Text - Rhodes University

intended impact. Closeups and cropping are used to create tension and uncertainty [fig
35], particularly through a constant swing from extreme closeup to a more distant view.
The character is silent in the first two pages; the introduction of speech is linked to the
overall pace of the comic, and functions as a verbal closeup mechanism. Fluctuating
background tonalities, from white to grey to black, reinforce dramatic moments rather
than depicting realistic lighting. Aesthetic qualities are subservient to information.
In this story I have realised some of the potential of traditional comics: used particularly
as a storytelling medium, they convey information differently from the way text or
pictures do. Through the visual movement of the story, through the actual transitions
from frame to frame that create an illusion of movement, a separate, underlying reality
is suggested. The real comic is thus an illusion created by the reader as he or she reads,
and exists in the relation between frames rather than in the frames themselves. In other
comics I explored comic techniques or tools for their own sake, for their visual interest,
not for the purposes of the story. Neither the story nor the pictures should intrude on the
unity of the comic; therefore the story is integrated through efficient pruning of the text,
and the pictures through coherent, simplified compositions. This is a lesson Bitterkomix
learnt early in their publishing career.
Nothing in Common is an earlier comic of mine that had been printed in Damn New
Thing, a Johannesburg fanzine, in drastically reduced form: all four pages were fitted
onto one. The justification for reprinting it in the original form was that it was designed
around page to page transitions, and much was lost in the reduction.
It is a verbally constructed series of very separate incidents and thoughts. Text and
pictures have bearing on each other, but it is their independance that is actually
exploited.
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