ADAPTING TRISTRAM SHANDY by Adria Young Submitted in ...

work, aided by the relationship between visual cues and textual information.
Visual cues in comic books usually range from the iconic to the textual. McCloud
sees the text and image relationship as an “imitation” of earlier forms of textual
communication (151), and comics incorporate a range of symbolic language extracted
from various other forms of the visual and textual arts. 55 That is, comic books operate in a
multimodal and intermedial way by virtue of the convergence between text and image, all
mediated on the page. “Comics,” McCloud writes, act as an “intermediary between
storyteller and audience” in a way that promotes an “awareness of [the] form” (172) of
the medium. Like Tristram Shandy’s deliberate attention to the material elements of the
text, and Sterne’s inclusion of graphic signifiers, Rowson’s version creates the same
sense of awareness about its form, and role of visual images in narration. In most comic
books, McCloud notes, the “words and images are kept separate” (144). Often, the text
that relates to the action is distinct from the image, much like a Hogarthian panel where
the text supplements the image. McCloud calls this an “interdependent” text to image
relationship (155), which is the most commonly used method in comic book design.
There are a number of other ways that text and image interact, however, like “duo-
specific,” when the same message is conveyed from the text and the image, or “additive,”
when the text “amplifies or elaborates” upon the image, or “montage,” when “parts of
words or images” are used (154-55). Rowson’s comic book, however, employs all three
of these styles, sometimes simultaneously. Multiple dialogues within panels, which are
meant to relate to multiple actions, confuse the priority and order of the text and visual
image. In many panels, there are several conversations going on while the text is visually
recreated. The narrative is not divided as in conventional graphic novels and comics; it is
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