Year 1: Roots of the Swamp

ST104 How Comics Create Horror

The formal toolkit: how a page is built, how time moves between panels, what a line and a colour do, how lettering makes sound, and how a horror comic times its reveal. Theory from McCloud, Eisner, Groensteen and Chute, tested against Swamp Thing pages.

6 lessons 6 units 2 assignments

Introduction

ST101 asked you to notice how a page works. This module gives you the vocabulary and the theory to say it precisely. Comics are not illustrated prose and not still films. They have a grammar of their own, built from the panel, the gutter between panels, the page as a single composed image, the line that draws everything and the letters that make the silent page speak. Horror uses every part of that grammar to control what you see, when you see it, and what you are made to imagine in the gap.

Four theorists anchor the module. Will Eisner, the working cartoonist who first wrote the medium's grammar down. Scott McCloud, whose Understanding Comics is a comic about comics and the book most students of the form begin with. Thierry Groensteen, who argues that the meaning of a comic lies in the network of relations across the whole page and book, not only in the sequence. And Hillary Chute, who reads the medium's history through its makers. You will read them after you have looked, not before.

The primary material is Swamp Thing at three moments: Wrightson in the early 1970s, Bissette and Totleben with Moore in the mid-1980s, and one page from a later run of your choosing. Every claim in this module should be demonstrable on a page you can put in front of someone.

Learning objectives

  • Use the formal vocabulary of comics (panel, gutter, tier, splash, bleed, closure, breakdown) accurately.
  • Analyse how a page is composed as a single image and how it controls reading order and time.
  • Describe line, ink, colour and lettering as decisions with effects.
  • Explain how horror comics time and stage a reveal.
  • Apply McCloud, Eisner, Groensteen and Chute to specific pages, and notice where they disagree.
  • Produce a formal analysis of a page that a reader could check against the page.

Lessons

Unit 1: Week 1: The panel and the gutter

Closure: what you imagine between the pictures.

  1. The panel and the gutterWhat a panel is, what the space between panels does, and why horror lives in the gap.120 min

Unit 2: Week 2: The page

Layout, the grid, and the page as one picture.

  1. The page as a pictureLayout, tiers, grids and their breaking; Groensteen's idea that a page means all at once.120 min

Unit 3: Week 3: The line

Ink, brush, black and texture.

  1. Line, ink and blackHow the physical mark makes a body rot, and why Wrightson's pen is a horror instrument.100 min

Unit 4: Week 4: Colour and sound

Colour, lettering and the noise of a silent medium.

  1. Colour and letteringWhat the colourist and the letterer add, and how horror uses both.100 min

Unit 5: Week 5: The reveal

Timing, the page turn and the moment of seeing.

  1. Staging the revealHow horror comics control when you see the monster, with the page turn as the medium's jump scare.120 min

Unit 6: Week 6: The whole page

Synthesis: a full formal reading, and a later artist.

  1. A full formal readingBringing every tool to one page, and testing the tools on an artist from a later run.150 min

Core texts

Secondary reading

Assessment

Two assessed pieces. The first is a full formal analysis of a single Swamp Thing page. The second is a comparative essay on how two artists from different eras stage fear, using at least two theorists from the module.

ST104-A1: Formal analysis of a single page

Choose one page from The Saga of the Swamp Thing #21 to #27, or from Swamp Thing (1972) #1 to #10. Produce a full formal analysis: how the page is composed, how time moves through it, what the line, colour and lettering contribute, and how these together produce the page's effect on a reader.

Length
1500 words (1350 to 1650)
Sources
Primary source only. Primary source only. One page, identified exactly. No secondary reading.

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ST104-A2: Essay: two artists, one fear

How do Bernie Wrightson and the team of Stephen Bissette and John Totleben stage fear differently? Compare at least two pages by each, using at least two of the module's theorists (McCloud, Eisner, Groensteen, Chute) to frame the comparison.

Length
2000 words (1800 to 2200)
Sources
Research assignment, minimum 2 secondary sources. Research assignment. At least two theorists from the module list, cited with page numbers. At least four pages of primary evidence, identified exactly.

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Source requirements

Assignment 1 is primary source only: one page, described and analysed. Assignment 2 is a research assignment requiring at least two of the module's theoretical texts, cited with page numbers.