Contextual Studies 2009

Joseph J. Morgan

Changing the silence

Wordless comics are all around us. They are within our newspapers and our T.V

manuals in the form of diagrams; they are illustrated safety manuals on our trains and

planes, and as storyboards to create a masterpiece Hollywood blockbuster.

This essay will explore a brief history of the silent comic and the impact of film on

silent comics, comparing the differences between the silent comic book artist Adolphe

Willete before the film The Great Train Robbery (1903), and the silent comic book

artist Shaun Tan of 2007. The reason for specifically choosing The Great Train

Robbery as a midway point in the change of silent comics is because it was known as

being the first short film to contain a narrative.

A former Thomas Edison cameraman, Edwin S. Porter created The Great Train

Robbery in New Jersey. The film contained fourteen scenes and was shot on a ten-

minute reel. The Great Train Robbery was the first film to create new and pioneering

ways to tell a narrative, like parallel editing1, camera movement, and jump-cuts2.

These narrative techniques had never been seen in wordless comics before.

1
Parallel editing lets us follow the simultaneous flow of actions at the same time from
two different locations.
2
A jump cut is a cut in film editing in which two sequential shots of the same subject
are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly

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Brief History

The wordless comic itself has firm roots in human history: cave paintings,

hieroglyphics, the Bayeux tapestry, woodcuts3, and engravings4. Several fine artists

have also adopted the wordless comic format. A Week of Kindness (1934) by Max

Ernst5, Hogarth’s series of painting Marriage A-la-Mode6 (1743-1745) and Picasso’s

Guernica (1937)7.

The wordless comic also has very close connections to film. Both film and comic

have evolved through influencing each other. The visual storytelling and symbolism

of the silent comic has helped film create visual narratives that can be understood by

all. Film has helped the silent comic portray perspective, timing and created mood in

a realistic fashion.

Before film 1885: Adolphe Willete

Adolphe Willete (1857-1926), French painter, illustrator, caricaturist, and sequential

artist was born in Chalonssur-Marne. Willete studied at the Ecole Des Beaux and was

taught by the artist Alexandre Cabanel8. Willete was well known for being anti-

Semitic; in fact, in 1889 he ran as an anti-Semitic candidate and created posters of the

same nature. Willete created such works as Les Pierrots9 (1885), Parce Domine10

(1908) and three years before he became an anti-Semitic candidate he created a

selection of wordless comics for La Chat noir weekly11 (1886) see figure 1.
3
F. Masereel. Passionate Journey.
4
Lynd Ward. God’s Man
5
An artist's book composed in collage by Max Ernst.
6
A series of paintings based on a play of the same name.
7
Guernica is a large painting depicting the bombing of Guernica.
8
French painter know for painting The Birth Of Venus.
9
Les Pierrots is a series of illustrations for the book of the same name.
10
Parce Domine is painting for the La Chat noir weekly.
11
La Chat noir weekly was a cabaret and weekly magazine created in 1881.

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 FIGURE 1

Analyzing figure 1, it could be suggested that the wordless comic may have not

changed much since film. However, looking closer there are some differences to the

wordless comic before film and wordless comics of the present day.

One of the most noticeable differences that stand out is the page layout. All panels of

figure 1 are open panels; they all exist on one page and do not spread to other pages.

This style of layout is commonplace for a silent comic of the 1880s. Silent comics

like Adolphe Willette’s C’est Un Conte noir12 (1884), Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen’s

Le Chat Noir13 (1885) and Emil Reinecke’s Ingratitude Is The World’s Reward14

12
C’est Un Conte noir is a silent comic, for La Chat noir weekly, about a windy day
in the park.
13
Steinlen’s Le Chat Noir is a silent comic Created for Le Chat Noir weekly about a
black cat calling to another cat.
14
Ingratitude Is The World’s Reward is a silent comic about a man sleeping while a
burglar awakes his dog.

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(1889) all exist on plain of existence. Some may have long overall story but most

pages would be stand-alone. Will Eisner suggests this style of layout is used as a

narrative device. The empty areas around the panels are used to convey a sense of

space and encourage the reader to fill in the blanks15. This style of storytelling is

created in this fashion so the reader can read random page and do not need to know

what events in the comic happened before of after that page. Film on the other hand

cannot do this.

The closest film can get to this style of layout is scene structure. All films have a set

number of shots that contain small parts of the story, when put together they create

the full story (the scene). A viewer watching a random shot from a film may get

confused, because they would not have any point of reference and never get the full

picture.

The decision to have Figure 1 as a stand-alone story on one page may seem like a

good idea, but it could also be its downfall. The comic contains ten panels that are

small and very cramped, which can be very confusing to the viewer. The panels are

so small that the viewer may miss vital parts of the story, which could result in a

different interpretation. Modern silent comic artists like Ulf K16(1969) would most

likely spread the panels across more pages to give a feeling of time to the panels that

need it (panels one to three) and adding more aspect to aspect panels to the others to

create mood.

The narrative structure of figure 1 also differs from film. It actually has more

15
W. Eisner. Comics And Sequential Art. p45
16
Ulf K is a German comic artist known for making comic series Hieronymus B.

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similarities to theatre. It is noticeable that figure 1 concentrates on timing and eye

level panels, which was also commonplace with comics of the same time. Eisner

suggests this kind of angle creates the idea of realism; the idea of actually being there

and believing it could be real17. It can also be suggested that this angle stems from

theatre, where you can only see the performance from one perspective, your eye level.

