The System of Comics - Softcover

Groensteen, Thierry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1604732598 ISBN 13: 9781604732597

Publisher: University Press of Mississippi, 2009

Synopsis

This edition of Thierry Groensteen's The System of Comics makes available in English a groundbreaking work on comics by one of the medium's foremost scholars. In this book, originally published in France in 1999, Groensteen explains clearly the subtle, complex workings of the medium and its unique way of combining visual, verbal, spatial, and chronological expressions. The author explores the nineteenth-century pioneer Rodolphe Töpffer, contemporary Japanese creators, George Herriman's Krazy Kat, and modern American autobiographical comics.

The System of Comics uses examples from a wide variety of countries including the United States, England, Japan, France, and Argentina. It describes and analyzes the properties and functions of speech and thought balloons, panels, strips, and pages to examine methodically and insightfully the medium's fundamental processes.

From this, Groensteen develops his own coherent, overarching theory of comics, a "system" that both builds on existing studies of the "word and image" paradigm and adds innovative approaches of his own. Examining both meaning and appreciation, the book provides a wealth of ideas that will challenge the way scholars approach the study of comics. By emphasizing not simply "storytelling techniques" but also the qualities of the printed page and the reader's engagement, the book's approach is broadly applicable to all forms of interpreting this evolving art.

About this title

Book Description:

An authoritative exploration of how the comics achieve meaning, form, and function

From the Publisher:

This authoritative exploration of how the comics achieve meaning, form, and function

--- Provides first English-language edition of a groundbreaking study of comics

--- Includes a new introduction by the translators that puts Groensteen’s work in critical and historical context

--- Provides English-language scholars with Groensteen’s revolutionary examination of how the mechanics of the comics create meaning

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1604732598
• ISBN 13: 9781604732597
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 204