Additive Combinations: The additive combination where words amplify or elaborate on an image or vice versa. In parallel combinations, words and pictures seem to follow very different courses–without intersecting.

Bleeding: Images that run outside the border of the panel. They do not contain time.

Closure: Is the act of mentally filling in the gaps we observe. Readers can comprehend space between panels.

Comics: Juxtaposed pictorials and other deliberate images in sequences.

Doodling: To help the mind focus by making random marks that have not much meaning.

Gutter: The space between comics. Space where meaning is made by connecting one panel to the next.


Icon: It’s like a verb. It represents a person, place, thing, or idea. It is very important!


Mono-sensory medium: Only using one sense. Comics rely on using only one sense to be comprehended.


Pictorial: Something expressed in a picture or illustration. (feelings expressed in a pictorial form)


Synaesthetics: A sensation in one part of the body produced by stimulation in another. Visual cues being used to express feeling in other senses.


Zip Ribbon: Common in super hero comics. Indicates objects moving through space.