378

Spectacular Consumption:
Visuality, Production, and
the Consumption of the Comics Page

Frank Verano

In the recent mini-series lVE3(Vertigo/DC Comics, 2004-05), one of the

themes creators Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely explore is the function of
language -- the language of the comics page, how one describes things, and
auditory communication in a visual medium. How is language structured, and
how does one consume it? In one particular panel in the third issue, a bomb,
emitting flashes of white, attached to discarded cybernetic armor peeks out
from beneath a staircase. Within this panel are four small, square panels ofthe
glowing bomb, beginning with an extreme close up, and ending with the bomb
in full frame . The panels wind around from behind the stairs, so that the first is
actually "cut off' by the diagonal staircase (Morrison, 2005: 107). What makes
this illustration worthy of note is that these four panels-within-a-panel are not
meant to represent the visual recognition of the bomb -- the drawing in the
"master" panel does that -- but, rather, the "bleeping noise," the sound of the
bomb reaching the soldiers' ears from behind the stairs. Morrison and Quitely
elected to represent a sound effect -- always a controversial topic in comics -
- using an illustrated symbolic signifier, challenging the way such an effect is
not only traditionally represented on the comics page, but the way one
consumes a sound in "real life." Essentially, the reader is consuming a sound
through vision, as opposed to hearing.
Information in comics is, of course, transmitted to the viewer for
consumption on a page, in ju*taposed sequential panels. Since comics'
inc.eption in the mid-1930s, the comics page has developed from merely a
means of processing infonnation to a stand-alone artform unto itself. However,
this evolution has not been determined solely by the innovative creator;
rather, changing production standards and marketplace conditions have set
the ways in which creators present their stories, and, thus, the way comics are
consumed as a text.
This argument -- that comics operate under conditions set by the modes
of production -- holds true for any industry, as visual culture analyst Don
Slater examines in his essay "Marketing Mass Photography." He contends
that "any economic activity labours under the imperatives of its mode of
production, operating strategically within the terms set by a level of technology,
a form of economic organization .... And a complex of other social relations"
(Slater, 2003 :291). These technological, economic, and social conditions that
structure production, in turn, aim at -- and create -- specific forms of

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consumption. Thus, the presentation of information in any industry -- be it

photography, film, or comic books -- creates a certain kind of consumer, for it
determines the way in which he consumes and processes that information.
Who is the consumer of comic books, and what are the conditions of
consumption?
Comics, in their inception, were a crude form, with little artistic merit. The
comic book format was conceived as an avenue for reprinting daily strips in
1933 by M.C. Gaines, a salesman at Eastern Color Printing, simply by folding
down the large sheets used for Sunday comics into a seven by ten inch
pamphlet. Gaines' invention not only kept the finn's color presses in operation,
but also gave the publisher a means of earning extra revenue to payoff creditors
(Daniels, 1998: 17). Pages were organized economically; the more material that
fit onto a page, the quicker the debts could be paid off. By the time that
Superman -- comics' first genuine phenomenon -- debuted in 1938, little had
changed. Creators in this era worked within very imposing storytelling
restrictions; the anthology nature of most comics allowed for, typically, three
stories per issue, between six and eleven pages in length (S. Moore, 2003).
Because the plot had to be established and resolved quite swiftly, the creators'
main prerogative was fitting as much story information onto a single page as
possible. The most efficient way to achieve storytelling clarity was to divide
the page into an eight panel grid, which became the standard. For example, in
1941 's Superman #6, the pacing is quite brisk, for the primary focus is to push
the story along in a linear fashion, and not to Iinger on any particular moment.
As a result, Wayne Boring's layouts feature very little moment-to-moment or
action-to-action transitions; rather, scene-to-scene transitions dominate, with
three scene changes occurring on this particular page.
Further, comics in this period relied heavily on expository dialogue and
narration to explain the story to readers. For example, the text of panel six on
page four of this particular Super11lan issue reinforces the already-obvious
visual with such redundancy that it is laughable by present sensibilities (Siegel
and Boring, 1941 :4). However, this degree of anchorage was necessary in an
era of poor printing to direct the reader to the way the image should be identified
and interpreted. In his seminal essay, "Rhetoric of the Image," Roland Barthes
examines the relation of 1co11as (image) and Logas (word), with an emphasis
on the function of the linguistic message when text is linked to an image, as in
advertisements and, of course, comics. As Barthes explains: "At the level of
the literal message, the text replies to the question: what js jt? The text helps
to identify purely and simply the elements of the scene and the scene itself; it
is a matter ofa denoted description of the image" (Barthes, 2003:37). On a level
beyond identification -- that of interpretation -- "the text dkects the reader
through the signifieds of the image" as "a kind of vice" that binds him to a
certain connoted meaning over another (37). How should the image be read?
Comics of the Golden Age were closed texts; there was little room for