Film on the other hand has an advantage: the viewer can be given angles that could

never be given by theatre. Scene two of the film The Great Train Robbery is a good

example, where we see the robbers hiding behind the railroad water tank as the train

they are about to rob pulls up on the other side of the water tank. This all happens in

the same shot, which results in a shot that could never be imitated on stage, and was

never thought to be used in silent comics.

2008: Shaun Tan

Shaun Tan (1974 – to present) was born in Perth, Australia. He graduated from the

university of WA in 1995 with joint honours in fine art and English literature and now

works in Melbourne as a freelance artist and illustrator.

Tans first jobs as an illustrator was creating images for small press science fiction and

horror magazines. Since then he has created children’s picture books (The Rabbits18

2003, The Lost Thing19 2000), mature picture books (The Red Tree20 2003, The

Viewer21 2003), and wordless book The Arrival22 (2007). Tan has also created
17
W. Eisner. Comics And Sequential Art. P93
18
The Rabbits is about anthropomorphic rabbits over colonizing an area of a forest
that doesn’t belong to them.
19
In The Lost Thing a young boy finds a strange large object while scavenging for
bottle tops on his local beach.
20
The Red Tree is a book that experiments with the relationship between random text
and random image.
21
The Viewer is about a boy who collects strange electronic artefacts from the past.
22
In The Arrival a foreigner arrives in a strange city to save money for his family

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concept for the films Horton Hears a Who (2008) and Pixar’s Wall-e (2008). His

work The Lost Thing has been turned into a short animated film and his wordless

book The Arrival has been created into a theatre performance (see figure 2).

FIGURE 2

Studying figure 2 it is possible to see an influence from film. We can see a more

varied amount of shots, perspectives and new narrative tools compared to figure 1,

like aspect shots23, establishing shots24, close ups and aerial shots.

While figure 1 is about layout and timing, figure 2 is about establishing the

surrounding area. Looking closely it is possible to see that panel two is an exterior

establishing shot25 (which we find in most comic books), but with figure 2 Shaun Tan

has decided he would like to create more emphasis on the area, so he adds panel three

to five, Mccloud suggests these panels are fragments of the area that when put
back home.
23
Transitions from one aspect of a place, idea or mood to another.
24
An establishing shot sets up, or "establishes", a scene's setting and/or its
participants.
25
A establishing shot that is outside.

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together in the mind of the audience, creates a theoretical establishing shot without

showing it on the page26 (Mccloud calls this closure). These types of shots are normal

for film; you will find them in most films, from the opening scenes from Hitchcock’s

Rear Window to the aspect shots of the main protagonists H.Q in Frank Miller’s

version of The Spirit.

Conclusion

Looking at Willete and Tans silent comics. It is possible to see the similarities and

differences between them. Both figure 1 and figure 2 have elements of real life, a

realistic style and comment on human behaviour. They both have these in common,

but they do it in different ways. Figure 1 is about layout and timing and figure 2 is all

about establishing an exterior scene. Figure 2 has a slightly more realist style of

drawing to figure 1 and uses more film style narrative tools, compared to the theatre

style of figure 1.

It could be suggested that film has played a big part in the progression of silent

comics. However One could comment on the fact that figure 2 could be different to

figure 1 because Figure 1 was created in 1880, figure 2 was created in 2007 and it

was just a slow progression over time. However this cannot be true, because figure 2

would be very different without the progression of the narrative tools of film. These

tools were only ever imagined because of film technology, like camera positions,

zoom functions, and scene to scene cuts. Over time the silent comic book artists have

adopted and modified these tools to their advantage and used them in their work.

Adapting from film is what has kept the silent comic book new and exciting. As long

as film keeps making new and creative narrative tools, the silent comic will never
26
S. Mccloud. Making Comics. P166

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fade away.

8
Figure 1

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Figure 2

Books:

The Language Of Comics Words and Image. Edited by Robin Varnum and Christina

T. Gibbons University Press Of Mississippi, U.S.A, 2001 P2/P3/P4

Wordless Books The Original Graphic Novels. Edited by David A. Berona Harry N.

Abrams, inc, New York, U.S.A, 2008 P2

Eisner, Will. Comics And Sequential Art, W.W. Norton, New York, U.S.A, 2008

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P4/P5

Mccloud, Scott, Making Comics, Harpercollins, New York, U.S.A, 2006 P7

Tan, Shaun, The Arrival, Arthur A. Levine Books, New York, U.S.A, P6

Ulf K., Hieronymus B., Top Shelf, Marietta, U.S.A, p4

Web:

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Leon_Adolphe_Willette [Accessed 22/02/08]

P2/P3

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/P/picasso_postww2.html [Accessed 01/02/09] P2

http://www.dropbears.com/a/art/biography/Theophile_Alexandre_Steinlen.html

[Accessed 22/02/09] P4

http://www.filmsite.org/grea.html [Accessed 05/03/09] P1

http://books.google.com/books?id=nwgIAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1&dq=

%22William+Hogarth%22&as_brr=1&ie=ISO-8859-1#PPP1,M1 [Accessed

01/02/09] P2

http://www.iment.com/maida/family/mother/vicars/alexandrecabanel.htm [Accessed

02/03/09] P2

http://www.shauntan.net/about.html [Accessed 02/03/09] P6/P7

http://www.tcj.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=813&Itemid=48
[Accessed 02/03/09] P6/P7

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