2018
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/licences/publicDomain/
Michel Matly, « Hacia un análisis funcional del cómic », HAL-SHS : littérature, ID : 10670/1.hz91pr
Influenced by structural theses, a dominant part of the theoretical research on comics is dedicated to detailing their parts (the image, the text, the margins ...) but considers the content, technique and style outside its field of study, a product of the author’s free will. In other words, this approach practices the “empty cartoon box” policy. All thisleads to a lack of definition of comics, as an “invisible art”, “unidentified cultural objects”, “unrecoverable by theory”. But comics are primarily a mean of communication and each comic book is an intermediary, a transmission machine between an author and a reader. The techniques, the styles obey communication rules. The definition of comics is to be found in the specific way in which they restore a content and optimize its semantic transmission, that is, how it informs, invites to reflection, emotion and commitment. To achieve this, comics exploit the advantages of the image over the text: semantic anteriority, isomorphism with mental mechanisms. Their characteristics—anthropomorphism, amplification by simplification, discontinuity— overload the semantic charge of the drawing and assign it a fundamental role in transmission.