Page - 29 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/01

On the History and Hermeneutics of Comics | 29www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 17–44 limits – the drawn reality is perceived without boundary-setting boxes – brings the comic closer to physical reality than a movie, for example, which is strictly limited to the film’s frame.28 Another exclusive polyperceptive feature of the comic is the artist’s/viewer’s ability to read the mind of the characters. the thought bubble is a distinctive expressive form (see lower panels of fig. 12) and in revealing a character’s think- ing provides the reader with knowledge that the other characters in the comic do not possess. Neither film nor computer game can deploy this possibility, other than in the inner monologue borrowed from literature, unless it draws on the comic’s toolset.29 28 the split-screen technique, invented in the cinema of the late 1920s, is not comparable as it only fur- ther divides the limited space provided by the film frame (the projection screen) into smaller units (cf. Monaco 2001, 103–109, esp. 105). By contrast, the comic leaves the eye of the viewer free to choose its own distance, rhythm, and sequence; the viewer can “read” a whole page or a panel again, look back to earlier images, and ignore the gutter at will. 29 Examples of this strategy to surmount frames and to depict polylocation and time flow can be found, however, early in art history. A famous example is provided by the ceiling of the sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo indicated God’s dynamis by depicting God from the front and from behind simultane- ously; cf. Toman 2010, 518–519. Fig. 11: Milo Manara, Tag des Zornes, 70. Even when an intuitive reading direction is adopted leading left–right and top–bottom, the internal ordering of the panel is dis- located (polylocation) and panel boundaries are broken.