TY - BOOK ID - 5817085 TI - The system of comics AU - Groensteen, Thierry AU - Beaty, Bart AU - Nguyen, Nick PY - 2007 SN - 9781604732597 9781578069255 1578069254 9786612940866 1604736933 1282940864 PB - Jackson (Miss.) : University press of Mississippi, DB - UniCat KW - Comic books, strips, etc. KW - Semiotics. KW - History and criticism. KW - Comic books, strips, etc KW - Bandes dessinées KW - Histoire et critique UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:5817085 AB - An authoritative exploration of how the comics achieve meaning, form, and function. This edition of Thierry Groensteen's The System of Comics makes available in English a groundbreaking work on comics by one of the medium's foremost scholars. In this book, originally published in France in 1999, Groensteen explains clearly the subtle, complex workings of the medium and its unique way of combining visual, verbal, spatial, and chronological expressions. The author explores the nineteenth-century pioneer Rodolphe Töpffer, contemporary Japanese creators, George Herriman's Krazy Kat, and modern American autobiographical comics. The System of Comics uses examples from a wide variety of countries including the United States, England, Japan, France, and Argentina. It describes and analyzes the properties and functions of speech and thought balloons, panels, strips, and pages to examine methodically and insightfully the medium's fundamental processes. From this, Groensteen develops his own coherent, overarching theory of comics, a "system" that both builds on existing studies of the "word and image" paradigm and adds innovative approaches of his own. Examining both meaning and appreciation, the book provides a wealth of ideas that will challenge the way scholars approach the study of comics. By emphasizing not simply "storytelling techniques" but also the qualities of the printed page and the reader's engagement, the book's approach is broadly applicable to all forms of interpreting this evolving art. ER -