This is meant to be a resource for works pertaining to the structure, theory, and development of visual language (a.k.a. the “comic medium”). I have strived to include works that use or analyze the form experimentally and theoretically across fields of linguistics, semiotics, psychology, and cognitive science. However, other works in fields such as communications, art education, and art theory are also included so long as they are relevant.

To aid in research, I have organized this list into subcategories of major research topics, listed at left. If you have any works to add, please email me.

I try to read every entry before putting it online. For many entries, reviews on my blog can be found here.

Last updated 2/24/08

Abbott, Lawrence L.1986. Comic Art: Characteristics and Potentialities of a Narrative Medium. Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 19.4, p. 155-176. Bowling Green, Ohio: BG State University

Baetens, Jan (Ed.). 2001. The Graphic Novel. Leuven: Leuven University Press

Barber, John. 2002. The Phenomenon of Multiple Dialectics in Comics Layout. Masters Thesis, London College of Printing

Bergen, Benjamin. 2004. To awaken a sleeping giant: Blending and metaphor in editorial cartoons after September 11. In Michel Achard and Suzanne Kemmer (Eds.) Language, Culture, and Mind. CSLI.

NEW Boling, Elizabeth, Malinda Eccarius, Ted Frick, and Feng-Ru Sheu. 2002. Perceived Meanings Relative to Intended Meanings of Common Graphical Elements in Instructional Illustrations: U.S. and Taiwanese College Students Compared. In IST Conference.

Bongco, Mila. 2000. Reading Comics: Language, Culture, and the Concept of the Superhero in Comic Books. New York, NY: Garland Publishing Inc.

Bresman, Jonathan. 2004. Test of Sequential “Sense” of Comics. Teachers College, Columbia University. Class Essay: MSTU 5510.008: Social and Communicative Aspects of the Internet and Other ICTs

NEW Bridgeman, Teresa. 2004. Keeping an eye on things: attention, tracking, and coherence-building. Belphégor 4 (1).

Brooks, Penelope H. 1977. The Role of Action Lines in Children's Memory for Pictures. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. Vol. 23, p. 98-107

Ceglia, Simonetta, and Caldesi Valeri, Valerio. 2002. Maison Ikkoku. Image [&] Narrative, Vol. 1.1.

Christiansen, Hans-Christian. 2000. Comics and Film: A Narrative Perspective.In Comics and Culture

Clegg, Mark. 1978. Understanding Comics. B.A. in Comics Art with Honors. University of California, Santa Cruz.

Cohn, Neil. 2003. A Time Frame of Mind: Visual Language and Buddhist Dharma Theory. Berkeley Undergraduate Journal, Vol. 31. Berkeley, CA

Cohn, Neil. 2003. Early Writings on Visual Language. Berkeley, CA: Emaki Productions

Cohn, Neil. Various essays on visual language

Cohn, Neil. 2005. "Un-Defining 'Comics.'" International Journal of Comic Art, Vol. 7.2.

NEW Cox, Maureen V., Masuo Koyasu, Hiromasa Hiranuma, and Julian Perara. 2001. Children’s human figure drawings in the UK and Japan: The effects of age, sex, and culture. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 19:275-292.

Davies, Lewis J., Sr. 1995. The multidimensional language of the cartoon: A study in aesthetics, popular culture, and symbolic interaction. Semiotica, Vol. 104.1/2, p. 165-211

Dean, Michael. 2000. The Ninth Art: Traversing the Cultural Space of the American Comic Book. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Driest, Joris. 2005. Subjective Narration in Comics. Masters Thesis. Utrecht University.

Duncan, Randy. 1999-2000. Toward a Theory of Comic Book Communication. In Fudge, Keith & Lloyd, Michael R. (Eds). Academic Forum Online No. 17. Henderson State University

Eisner, Will. 1985. Comics & Sequential Art. Florida: Poorhouse Press

Estep, Joanna. 2006. Timing: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 .www.newsrama.com

Fei, Victor Lim. 2006. The Visual Semantics Stratum: Making Meanings in Sequential Images. In T. Royce & W. Bowcher (Eds.). New Directions in the Analysis of Multimodal Discourse. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

Fein, Ofer, and Kasher, Asa. 1996. How to do Things with Words and Gestures in Comics. Journal of Pragmatics, Vol. 26.6. Pp. 793-808

Forceville, Charles. 2005. Visual representations of the idealized cognitive model of anger in the Asterix album La Zizanie. Journal of Pragmatics, Vol. 37, p. 69-88

Friedman, Sarah L.,and Stevenson, Marguerite B. 1975. Developmental Changes in the Understanding of Implied Motion in Two-dimensional Pictures. Child Development, Vol. 46, p. 773-778

Gross, Dana, et. al. 1991. Children’s Understanding of Action Lines and the Static Representation of Speed of Locomotion. Child Development, Vol. 62, p. 1124-1141

NEW Groensteen, Thierry. 1999. Systeme de la bande dessinée: Presses Universitaires de France.

