I adore storytelling. Its ability to engross its audience into a world of experiences has always been amusing and to communicate messages while being entertaining is incredible; the primary way to express these stories is with words. Language is essentially mind-reading. When you put those words onto a page, you store your mind into a medium for multiple people to see. Those words go into their heads to make an entirely different world, and that’s one of the most fascinating and unique phenomena that human communications allow. Words are so powerful that they almost make us forget the other way to tell a story, pictures. The English illustrator Fred R. Barnard once said “A picture is worth a thousand words” and when you apply this principle to storytelling you begin to see the infinite potential pictures could have in storytelling. The purpose of this writing is to bring to light the missed opportunity of not using pictures in storytelling and how it hurts the ability of authors to communicate ideas.

Even going back to our early history pictures have been used to depict our distant ancestors hunting and gathering. Even in those early days pictures were the primary tool used to communicate ideas. In more modern terms what would a story being told through pictures be called? There are many terms for it but the more general term is comics. There is often a misconception that comics are bound to a genre, that they are humorous picture stories at the back of newspapers or they all were of superheroes but to quote the comic book genius Scott McCloud in his podcast “Speech Bubbles: Understanding Comics with Scott McCloud” a more specific definition for them would be “juxtaposed, pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence.” With this definition, it’s clear that comics can range from many different forms of expression. Using this definition as a baseline allows for discussion of why comics make for such effective storytellers.

From the same podcast, it’s simply that “it makes it more intimate” in that words will always be the same but an illustration made by hand will always have that human connection being able to see “through their lines” it brings a level of human connection that while can be achieved through words, is a lot more difficult to pull off. Another example of how comics can be so effective is the ability to express complicated concepts in a simple and digestible way. Visuals have always been and will always be very effective in making things easier to understand and process. A magnificent example of this is Western Michigan University Nick Sousanis’ “Unflattening” seen below.

If I could not grasp the concepts that were talked about within the boxes, I could get an understanding with just the illustrations, of the narrow-minded inhabitants being manifested and shown, or from the boxes that confine the individuals and how it literally gets internalized inside our heads. It’s all abstract and beautiful concepts that are otherwise borderline Shakespeare in comprehension. A personal anecdote I have about that concept of comprehension is during a writing assignment where I wrote very pretentiously and my teacher expressed his worry about making my text readable by my peers. That got me thinking about why I was writing at all and who I was writing to and the importance of communicating correctly. By using images, advanced-level discussion can be had by just about anyone who can perceive and understand what they are looking at. According to “The Senses – Sight” published by Alimentarium is 80%, such a large part of the perception of reality dedicated to sight should be utilized to its fullest.
Does this mean abolishing writing via words? Absolutely not, comics to an extent use words just differently and creatively but also said in “Speech Bubbles: Understanding Comics with Scott McCloud” elaborates on the strengths and weaknesses of the two mediums. The difficulty that comes with storytelling via pictures is very elaborate concepts, “because they’re time intensive. It takes a long time to put them together, and something like that is better in text.” The popular creator “Strip Panel Naked” also elaborates on how text is important in comics as they are still utilized even more so than by a traditional writing piece by having the speech bubbles in which express speech be drawn in very specific ways that personifies the words to further the ability to express emotions and story. A video of his analysis of “Sandman (1989)” is linked below.

“Sandman (1989)” is linked below.
The Sound of Speech Bubbles | Sandman (1989) | Strip Panel Naked

The percussion of pictures is a valuable tool that should not be overlooked in the realm of storytelling as it allows for extraordinary forms of expression that even Mcloud, someone who is very well versed in the potential of “comics are not capable of something, somebody always proves me wrong.” Pictures hold so much weight to them and with the insight from the experts on comics it’s clear to see that this form of medium is far from simply just superheroes, it is a whole form of communication that is underutilized in professional settings which is a completely wasted opportunity. There is a treasure trove of comics with masterful storytelling and it is finally time to give them the spotlight right next to words in the mediums of storytelling.