Page - 27 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/01

On the History and Hermeneutics of Comics | 27www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 17–44 ist. A drawing captures at least one characteristic that is real (the outline), but a painting works with much more ambiguous features, namely colour and densi- ty. eco proposed that an image’s iconic quality stems not from the depiction but from the conventions met by illustrator and viewer in a minimal consensus.25 PriMACy Of the PiCtUre the weighting of picture and text can be reversed in illustrated narration. Conventionally, text outweighs pictures, with the latter often static and used sparsely. in comics, however, pictures dominate the text, with words necessary only when the picture on its own cannot fulfil the narrative purpose. the noteworthy sin- gle-page cartoon in fig. 9 makes its point without using a single word, a rare exception in Carl Barks’ work.26 the priority of the pic- ture allows the comic to traverse language barriers – in Michael Haneke’s film 71 Frag- ments of a Chronol- ogy of Chances (At, 1994) a homeless refugee child steals a comic in the hope that “reading” it will pro- vide security, comfort, or even amusement.27 25 eco 2002, 209–210. 26 the intervention from the publishing house at the bottom right is remarkable. it addresses the precon- ception that comics are trash and therefore harmful to youth. the Dell code introduced in 1955 was intended to prevent such preconceptions. i sincerely thank ernst horst for drawing my attention to this aspect. 27 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chances (Michael haneke, At 1994), 00:18:04. Fig. 9: Carl Barks, Uncle Scrooge 11 (09/1955), 35.