Page layout is one of the most salient features of graphic novels and comics that readers encounter: even before engaging with specific content, an overall impression of the page composition will have already been communicated. In the critical literature on comics and graphic novels, it is also commonly claimed that page composition plays a significant role for narrative construction, pacing, and other aspects of reception. However, in contrast to this prominence, methods for engaging systematically with the analysis of page design in comics and graphic novels are still in their infancy. Empirical studies of the workings of visual page composition are rarer still. In this article, the authors report results, drawing on a diachronic, corpus-based investigation of page composition that illustrates how it is beneficial to approach page composition employing methods from corpus linguistics and multimodality. They show not only that it is possible to isolate trajectories of change in composition over time but also that such studies can be used to provide evidence of functionally-motivated variation in compositional choices.

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The aim of this article is to discuss how comicbooks, as complex multimodal artifacts, discursively interpret and evaluate events during World War II. More specifically, I examine how women are represented in an archive of 69 Captain America stories published by Marvel Comics between March 1941 and March 1943, drawing on theoretical developments within the area of social semiotics (Halliday, 1978; Hodge and Kress, 1988). An important argument within social semiotics and multimodal studies is that texts are a combination of semiotic resources that are used for production and consumption of meanings, in specific contexts (Hodge and Kress, 1988). As a consequence, by examining these semiotic resources one can develop a better understanding of social meanings that circulate in society and how these meanings are structurally organized. By examining forms of discourse for social analysis we may identify ways of addressing particular issues at the level of representation.

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