Word & Image II

(photo courtesy of http://www.momscancer.com)

Cover the words of this comic and look at the images from left to right, top to bottom. What I noticed is the difference in facial expressions and the gradual hair loss from the same person. This is basically all that I see different in the six different panels with images. Now focusing on only the text and not the image, you get a sense of what they are talking about, quitting smoking or the cause of it. But you don't know if the same person is thinking these thoughts or saying them or even if it is the same person relaying out their thoughts. When separating words from images, there is a disconnection that goes on because if there isn't much description in the text, then readers have a hard time imagining what is going on. Someone could have read this comic without the images and thought the speaker was a 23 year old, athletic male just contemplating. Or vice versa, the images of an old lady with different emotions on her face could have been about a debate about who she should let cut her hair the next time at the salon.

The reason why images and words work so well in comics is because they narrate a story that only each component could be balanced with each other. Brian Fies who was the author of Mom's Cancer (where the comic was taken from), lectured about the collaboration between word and image and how the two creates the meaning of the whole. What he is illustrating in this comic is his mom who has a disease and her rationality for smoking and how she goes back and forth blaming others or taking responsibility for the condition she is in. This big idea would not have been seen if the words and images of this one comic were separated.