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interpretation -- or, rather, misinterpretation -- because text was anchored to

image to the point of redundancy. This was precisely the point. True to Karl
Marx's contention that "Production thus produces not only the object but
also the manner of consumption," publishers were creating an audience along
with the pamphlet that came offthe press (Slater, 2003:291). Because oftheir
poor production level, easy comprehension, and overall "low art" quality,
comics created an audience of children and subliterates who easily understood
the foregrounded dialogue and narration and the primitiveness of the art.
Production standards at the time simply did not allow for anything elaborate,
given that comics were a cheap spectacle of brief entertainment, and nothing
more. It is not until the 1980s that technology and talent coalesce to allow text
and image to function in a completely complimentary relationship where the
unity of message is realized on a higher level. Writer Alan Moore's Swamp
Thingis often hailed as the forerunner in this -- Barthes' concept of relay -- a
true inter-dependency of word and image.
Moreso than in any other era that follows, comics in this, their Golden
Age, were literally consumed by their audience. Readers visually digested the
material, and, when no further nutrients could be gleaned from the text, out it
went -- into the rubbish. A cheap thrill , quickly consumed and disposed of,
comics of the late 1930s-1940s provided a spectacle on par with their production
values -- relatively low.
In the early 1960s, however, with the rise of Marvel Comics, standards
shifted. Creators were granted more space within which to work, as single
stories usually ran 19 to 24 pages; however, the pacing of the -- still self-
contained -- stories remained more or less on par with that of their predecessors,
with the six to nine panel grid still operating as the standard (S. Moore, 2003).
In the mid-1960s, artist Ja~ Kirby's groundbreaking work on Fantastic FOlil
with writer Stan Lee shifted the paradigm. Kirby had moved into a looser, morl'
action-oriented style that emp loyed three to four panel pages, and,
occasionally, full-panel pages.
Kirby's storytelling breakthroughs -- which soon became industry
standards -- were rooted in a change in production standards. Whereas artisls
previously had drawn original art onto boards twice as large as the printed
size, the new standard original art size became 1'h times printed size in the mid
1960s (S. Moore, 2003). Thus, it became more difficult to squeeze the traditional
eight panels onto the page with relative clarity. However, by phasing out t1w
sometimes cumbersome eight panel grid and reducing the number of pane ls.
the smaller art board actually opened up the page -- to a new kind of gaze and
consumption. Additionally, with Lee letting him control the pacing of thl
story, Kirby's "innovative cosmic vistas" could now take up as much spac\"
as they demanded (S. Moore, 2003).
Another factor that led to the breakdown of the panel-per-pa l'\"
construction was the shifting comics marketplace, which was quickly movill '

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from comics as a cheap, once-and-done novelty, to a serialized medium that

