comic strips/ satirical cartoons

Purpose: comic strips are often humorous; their primary purpose is to entertain. Nevertheless the strip may make a serious point about a local or global issue.

Structure: comics and cartoons are drawn in square boxes called panels, arranged in sequence and read in a linear fashion. The white space between the panels is called gutters.

Exposition: text that tells the story is presented as captions.

Speech and thought bubbles: so you can read the internal and external dialogue of the characters.

Mechanics: spatial mechanics is the use of space within and between each frame. Temporal mechanics is the way time can be slowed down, sped up or stopped.

Artistic style: comics are drawn purposefully and with intention. Are the pictures crisp, heavy, weighty, light, cartoony, realistic, bright, dark? Can you tell whether the artist used pencil, pen and ink, or brush? Words that describe mood and tone can be useful when analysing graphic weight (shading and contrast) and saturation (brightness).

Emanata: items such as dots, lines, exclamation marks or onomatopoeia that depict action, emotion or sound.

‘Cartoonification’: how realistic are the images in the cartoon or comic strip? Realism is measured on a spectrum from photorealistic or lifelike to simplified.

Punchline: especially apparent in four-panel comic strips, the joke is revealed in the last panel.