Exploring Pictorial Runes in Luca Enoch’s Comic Book Series Gea

Abstract

Drawing on the work of Forceville (2005, 2006, 2011), who employed linguistic tools in analysing comics, the paper deals with pictorial runes as a specific type of visual information found in comic books. As Kennedy (1982) proposes, pictorial runes are graphic devices used in pictures to modify the literal depictions of objects, intended to convey certain aspects of those objects that are otherwise difficult to depict literally. In comics, they are usually employed to imply various emotions, such as anger, fear, pain, or surprise, and indicate speed or the direction of a moving object, among other things. Using the research model presented by Forceville (2011), the paper aims at identifying and categorising pictorial runes in a popular Italian comic book series Gea, in an attempt to corroborate the above method and add to the list of already inventoried runes. Furthermore, the new runes found in this comic book series show evidence of being indexical, rather than symbolic, signs. The paper also briefly outlines the distribution of runes across the entire series.

Meaning above (and in) the head: Combinatorial visual morphology from comics and emoji

“…These combinations require a comprehender to link modifying information (like hearts, lightbulbs) to a more stable form (like a characters’ head) to derive a meaning beyond their parts. Because of these relationships, these combinations have been compared with affixes in the morphology of language (Cohn, 2013 , 2018 ; Engelhardt, 2002 ; Forceville, 2011 ), making them “lexical items” in “visual languages” of graphics which may vary across cultures (Cohn, 2013 ; Cohn & Ehly, 2016 ; Forceville et al, 2010 ; Tasić & Stamenković, 2018 ). Because these forms integrate different sources of meaning in noniconic ways, and are growing in ubiquity throughout society, they provide a way to investigate combinatorial meaning-making outside the domain of spoken or signed languages.…”

Multimodal Adaptations of Baš-Čelik: From a Fairy Tale to a Comic and Illustrated Book

“…Lastly, the third area of interest addressed various comics-related issues such as page layout, colour usage, representation of speed and motion, and the presence or absence of graphic devices for enhancing emotional content. In this context, we relied on the work of Cohn (2013) and Forceville (2011), as well as some of our previous studies (Stamenković & Tasić 2014;Tasić & Stamenković 2017 to analyse the use of pictorial runes and upfixes for representing speed, motion, and emotion in the comic book. We integrated all these tools into a comprehensive methodological approach with the goal of thoroughly examining these specific instances of adaptation from multiple perspectives.…”

“…The study is a continuation of our efforts to analyse folk literature adapted to different forms of popular culture. It started with "Visualising an Oral Epic: Lobačev's Comic Book Tsar Dušan's Wedding" (Tasić & Stamenković 2023), and it shares a large part of its methodology with this study. The primary focus of our investigation lies in three crucial aspects of these adaptations.…”

Facial expressions in comics: an empirical consideration of McCloud’s proposal

“…As far as certain types of comics are concerned, the right kind of (primary) emotions is enhanced by the use of ‘pictorial runes’ (Forceville, 2005a, 2011; Tasić and Stamenković, 2017). These cues were of course absent here.…”

“…Cohn, 2013; Forceville et al, 2010; Groensteen, 2007). A third element is motion and emotion lines (sometimes called ‘pictorial runes’): such lines appear to constitute a limited set and to be used with a specific meaning (Bateman and Wildfeuer, 2014; Forceville, 2005a, 2011; Tasić and Stamenković, 2017). None of these elements, however, pertains to the depiction of comics characters’ faces and bodies (but cf.…”