The Comic Book Film Adaptation by Liam Burke

Author:Liam Burke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2015-03-11T04:00:00+00:00

FIG. 4.6 While employing their unique means of expression, these comparable scenes from the comic book The Amazing Spider-Man #33 and film Spider-Man 2 have similar compositions.

Unsurprisingly, there are some grammatical correspondences between film editing and comic layouts. In comic books, the introductory panel of a story will usually be a larger panel that can take up an entire “splash” page. In this respect, the introductory panel of a comic is similar to the establishing shots often used in cinema, in that they both institute the spatial logistics for the subsequent panels or shots. Nonetheless, layout is widely considered specific to comics with Groensteen suggesting that comics scholars should “leave the editing to the cinema (and to the photo-novel) and fasten ourselves to the study of the page layout—which the cinema cannot do” (102). Indeed, in cinema each frame follows the next, while on the comic book page panels coexist. This co-presence of imagery has led McCloud to conclude that “unlike other media, in comics … both the past and future are real and visible and all around us” (Understanding Comics 104).8 Cinema meanwhile, despite the presence of numerous past-time indicators such as dissolves, fades, and superimpositions, is inescapably fixed in the present tense.9

To fully appreciate “What Comics Can Do That Films Can’t (And Vice Versa),” one need only look at similar sequences from The Amazing Spider-Man #33 (February 1964) and Spider-Man 2 (Raimi 2004). In these two parallel moments, shown in figure 4.6, Spider-Man is pinned under tons of falling debris. The rhetorical borders of the comic allow for narrow panels to capture his anguish and pain. Although the screen size cannot change in a film, the shot scale tightens to a close-up that captures the same emotion. Furthermore, in both comic and film, the proscenium arch widens to larger panels and wider shots as Spider-Man finds the energy to lift the crippling weight; suggesting that panels and shots, though indigenous to their own forms, share some commonality.

Nonetheless, while Spider-Man 2 may employ close-ups and wide shots in a manner similar to the comic, the spectator has neither the control nor the layout necessary to contrast the hero’s efforts with his eventual triumph. Conversely, the comic’s elegant layout ensures that Spider-Man’s escape from the debris is more triumphant through the careful juxtaposition of the hero’s struggle (conveyed in tight panels on the first page) with his inevitable emergence, which explodes into an entire splash page.10 As Groensteen notes, in comics “the focal vision never ceases to be enriched by peripheral vision” (19).

Ultimately, comics and cinema do share some parallels—such as graphic narrative base units that have a measure of autonomy, and which are organized by punctuation-like transitions. Cinema can also achieve a measure of participation, yet the reader contribution necessitated by comics is far greater than that of film. Furthermore, while both comics and cinema rely on montage, the co-presence of images in comics (as opposed to the sequential replacement of images in cinema) can achieve results that cinema cannot match, and vice versa.

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