had an audience that followed stories month after month. Knowledge of this
led to writers being able to expand their stories, opening up from the traditional,
self-contained issue, to two, or even multi-part stories. Comics were advancing
beyond their pulp magazine origins (the three story anthology structure), and
were beginning to feel the influence of movie serials, or television soap operas.
With this ongoing, open-ended framework to work within there was less of a
rush to compact story information into a given space as efficiently as possible;
creators knew (or hoped) the audience would return the following month for
the story's resolution. In this regard, the consumer was willing to wait for the
story to be told in its needed space.
In the late 1980s, the growing awareness of comics as an artform -- and,
especially, the comics page as a work of art unto itself -- led to significant
changes in consumption. Two particular catalysts allowed for such an artistic
movement to occur -- the establishment of the direct market, in the form of
comic book specialty stores, and technological improvements. Specialty stores
created a market for alternative, mature, and more "artistic" comics to prosper,
because the newsstand, convenient store, and supermarket marketplace could
not support "adult" content in an avenue accessible by children -- nor is there
a particularly strong market for "high art" at Seven-Eleven. Furthermore, the
birth of specialty stores almost single-handedly allowed the innovations of
Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Neil Gaiman to take place by
giving sllch material a market.
By the late 1980s, creators had become aware of the framework within
which they worked, and how they could exploit it for artistic ends. For example,
1986's WatcilmeJ1, chapter five, "Fearful Symmetry," is laid out symmetrically,
reflecting the themes explored in the issue around the character Rorschach.
The page compositions of pages one and twenty-eight are mirror opposites,
as are those of pages two and twenty-seven, and so on, until the pages meet
at the fold in the center of the book. Furthermore, not only is the panel
construction symmetrical, but their content is, as well. For example, the
characters in panel four of pages ten and nineteen are inverted in both their 2-
D and 3-D space within the frame (A. Moore, 1987). This kind of storytelling
complexity was unheard of at the time, and greatly affected the way in which
the story was consumed and interpreted by the reader. Thus, story is
understood not only by the book's content, but by its form, as well.
In terms of the exploiting of the structures of production for artistic
ends, Alan Moore (with artist lH. Williams III) perhaps topped himself with
the final issue of his series Prometbea (#32, America's Best Comics, 2005).
Alan Moore's "Answers to Life, the Universe and Everything" is an
exceptionally crafted reading experience; the creators constructed a story
that could be read both forwards and backwards, but the highest storytelling
thrill is achieved when the issue is pulled apart and reassembled according to

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a numeric code into a double-sided poster. Although, in the posters, the pages
are organized into a different order than they were when stapled together,
each page transitions perfectly into the next; both the story and art are so
precisely crafted that the issue offers the reader different, satisfying, and
challenging storytelling experiences in whichever format he chooses to
consume it. A treatise on eternal recurrence, the book's structure of
consumption stands as an example of the very concept Moore explores through
the book's content. As with Watchmen, Moore's awareness of the printing
process, and the technical aspects of comic book production make his
storytelling innovation possible.
While new technologies in the 1980s certainly made new processes
possible, they were not invented in a vacuum; that is, there must be a need
that brings this technology about. A useful model to understand this process
is that of the feedback loop, where the demand for certain technology creates
it. As writer/artist Frank Miller revealed in a 1985 interview with The Comks
Journal:

But now, very suddenly, as a direct consequence of the increased power

of the talent the ante has been raised. Comics are being published in
formats that demand the level of attention from production that slick
magazines and fine-art books do . And, just as the talent has to shift
gears, at every single stage of the craft, so [doI the production departments
(Quoted in George, 2003 :45).

An impedance as minor as an undersized camera lens prevented artists from

doing bleeds off the sides of pages for decades, until Miller pressed the point.
Miller argued that it would have cost $100 to replace, but that was not the
point -- "It had toflO with the essential worthlessness of the product itself.
There wasn ' t a sense that comics were a worthwhile thing" (Quoted in
Brownstein, 2005:108). But that perception was changing.
In the 1983 mini-series, Ronin (DC Comics), Frank Miller experimented
with a new format that went beyond the monthly, 22 page comic -- Ronin waH
serialized in six, 48-page issues that featured higher-quality paper and covel'
stock, which DC called the "prestige format." The book's entire production
process stands as a quintessential example of the feedback loop at work. One
particular double-page spread in the fourth issue is almost completely black ,
except for four frames of a female protagonist's face being consumed by a
swarm of silhouette hands. However, this posed a problem for the printel',
because "due to the way that the paper feeds into the press, the spread would
inevitably suffer from vertical streaks, cutting across the black. To fix this, [th '
printer] added a fifth plate to the printing, at their own suggestion" (Quoted ill
George, 2003:46). As a result of challenging the long-standing, traditional
structures of production, Miller produced a page that was challenging to th~'
eye, because nothing like it had ever been seen in a comic before. The new
development in printing transformed what was artistically possible on till'
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 383

comics page.
Ronin is also oftentimes credited as championing the decompression of
modem comic books; certainly, Miller, who was heavily influenced by Eastern
storytelling methods at the time, sought to relieve American comics of their
goal-oriented "constipation," and refocus on the moment and its emotional,
technical and cinematic implications. Quite possibly his most revolutionary
work, Ronin saw Miller develop new ways of constructing time and the
depicting of the moment, as well as laying out the page in ways that challenged
the typical mode of visual consumption. As columnist Stuart Moore recalls:

