Kira’s emdublog

Breaking the Fourth Wall is another interesting aspect of comic spacetime that was not considered in the piece we read for class. Many comic (by which I mean graphic, by which I mean picture) settings are self-contained worlds. The audience is separate from and has no interaction with the characters. Sometimes however, the characters interact with the audience by directing speech at them. This is called “breaking the fourth wall” and can also be applied to theatre and television. (I realize that McCloud was trying to separate them.) Some comic characters, from Calvin and Hobbes (on occasion) to Deadpool in the X-men comics, “speak to” the audience and are sometimes asked by other characters who they are talking to as though they are speaking to someone who is not present.

I have personally been reading graphic novels and manga since I was a sophomore in high school. My favorite series would have to be Sin City by Frank Miller, which was made into a movie in 2005. I also read graphic novels by Neil Gaiman, and manga like Fushigi Yuugi and Mars. I never thought about how time and space were portrayed in graphic novels and McCloud is right, they are the same thing. Spacetime.