The Patron Saint of Superheroes

I’m going to say yes. And not just because the four-panel comic strip is titled “I rowed my father’s boat to sea.” The sequence tells a visual story whether those words are included or not. And the best way I know of discussing wordless storytelling is Neil Cohn’s visual grammar, which includes five types of narrative panels.

My first panel is an Establisher, which “sets up an interaction without acting upon it.” I’m not entirely clear what Cohn means (how is a set-up interaction not itself an interaction? if the panel content is the interaction, then how does the panel content also act upon the interaction?), but the panel does establish the two main visual elements: the boat and the dock. There’s also minimal tension between them. The panel by itself would not imply a story. If instead the rope were taut and the boat were pointed away from the dock, then there would be a plot.

My second panel is an Initial, which “initiates the tension of the narrative arc.” I’m not sure an awareness of the  future arc  is technically possible, but the panel has tension. The boat and the dock are now much further apart–presumably because someone in the boat is rowing it away. A lot of narrative information occurs between panels: the rower climbed into the boat, untethered it, and began rowing. All of that could be a visual sentence too, using the same panel one as an Orienter, which “provides subordinate information, such as a setting.” Instead, the rower is undrawn, and so the visual sentence is only between the boat and the dock.  This second panel might instead be a Prolongation, which depicts a “medial state of extension.” If so, the Initial is implied as the sequence leaps to a later a moment in which the tension is already extended.

My third panel is either a Peak, the “height of narrative tension,” or it is the Release, which of course “releases the tension of the interaction.” Personally, I think the Peak, like the Initial, occurs in the gutter. The boat has already rowed out of sight, and so the tension is over. Alternatively, the boat and the dock are still interacting, because we project the existence of the still moving boat beyond the panel frame. Either way, the story is basically over.

My fourth panel is more clearly a Release, either of the third panel’s Peak or as a secondary Release which extends the third panel’s Release further. The blue is ambiguous. Has our perspective continued to move higher and so now the dock is so small it is effectively invisible? Regardless, the boat and now the dock are out of the image and so there is no tension.

That’s all pretty straightforward. But notice that it all works on the assumption that pictures are pictorial. They picture something. While they are actually pixels on a screen, they are also representations of objects that are not pixels on a screen. So the story is about something that’s not actually present. The images are a little like words that way. Although, unlike words, pictures do to some extent resemble what they represent, they are also dissimilar to them. Even radically dissimilar. The “sea” is a blue square. The “boat” is an outline in negative space. The “dock” in panel two and three are recognizable only because they vaguely resemble the dock in panel one.

But what happens if there are no representational elements? If I replace the “boat,” the “dock,” and the “rope” with different visuals, do the four panels still tell a story?

The content of the revised panel one is now entirely abstract. Does Cohn’s Establisher panel type still apply? I want to say yes. The diamond in the upper left area and the random shapes along the right edge are still “set up,” and the overlapping circle between them suggests little or no compositional tension. The image is roughly balanced.

The second panel shrinks the first two elements, adding a few shapes to the diamond cluster, and doubling by mirroring and then simplifying and shrinking the second cluster of shapes. Are the two clusters interacting? Again, I want to say yes. The compositional tension is still low–but this was true in the representational version too. Although abstract, the tension is prolonged but waning.

The third panel is still either a Peak or Release–though now the diamond cluster can not be understood as having traveled out of frame. It simply does not appear. Also the former “dock” is not shrinking because are perspective is higher. There is no perspective. The shape is simply reduced in size.

The final panel again is all Release–no visual elements but the solid blue square and the white surrounding it. There is no tension. The image is perfectly balanced.

So the two versions of the four-panel sequence both follow the same visual grammar. Does that mean they tell the same “story”? Probably not. The first visual sentence is about a boat and a dock and someone rowing the boat out to sea. Things happen in time and space. The second visual sentence is about clusters of pixels. The only space is the space of the screen, and the only time is the time experienced by the viewer.

I’m not certain a “story” is possible without some kind of representation of time and spatial subject matter, but if it is, the second story is not the first story. They do, however, overlap. The abstract sequence and the representational sequence have the same arc. Is this inevitable? Since all representational images are also abstract marks (ink or pixels), do the two visual sentences always overlap?

Maybe. Unlike the above example, there would only be one set of images–whether analyzed abstractly or representationally. But that’s true of “I rowed my father’s boat to sea” too.  The second just illustrates the innately abstract qualities of the first. Delete the second, and the first sequence is still open to both readings.

In both, blue dominates each successive panel until all white elements stop repeating. If blue is “water,” then the water dominates as the white of the “boat” and “dock” decrease in presence. In representational terms, this is because the boat rows out of frame as the viewer’s perspective grows higher until the dock is too small to see too. That’s not how I originally summarized the story though.