In an early '80s interview, [Miller] d iscussed hi s decision to depict a

four-page sequence where the main character merely li es, beaten, in a
pile of trash , for greater emotiona l impact. At the time, that kind of
'waste of space' was unheard of in American com ics . Now it 's common
(2003 ).

Another particularly effective scene depicts the build-up and eventual

consummation -- in 29 panels over two pages -- of a passionate encounter
between the book's two protagonists. A third page cuts to a splash of the
characters in sensual embrace; its pointed juxtaposition against the density
ofthe previous two pages creates a visually arresting montage (Miller, 1987).
Reading Miller's panels -- which consist of tight close ups of hands, lips and
eyes -- is the equivalent of holding a film reel up to the light and following the
frames in sequence -- the "cuts" between panels are that tight.
Miller's second foray into the prestige format book, Batman: The Dark
Knight Returns (DC Comics, 1986), took his experiments further -- while many
sequences perfected decompression techniques first introduced in Ronin --
such as the flashbacks to the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents -- much ofthe
book's dense page layouts and tight panels overloaded the reader with
information, miming the activity oflate 1980s television media. 2001 's The
Dark Knight Stnkes Again (DC Comics) plays with the idea ofthe page as a
meta-panel -- juxtaposing images on the page are intended to be consumed
simultaneously in the context of one overriding panel -- the page. Because
"you're experiencing panel three when you're looking at panel one," the reader
consumes the page as an entity, as a single, complete moment (Quoted in
Brownstein, 2005 :87). Though a "cinematic" technique, Miller argues that the
juxtaposition of "contrasting or related images that are happening to take
place at the same time" works better in comics, which uses spatial relationships
to create timing, as opposed to film, a time-based medium (87).
Miller's appropriation and mimicry of another medium's representational
code is highly revealing of motifs in the ongoing consumption of spectacle. In
Ronin, Miller's cinematic storytelling illustrates his film influence, while The
Dark Knight Returns is obsessed with television, and The Dark Knight Strikes
Again plays with digital age hypermedia saturation techniques. Looking again

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384

at comics ofthe Golden Age, with their persistent anchorage of text to image,
it is quite evident that they still worked within a signification process that
relied primarily on text to transmit narrative content -- that of the magazine
tradition that they stemmed from. Later in history, of course, comics read very
much like movie serials or soap operas, for a very smart reason -- this was the
form of consumption that most readers were familiar with and could easily
process. On this point, comics innovator Will Eisner rationalizes:

When people ta lked about the cinematic qua li ty of The Spirit, that was
because I rea lized when I was doing The Spjlit that movies were creating
a visua l language and I had to use the same language, because when you
are writing to an audience that is speaking Swahi li, you ' d better write in
Swah il i (88).

In The Dark Knight Retl.lflJs, Miller 's incessant crosscutting between scenes
and seemingly nonexistent attention span mimics channel surfing -- a
significant creative decision, considering that this was how audiences
consumed information at the time -- "cruising." Roland Barthes describes
cruising as a way of consuming culture in which the viewer does not linger in
one place for too long; he "is licensed to use whatever had been appropriated
in whatever way and in whatever combination proves the most useful and the
most satisfying" (Hebdige, 2003: 108). Whereas this model of the gaze is useful
in understanding one mode of visual consumption that typified the era and
was incorporated into the language of the comics page, how is the viewer
situated to consume "decompression"?
Miller took decompression a step beyond Ronin with his creator owned
Sin Ciry:.(Dark Horse, 1991), which gave Miller free reign in terms of length,
content and form. Although originally anthologized, Sin City has achieved
its greatest success in collected editions, where, interestingly, Miller adds
pages not published in the serialized chapters. A master of pacing, Miller is
keenly aware that reading a story in a collection -- as a whole -- as compared
to the monthly format is a different experience; his page additions "pad" the
story in a way that adjusts to the way the reader consumes a story in this
particular format. One such addition to Sin City: The Hard Goodbye is three
splash pages ofthe character Nancy performing a striptease (Miller, 200 1:56-
58). While the inclusion of these three pages does not affect the plot, it
completely overhauls the pacing of the scene. The choreography of Miller's
layouts is trance-like -- time slows, and the viewer is caught up in the moment
that Miller expands upon. The expectations that the consumer has of the
single issue, however, would make this sequence awkward -- and perhaps a
bit self-indulgent -- ifit was included in that format.
Furthermore, in Sin City, Miller chose to draw his story out at a relaxed
pace through the use oflarge panels that maximize the melodrama. Sin City, in
stark contrast to other American books on the market at the time, averaged
approximately three panels per page. Miller's large panels incite the viewer's
IJOCA, Spring 2006
 385

