Over the past decades, various types of graphic narrative, such as comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels, have enjoyed an enthusiastic popular reception.2 While the exploits of superheroes like Superman and Batman have long fascinated readers, licensing and merchandising have made comic books and graphic novels more widely known to the general public than ever. Their popularity may result from the fact that they are prone to what Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin (2000) call 'remediation,' to transmedial storytelling and diversification: many of the novels, movies, animated cartoons, and video games launched today are based on graphic narratives. While graphic narratives are transmedial phenomena due to their remediation potential, they are also intermedial narratives based on words and images that collaborate to relate stories. Whereas writer-artists like Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware are responsible for both the words and pictures of their works, the bulk of graphic narratives are produced by creative teams consisting of writers, scripters, and plotters to outline the complete story, and pencilers, inkers, and colorists to render the story in visual form. Examples are Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Frank Miller, who collaborate with well-known graphic artists such as D ave McKean, Dave Gibbons, and Bryan Talbot. Comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels can be read as stories due to the sequential nature of their panels3: closure, i.e., the readers' ability and constant activity to bridge the gutters that divide the single static pictures, helps to create narrativity. Since graphic narratives combine word and image to tell stories, they are ideal test cases for a discussion of Lukas Etter has contributed the examples from primary sources; Gabride Ripp! is responsible for all other parts of this article. 2 The term 'graphic narrative' was introduced by Hillary Chute and Marianne DeKoven in 2006. There are additional formats outside the English-speaking world, such as Japanese manga and French-Belgian albums, which would equally qualify as 'graphic narratives.' For further analysis, see the chapters by Jaqudine Berndt, Pascal Lefevre, and Jan Baetens and Steven Surdiacourt in this volume. 3 See Eisner 1985; I-&Cloud 1993.
