MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Scott McCloud first applied the term ‘closure’ to analyze the undrawn content of comics in 1993. While his approach was limited to panel-to-panel transition types, other scholars have built on his pioneering work, either by adding additional transition types or by expanding closure analysis to include other types of inferences that viewers experience as occurring between images. Other scholars, including most prominently cognitive psychologist Neil Cohn, have instead focused exclusively on drawn content by categorizing panel types without reference to any undrawn content implied by those panels. I present a method that combines these two approaches in order to place parameters on what McCloud calls “the invisible art” of comics. Technically almost anything can occur between any two images, leaving the possibilities of closure effectively infinite. However, I provide a means for clearly defining undrawn content according to an event model that both excludes extraneous content and requires necessary content. Harmonizing Freytag’s plot pyramid, Todorov’s equilibrium circle, Cohn’s panel types, Jackendoff’s event structure, and Newtson’s breakpoints, my five-part action structure applies equally to drawn and undrawn content and so unifies what is explicit and what is implied within a single approach. In keeping with the conference’s zombie theme, I will draw my examples from Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore’s The Walking Dead Volume 1, “Days Gone Bye.”