The Delivery of "Word and Image" in Comics

Comics are a very unique medium because they utilize both words and images to express their purpose. The purpose may be to tell a story, or to depict a viewpoint or paradigm of consciousness. The words and image have a symbiotic relationship in delivering the message, requiring both for its effective communication.

In Brian Fies' Mom's Cancer, image and word purposefully interact to communicate small messages that throughout the story lead to an overarching theme, that cancer is a serious and personal event, amidst the chaos of the surrounding world, and that the system that is designed to heal you cements your fate in the process of healing. The interaction between the words and images is what I will be analyzing here.

In the excerpt from the comic above, Brian Fies utilizes the strength of the words to describe how his mom is feeling with the cancer. The images depict a symbolic representation of mom's sensations and reality, but the audience connects to at a physical and intuitive level. The words, by itself, have a vague representation of meaning, as does the image, however, when combined, the image and word communicate the concept to the mind and body at different levels of our anatomy. The contrast between words and image, and the juxtaposition of them in the scenes are the dynamic that links the split mom on the right back to reality, with us understanding that she is being symbolically represented this way.

Also, the placement of the words and images guides us through the storytelling. In comics, the main focal point usually resides in the words, because that is where the central part of storytelling resides, and in the above image, the placement of the words at the very top with small confining boxes for the image of mom to express herself allow the reader to get a sense of the claustrophobia of understanding that she is experiencing, even from herself. The Text, positioned at the top lead the eye from left to right through the sequence to arrive at Fies as the narrator having a somber message, which depicted without image, is much more powerful. The lack of image, in this case, allows us to fill in the blank with our imagination, which is constantly redefining the situation and connected to our physical body and nervous system, actually reacting in small ways to the physical, allowing us to connect and experience the meaning of the text on multiple levels. As well, the very straightforward text in this segment is balanced in speech by the white bubble on the black background that surrounds mom, and creates a personal and foreboding sense that accompanies the frames, especially as the chronological sequence displays lined features on the hair and face that depict a older and more ill appearance as the sequence continues from starting frame to ending frame.

A similar chronology and contrast of text and image is displayed above. The smooth lines and positioning and stances of the doctors at the left bring a sense of heroism and dynamism to their jobs, portraying them as superheroes, ready the patient. The contrast of this image amidst the storytelling to the right, and the way in which image and word interact to depict the whole of the images of mom enduring various effects and the bipolar reactions of the doctors lead the audience to take in the concept that the doctor's are as lost as the patients in simply dealing with the patients. The zooming in of mom's head in each frame with her on the telephone also commits a very personal relationship between the audience and her, especially with the combination of each set of words depicting a more serious symptom, and the doctor's apparent lack of care or concern.

Also, the use of color in certain parts of the book, rather than the whole book highlight certain aspects to be expressed. The colored mom amidst the black and white representations of the party guests above can be contrasted with the words which bring to mind a polar opposite image: one of party guests alive and well and full of "color," and one of mom's condition and her fate sealed in black-and-white clarity. The color used in the example below, as well as the stylistic drawings of each person contrasted with their black-and-white "normal" representations, depicts each member as a dynamic and powerful individual. In the context with the text, which represents each individual as trying to provide help to mom, the reality is shown where each individual is communicating their good intentions through their egoic self-centeredness, which ends up creating a stark contrast to the super-heroic image depicted in color, the fantasy self amidst crisis. This contrast of image and color gives the audience a chance to step back and be wowed by the ways we as individuals deal with crises, and how our subjective reality can be very different from the objective reality.

Brian Fies succeeds in storytelling by using contrasting imagery, balanced whole images, and the contrasting concepts that evolve from image representing one aspect and text representing another.