gaze to linger on a page that depicts, oftentimes, a single moment; in The Hard
Goodbye, eight pages of protagonist Marv plodding along in the rain is
essentially a single moment, but Miller's decision to stretch this moment out,
page after page, builds tension and creates atmospheric melodrama that an
ordinary two or three panel signifier is incapable of (128-135).
At this significant paradigm shift, where is the viewer? What is his
relation to the material? In a work like 1998 's 300 (Dark Horse), Miller, by
formatting his layouts across double-page spreads (which became single
"widescreen" pages in the hardcover collection), experimented with engaging
the eye and opening space to the wandering gaze. Miller contends that:

The natural way to read comics is horizontally. My feeling is the fewer

tiers the better, and the wider the tiers the better. ... [ found when I did
300 that there was something that felt so much more organic about it,
because as humans we tend not to look up and down so much as we do side
to side (Quoted in Brownstein, 2005: 12).

In an interview with Miller, Will Eisner adds that 300 was "breaking not so
much the pattern of the geometric size that you're stuck with, but within that
pattern you were moving the eye and developing space .... You were engaging
the reader in space" (13). Unlike in film, the comics reader retains visual mastery
over space and time; he is a flaneur -- the stroller -- who consumes with vision.
The flaneur is a model of spectatorsh ip developed by Charles Baudelaire
at the tum of the century as a way to understand the reorganization of
knowledge, power and information in the urban spectacle ofthe modern city.
The gaze of the flaneur emphasizes fluidity and mobility; like the window
shopper, he strolls the city at a leisurely pace, consuming through the act of
looking. In the modern city distracted with spectacle -- where, indeed,
everything had been transformed into spectacle -- consuming and looking
have welded together. As Walter Benjamin muses:

For the perfect flaneur .... It is an immense joy to set up his house in the
heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and the flow .... To be away from
home, yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at
the center of the world, yet to remain hidden from the world .. . (Quoted
in Chun, 2002:247).

Is this not the consumer of the modern comics page? His mobilized gaze
wanders the space of the page, consuming a world that resembles his own --
only it is one transformed into "an immense accumulation of spectacles"
(Debord, 2002: 12). Warren Ellis and John Cassaday's Planetary(Wildstorml
DC Comics) epitomizes this concept -- with its story content, leisurely pacing
and large panel layouts that invite the eye to linger, Planetary is pure
spectacle. These aspects of the book's production create an experience that
invites it to be wandered through, rather than read as a pure text. Planetary
prides itself in creating spectacle that even a Hollywood blockbuster cannot

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match; its outright mimicry of Hollywood one-sheet posters -- right down to

