The Textual Experience: The Interplay of the Image and the Text in Watchmen
Karan Kimothi
Publication: Volume 2 Issue 3
Abstract
The reader while approaching a text might be tempted to focus entirely on the words on the page. However, the idea of a text consists of numerous non-verbal elements which come together to form the reader’s experience of the text. This paper attempts to examine the interaction of such verbal and non-verbal elements in Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons’s graphic novel Watchmen in order to demonstrate how the two elements influence each other’s meaning in the text. This optic is applied in order to draw conclusions about the medium as well as the nature of criticism that claims to deal with the medium.
Keywords: Watchmen, Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, Graphic Novel, Comic Books, Visual Culture.
Karan Kimothi (karankimothi@gmail.com) is currently an Undergraduate student of English Literature at Ramjas College, University of Delhi. His research interests include the graphic novel as a medium, horror as a genre in literature and cinema, animation, and satire. In his writings he is partial to theory surrounding visual culture, iconography, as well as the idea of the image. He enjoys reading fat fantasy novels and talking politics in his free time.