Book review: Who Understands Comics? Questioning the Universality of Visual Language Comprehension

Running through the Who, Where, and When: A Cross-cultural Analysis of Situational Changes in Comics

“…More substantive corpus analyses have shown similar results by comparing books within the more extensive Visual Language Research Corpus (VLRC) which includes annotations of over 300 comics from the United States, Europe, and Asia (Cohn, 2020a;Cohn et al, In prep). This corpus includes analysis of three primary situational dimensions: changes between characters, spatial locations, and states of time.…”

“…At the most basic level, to form a coherent situation model, readers need to understand that the characters in the second panel in Figure 1a are the same as the characters in the next panel(s), despite the apparent visual dissimilarities. This coreference across panels has been called the continuity constraint (Cohn, 2020a). Similarly, readers need to be able to map different moments or parts of an action across panels into one larger event.…”

“…Similarly, readers need to be able to map different moments or parts of an action across panels into one larger event. Cues signaling changes in states form the activity constraint (Cohn, 2020a). While these concepts might appear simple to comprehend, recognition of these constraints by children typically develops around or after the age of four and adults not familiar with visual narratives may still struggle with them (Cohn, 2020a).…”

“…Cues signaling changes in states form the activity constraint (Cohn, 2020a). While these concepts might appear simple to comprehend, recognition of these constraints by children typically develops around or after the age of four and adults not familiar with visual narratives may still struggle with them (Cohn, 2020a). Exposure and practice with visual narratives thus modulates the ability to construct a coherent situation model.…”

“…In this analysis, Asian comics had comparatively fewer time changes along with more changes between characters than was found in European or American comics. Further studies both using the VLRC and outside it have shown that, for American comics, frequency of these situational changes have developed over time (Bateman et al, 2021;Cohn, 2020a;, possibly due to the influence of manga (e.g., Cicci, 2015). These studies thus suggest that comics from varying places may have distinct flows of information across panels, and either single or multiple aspects may change across panels.…”