the way the credits are laid out -- that are the substance of some covers attests
to this.
After examining the consequences of production shifts on patterns of
visual consumption, it is important to ask: what are the implications of this
visual experience as a commodity in the marketplace? In an industry where
top-selling monthly periodicals sell at what was a cancellation number 20
years ago, new markets must be forged; Frank Miller's Sin Citywas ahead of
its time in the sense that it anticipated the present state of the comic book
marketplace, where there is an emphasis on the trade paperback as a means
into the bookstore market. Comics legend Will Eisner was the first to envision
a market beyond the periodical nature of comics; with his revolutionary graphic
novel, A Contract With God(1978), he launched the notion that a comic book
could have a permanent place on a bookstore shelf. In recent years, as the
cost of the monthly single issue continues to inflate, trade collections of
serialized stories have found success with both specialty shop and bookstore
consumers. Frank Miller, a vocal detractor of the serialized comic "pamphlet,"
predicts that the future of the industry lies in such a format -- the trade paperback
and graphic novel -- and market -- along with the demise ofthe direct market.
As creators have become aware of this market, many have adjusted their
writing style to fit the trade paperback format; the "ideal" story arc length
seems to be six issues, which translates into a nicely-sized collection. What
has essentially taken place is an inversion of 1940s comics production -- as
opposed to being the slave of the eleven page short, many creators today are
at the mercy of the six-issue story arc. Writers such as Warren Ellis, Brian
MieKael Bendis (Ultimate Spider-Man) and Greg Rucka ( Wonder Woman),
however, are key proponents of this movement, and swear by its structure.
Their comics tend to move at a slower pace, and are characterized by large
panels that give creators the time and space to tell the story as they feel it
should be told. Critics, however, argue that many oftoday's stories are written
beyond the length they need be, and find certain stories unnecessarily
"padded" with extraneous story in order to stretch the storyline into a length
that would make a suitably-sized trade paperback. While many readers bemoan
the lack of story content in individual issues, due to their drawn-out pacing,
the individual chapters are meant to be consumed in the content ofthe whole
story -- not as stand-alone pieces. Because of this, many consumers have
shifted their buying patterns from picking up monthly installments to "waiting
for the trade."
In any aesthetic medium, where a visual experience is also commodity
-- film, photography, comic books -- the presentation and consumption of that
product is affected by and predicated upon structures that govern its
production. The role of the marketplace, production standards, and
technological determinism cannot be overstated when producing an evolvin

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creative product. As standards continue to shift and structures realign, the

relationship of the reader to the consumption ofthe spectacle of comics is one
that is forever open-ended.

References

Barthes, Roland. 2003. "Rhetoric ofthe Image." In Visual Culture: The Reader,
edited by Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall, pp. 33-40. London: Sage.
Brownstein, Charles and Diane Schutz, ed. 2005. EisnerlMiller. Milwaukie,
OR: Dark Horse.
Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. 2002. "Othering Space." In The Visual Culture
Readei; edited by Nicholas Mirzoeff, pp. 243-254. London: Routledge.
Daniels, Les. 1998. Superman: The Complete History. San Francisco: Chronicle.
Debord, Guy. 2002. The Society ofthe Spectacle. Trans. Donald Nicholson-
Smith. New York: Zone Books.
George, Milo, ed. 2003. The Comics Joumal Librmy: Frank Miller. Seattle:
Fantagraphics.
Hebdige, Dick. 2003. "The Bottom Line on Planet One: Squaring Up to The
Face." In Visual Cultw·e: The Reader, edited by Jessica Evans and
Stuart Hall, pp. 109-124. London: Sage.
Miller, Frank. 1987. Ronin. New York: DC Comics.
Miller, Frank. 2001. Sin City: The Hard Goodbye. Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse.
Moore, Alan and Dave Gibbons. 1987. Watchmen. New York: DC Comics.
Moore, Stuart. 2003 . "In the Old Days, It Woulda Been Eight Pages." In A
Thousand Flowers: Comics, Pop Culture and the World Outside,
edited by Matt Brady. Sept. 23, <www.newsarama.com/forums/
showthread. php ?s=&threadid=5824>.
Morrison, Grant and Frank Quitely. 2005. HlE3. New York: DC Comics.
Siegel, Jerry and Wayne Boring. 1941. Superman. Vol. 1, Issue 6. New York: DC
Comics.
Slater, Don. 2003. "Marketing Mass Photography." In Visual Culture: The
Reader, edited by Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall, pp. 289-306. London:
Sage.

Frank Verano, a graduate of Temple University's Film & Media Arts program,
is the author of several critical essays on the comic book. In 2005, he presented
his work at the 13 th annual Comics Art Conference in San Diego, CA. He lives
in Philadelphia, PA, where he is co-creating, with Nicklas Klinger, a graphic
novel, The Death ofthe Sweetheart, for publication in 2007.

IJOCA, Spring 2006