Comics and Sequential Art

Will Eisner

What has long been my fascination with comics is the movement of a story within the few pages allotted for a single issue. The physical medium is static. Yet the story told has to move from point A to point B by the end of the issue, however short the distance between may be. The arrangement of the images, word balloons and even the text itself is all directed towards movement. The first issue of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's We3 has a several pages containing nearly a hundred panels. Each panel presents only one image yet not only is movement conveyed between each panel but suspense and tension as well. The most apparent parts of a comic are the art and words but what drives a comic is all of the underlying elements such as the story, the structure and the layouts. It's the mix between the artistic visuals and the literary tales.