike narrative films, comics are unconstrained by the need to avoid contradictions in the depiction of space and movement in moving images. On the contrary, they may exploit their necessarily discontinuous form to enhance the effects of a moving perspective without causing jarring effects in narrative develop­ ment and the sense of space. The characters’ changing position and orienta­ tion, furthermore, suggest a sense of continuing action or an ensuing event. What is extremely similar in narrative comics and film, however, is the role of recurring characters in creating a sense of narrative coherence, and the fact that discontinuity in such characters’ action makes scene changes more obvious. In other words, a character shift,12 which may occur either by addition, subtraction, or the complete change of major characters across panels, can indicate that a particular panel transition in fact represents a transition from one event, scene, or episode to another and from one narra­ tively salient element to another.13 Therefore, the change of focus on a con­ tinuing character allows the reader to make inferences about transitions in narrative emphasis and in the larger narrative structure and context.14 Continuing Movement

Repetition of the same character in a sequence of panels can suggest narrative continuity when the sense of action and event is weak or the images depict no action. The showing of a character in stasis (that is, someone who is motionless and unengaged in any obvious activity) can serve as the description of a character or a mental state as well as the means of establishing a scene or a situation.15 Moreover, in contempo­ rary comics such as in The Walking Dead, it is quite common for the images to focus predominantly on the presentation of dramatic situa­ tions by showing the characters’ faces, positions, and gestures from dif­ ferent angles, instead of ‘directly’ depicting their movements or actions.

In traditional superhero comics, action and dialogue are often found to alternate more  frequently, but in The Walking Dead series, despite the centrality of action, the images rarely portray several phases of an on going movement or action. Typically, while the characters in The Walking Dead are engaged in a physical confrontation or are escaping zombies—both very frequent situations in this series—they are also en­ gaged in a conversation.16 Although the action scenes in this series show aspects of the physical action, the focus lies on the characters’ facial ex­ pressions and bodies, their gestures, positions, and situation in relation to one another and the depiction of their engagement in a conversation.

When comics portray movement and phases of action, or when a char­ acter is shown moving from panel to panel, the focus on the character’s spatio­temporal path can serve as a means of continuity in quite specific ways. This technique is effective for the same reason as match on action in films: the depiction of phases of movement creates simultaneous spatial and temporal connections. In addition, however, in the showing of a charac­ ter’s movement, two levels or articulations of sequentiality also coincide: the character’s imagined mobility and the sequence of the panels. Both of these levels of sequentiality help to mask or negate the discontinuous form of nar­ ration present in comics. Movement in itself is a way of connecting story ele­ ments and adding new elements at various levels: The phases of movement can create a rudimentary narrative, while moving characters also introduce the reader to new places and characters, thus giving the reader new rea­ sons to follow the story. Furthermore, the illusion of movement provides the story with a visual logic that helps direct the reader’s attention and the order of reading. The characters’ forward movement—typically moving from left to right— reinforces the forward flow of the reading experience from panel to panel, strip to strip, from top to bottom, or in manga from upper­right corner to left and from the back of the book to the front. Potentially, a character’s movement can also contribute to the reader’s sense of curiosity, surprise, and discovery on the verso page after the page has been turned.

In order to better understand the function of movement in narrative comics in this regard, we should consider briefly the importance of sto­ ries of motion and movement for the development of narrative comics in the nineteenth century. As much research on nineteenth­century comics has shown, in the latter part of the century, the narrative art of com­ ics developed greater continuity between images through the depiction of motion and action. For instance, rather than presenting separate stages of a story or an event, accompanied by captions explaining the gaps in the action between the illustrated scenes, images in sequence were increasingly conceived as phases of a continuous action (Gunning 2014, 41). This development was, in part, inspired by advances in mo­ tion capture in photography and cinema.17

Let us consider a few examples of the depiction of movement from