Glossary of comics terminology

developed specialized terminology. Some several attempts have been made to formalize and define the terminology of comics by authors such as Will Eisner, Scott McCloud, R. C. Harvey and Dylan Horrocks. Much of the terminology in English is under dispute, so this page will list and describe the most common terms used in comics. "Comics" is used as a non-count noun, and thus is used with the singular form of a verb, in the way the words "politics" or "economics" are, to refer to the medium, so that one refers to the "comics industry" rather than the "comic industry". "Comic" as an adjective also has the meaning of "funny", or as pertaining to comedians, which can cause confusion and is usually avoided in most cases ("comic strip" being a well-entrenched exception). "Comic" as a singular noun is sometimes used to refer to individual comics periodicals, what are known in North America as "comic books". "Underground comix" is a term first popularized by cartoonists in the underground comix movement of the 1960s and 1970s in an attempt to move the word away from its etymological origins. Art Spiegelman in particular has been a proponent of its usage, hoping to highlight the fact that the medium is capable of mature, non-comedic content, as well as to emphasize the hybrid nature of the medium ("co-mix"). "Alternative comics" is a term covering a range of American comics that have appeared since the 1980s, following the comix movement of the late 1960s/early 1970s. Other terms used as synonyms for "comics" are "sequential art", a term coined and popularized by Will Eisner, and graphic novel, which is normally used to denote book-form comics, although this usage is not consistent. A panel (alternatively known as frame or box) is one drawing on a page, and contains a segment of action. A page may have one or many panels, and panels are frequently, but not always, surrounded by a border or outline, whose shape can be altered to indicate emotion, tension or flashback sequences.

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Dense Multitask Learning to Reconfigure Comics

Sabine Süsstrunk, Mathieu Salzmann, Deblina Bhattacharjee

In this paper, we develop a MultiTask Learning (MTL) model to achieve dense predictions for comic panels to, in turn, facilitate the transfer of comics from one publication channel to another by assisting authors in the task of reconfiguring their narrativ ...

IEEE2023

Estimating Image Depth in the Comics Domain

Sabine Süsstrunk, Mathieu Salzmann, Martin Nicolas Everaert, Deblina Bhattacharjee

Estimating the depth of comics images is challenging as such images a) are monocular; b) lack ground-truth depth annotations; c) differ across different artistic styles; d) are sparse and noisy. We thus, use an off-the-shelf unsupervised image to image tra ...

2021

Sequential art

In comics studies, sequential art is a term proposed by comics artist Will Eisner to describe art forms that use s deployed in a specific order for the purpose of graphic storytelling (i.e., narration of graphic stories) or conveying information. The best-known example of sequential art is comics. The term "sequential art" was coined in 1985 by comics artist Will Eisner in his book Comics and Sequential Art. Eisner analyzed this form into four elements: design, drawing, caricature, and writing.

Cartoonist

A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and graphic components of the work as part of their practice. Cartoonists may work in a variety of formats, including booklets, comic strips, comic books, editorial cartoons, graphic novels, manuals, gag cartoons, storyboards, posters, shirts, books, advertisements, greeting cards, magazines, newspapers, webcomics, and video game packaging.

Graphic novel

A graphic novel is a long-form, fictional work of sequential art. The term graphic novel is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comics scholars and industry professionals. It is, at least in the United States, typically distinct from the term comic book, which is generally used for comics periodicals and trade paperbacks (see American comic book). Fan historian Richard Kyle coined the term graphic novel in an essay in the November 1964 issue of the comics fanzine Capa-Alpha.