The System of Comics by Thierry Groensteen

Author:Thierry Groensteen
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2007-06-05T04:00:00+00:00

1.11.2 A Defense and Illustration of the Regular Layout

With regard to the two principles that must necessarily govern the layout of a comics page, the choice of a regular layout immediately eliminates all difficulties. The frames are more than compatible because they are identical and no doubt is introduced to the reader with regard to the order in which the panels are linked.

If the regular layout was chosen only for this convenience, it might reflect a certain laziness on the part of the cartoonist, an abandonment to a mechanical situation. In fact, this layout has not found great favor amongst the theorists. In the first version of his study (1983), Benoît Peeters spoke of a “mutilated instrument,” emphasizing that some comics submit “to an imaginary constraint, inherited from another discipline”79—cinema, of course, where the size of screen stays constant. This notion of mutilation did not reappear when the text was rewritten in 1991, where Peeters developed the advantages that he wanted to attribute to this layout in certain cases.

The most interesting uses of this principle are those that . . . push this constancy of the frame in order to achieve a kind of “static shot” unwinding on the page. The humorist cartoonists like Schulz, Feiffer, Bretécher, Wolinski or Copi have provided remarkable examples of sequences where the slightest modification of the regularity of the whole takes on a considerable value, favoring a true entrance into the drawing.

Even a realist adventure cartoonist like Hugo Pratt is often served by this type of apparatus . . . , which concentrates the attention of the reader on some minimal modifications in the action and the attitudes. (p. 38)

In the second edition of Case, planche, récit in 1998, Peeters appeared even better disposed to the consideration of the regular layout. But those who, in the interim, have adopted his categories have not demonstrated a great enthusiasm for this kind of layout; it is in this concessionary mode that Baetens and Lefèvre admit that “the mechanical allure of the conventional layout does not necessarily exclude subtle and ingenious solutions.” I believe that this understates the matter, and that it is time to rehabilitate the regular orthogonal grid as a model that is at once rigorous and which offers a number of interesting possibilities to the breakdown and to the braiding. The argument advanced by Peeters is extremely strong; the fact of forcing the frame to observe the greatest neutrality allows it to elevate other parameters whose visibility and, therefore, efficacity would be considerably reduced if the layout were given over to useless fantasias. It can be seen, for example, in the play of physiognomy in Bretécher: it is evident that the differential value of every shrug or frown of the eyebrow is accentuated when no other element is changed.

Moreover, far from being the exclusive prerogative of creators of sketchily drawn satirical comics, the regular layout has often characterized ambitious and innovative works, from Polly and Her Pals by Cliff Sterrett to Fires by Mattotti or even Watchmen by Moore and Gibbons.

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