Using the grammar of the visuals as abstractions, blue has overwhelmed everything else. Not only has the boat moved far from the dock, the dock has shrunk away too. Since both decrease in size and then vanish, both are in visual tension with the water. I think Cohn would call the water “subordinate information, such as a setting,” but it actually serves as the sequence’s most dominant visual element. If this were a superhero comic, we might say the blue vanquishes the white. And since we begin the sequence identifying with the only human character, the implied rower of the boat, the blue is the villain. It destroys everything. 

This reading occurs mostly at the abstract level. If we rely only on the representational qualities of the images, the water’s increase is primarily a side effect of the perspective and framing of the boat and dock. We are more prone to dismiss the blue as mere setting. Read abstractly, the blue is the story. The two visual sentences are not the same.

Does this mean that the meaning of any comic is incomplete if its content is read entirely or primarily in representational terms? Shapes and colors can be characters in a story–but aren’t all comic characters just shapes and colors?

Dear Professor Gavaler,

I am a biologist at the University of Oklahoma, currently writing a review paper about our research on sensory processing by weakly electric fish in South America and Africa (a major focus of my research program).  In this review, I have drawn an analogy between the electrosensory abilities of weakly electric fish and X-ray vision in superheroes like Superman.  One of the points that I am trying to make is that extraordinary sensory capabilities also carry high liabilities.  In the case of electric fish, the metabolic demands of generating electric fields leaves them extremely vulnerable to low oxygen and low food availability.

I would like to complete the analogy by referring to the costs/curses that usually come with the superpowers possessed by superhero characters, but I need a scholarly source(s) to back up this claim.  My initial literature review has turned you up as the leading expert on superheroes in literature and pop culture.  So, I’m writing to ask it you could refer me to any work of your own or work by others that discusses the sometimes costly tradeoffs that come with superpowers.

You can find more about electric fish and our research at my lab website if you are interested.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.  I was fascinated by the reading I did from your most recent book!

Sincerely,

Michael

Michael,

You have an interesting project, and your analogy is apt. The notion that a superhero’s powers are also a curse has been a standard of the genre since the early 60s. I don’t believe it applies to Superman or most other WWII-era heroes, but Marvel Comics popularized the idea with characters like the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and the X-Men. Often the curse is more psychological–the moral obligation that, as Stan Lee phrased it, “with great power there must also come–great responsibility!” The self-sacrificing curse comes in other forms too. The Thing, for example, routinely saves the world, but his powers also make him look like a grotesque monster.

Since your analogy is biological, Daredevil may be a better example. In the 1964 premiere, Matt Murdock saves a pedestrian from being struck by a truck carrying radioactive material. As a result of the exposure, Murdock gains bat-like radar but he’s also blind. He can’t have one trait without the other. In some sense, this does apply to Superman then–if you think of kryptonite as his liability. Being from Krypton gives him a range of extraordinary powers, but it also means he’s extremely vulnerable in this one area, while normal humans are unaffected by kryptonite. The film Unbreakable does the same thing with Bruce Willis’ character, who is invulnerable–except he can easily drown.

If you need a citable source, I touch on this briefly in On the Origin of Superheroes. On page 38: “And the whole tragic  twist of Marvel’s Silver Age heroes–that superpowers are both blessing and a curse–comes down to one word, “barak,” from Job 1:5. It means both ‘bless’ and ‘curse.'” I also spoke a year ago with journalist Jim Rendon about a similar idea for his book on post-traumatic growth syndrome. I don’t know if his book is published yet, but I wrote about it in more detail here.

Let me know if any of that helps.

Best,

Chris

Hi Chris,

This is very helpful.  Thanks so much for sharing your perspective on this issue.  I think you’re right that Daredevil is probably a better example (I just started mass-consuming the Netflix version a couple weeks ago).  But, I think we will still stick with Superman just because he is an example more familiar to a general audience.  Your pinpointing of the tradeoff for Superman is spot on.

I ordered a copy of your book (it was released too recently for our library to have a copy) and I look forward to reading it.  We will probably cite it as a reference for our paper, and may include a personal communication reference based on your email (I will get your permission first if that is the case).   I will definitely send you a copy of our paper when we have it completed.

Thanks again for your help!  Much appreciated.

Best,

Michael

Glad I could help, Michael. And, yes, you have my permission to quote our email correspondence too. And would you mind if I included our correspondence in a blog post?

Btw, the Netflix Jessica Jones is even better than the Daredevil (and her powers create some major liabilities).

Chris

Hi Chris,

It would be absolutely fine to include our correspondence in your blog.  I will follow up in a couple weeks when we finish the paper we are currently writing.  This project has me intrigued by the parallels between superheroes and animals with extreme adaptations in biology.  A core principle in evolutionary biology is the notion of the adaptive tradeoff – traits that carry a large adaptive advantage in one capacity also come at high costs (e.g., metabolic, reproductive, or survival).

Best,

Michael