From Invisibility to Visibility and Backwards: Punctuation in Comics

Abstract

In a literary form such as the comic that combines images and text, punctuation is likely to play a specific role. From the comic's invention at the beginning of the 19th century, creators like Töpffer or Doré played with punctuation, especially the expressive signs, imitating what was happening at the same time in numerous novels. The habit of overloading the images with exclamation and interrogation marks or dashes led progressively, however, to saturation during the golden age of superhero comics and therefore to a sort of punctuation crisis. There was increased questioning as to the ideological meaning of such signs: a rethinking of what punctuation meant. Nowadays graphic novelists tend to invent new uses for the signs, making language newly visible with interesting effects.