NEW Groensteen, Thierry. 2007. The System of Comics. Translated by B. Beaty and N. Nguyen: University of Mississippi Press

NEW Heggs, Dan. 1999. Comics: Strip Semiotics. In Critical Textwork: An Introduction to Varieties of Discourse and Analysis, edited by I. Parker and B. D. Network. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.

Horrocks, Dylan. 2001. Inventing Comics: Scott McCloud Defines the Form in Understanding Comics. The Comics Journal #234. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books Inc

Hünig, Wolfgang K. 2002. British and German Political Cartoons as Weapons in WWI. Paper presented at the International Symposium of Manipulation in the Totalitarian Ideologies of the Twentieth Century. Monte-Verità, Ascona

NEW Lacassin, Francis. 1972. The Comic Strip and Film Language. Film Quarterly, 26(1), 11-23.

Liddell, Christine.1997. Every Picture Tells a Story—or Does It?: Young South African Children Interpreting Pictures.Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Vol. 28.3. Pp. 266-83.

Magnussen, Anne, and Hans-Christian Christiansen (Eds.). 2000. Comics and Culture: Analytical and Theoretical Approaches to Comics. Copenhagen: Museum of Tusculanum Press

Magnussen, Anne. 2000. The Semiotics of C.S. Peirce as a Theoretical Framework for the Understanding of Comics. In Comics and Culture

NEW Manning, Alan D. 1998. Scott McCloud Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 41 (1).

McCloud, Scott. 1993. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York, NY: Harper Collins Inc

McCloud, Scott. 1996. Understanding Manga. Wizard Magazine, April 1996, 44-48.

McCloud, Scott. 2000. Reinventing Comics. New York, NY: Paradox Press

McCloud, Scott. 2000. I Can't Stop Thinking! #4: Follow That Trail. www.scottmccloud.com

Munn, Nancy D. 1986. Walbiri Iconography: Graphic Representation and Cultural Symbolism in a Central Australian Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press

Murray, Chris. 1997. Reading Comics: Narrative and Visual Discourse in Comic Art. Paper Presented at the Scottish Word and Image Group conference.

Nakazawa, Jun. 2002. Analysis of manga (comic) reading processes: Manga literacy and eye movement during Manga reading. Manga Studies 5:39-49.

Nakazawa, Jun. 2002. Effects of manga reading comprehension ability on children's learning by manga materials. Research on Teaching Strategies and Learning Activities 9:13-23.

Nakazawa, Jun. 2004. Manga (comic) literacy skills as determinant factors of manga story comprehension. Manga Studies 5:7-25.

Nakazawa, Jun. 2005. Development of Manga (Comic Book) Literacy in Children. In Applied Developmental Psychology: Theory, Practice, and Research from Japan, edited by D. W. Shwalb, J. Nakazawa and B. J. Shwalb. Greenwich, Connecticut: Information Age Publishing.

Nakazawa, Jun, and Sayuri Nakazawa. 1993. How Children Understand Comics?: Analysis of comic reading comprehension. Annual of Research in Early Childhood 15:35-39.

Nakazawa, Jun, and Sayuri Nakazawa. 1993. Development of manga reading comprehension: How do children understand manga? In Manga and child: How do children understand manga?, edited by Y. Akashi: Research report of Gendai Jidobunka Kenkyukai.

Narayan, Shweta. 1999. The Language of Comics: Metaphor in Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. UC Berkeley, Linguistics 106 class essay.

Narayan, Shweta. 2001. A Window on a Trail: The Metaphorical Structuring of Scott McCloud's Web-Comics. Paper presented at the Comic Arts Conference.

Natsume, Fusanosuke. 1997. Manga wa naze omoshiroi no ka [Why are Manga Fascinating?: Their visual idioms and grammar]. Tokyo: NHK Library

Nielsen, Jesper, and Wichmann, Søren. 2000. America’s First Comics? Techniques, Contents, and Functions of Sequential Text-Image Pairings in the Classic Maya Period. In Comics and Culture. pp. 59-77

Oakley, Todd V. 1998. Conceptual blending, narrative discourse, and rhetoric. Cognitive Lingistics, Vol. 9.4, p. 321-360

NEW Omori, Takahide, Taku Ishii, and Keiko Kurata. 2004. Eye catchers in comics: Controlling eye movements in reading pictorial and textual media. In 28th International Congress of Psychology. Beijing, China.

Pallenik, Michael J. 1986. A Gunman in Town! Children Interpret a Comic Book. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication, Vol. 3, No. 1. Pp. 38-51

Raecke Jochen. 1999. Using Comics as Data for Research into the Connection between Pointing Gestures and Deictics. In E. André, M. Poesio, and H. Rieser (eds). Proceedings of the Workshop on Deixis, Demonstration, and Deictic Belief at ESSLLI XI.

Rommens, Aarnoud. 2000. Manga story-telling/showing. Image [&] Narrative 1(1).

Saraceni, Mario. 2000. Language Beyond Language: Comics as verbo-visual texts. Doctoral Dissertation. University of Nottingham

Saraceni, Mario. 2001. Relatedness: Aspects of Textual Connectivity in Comics. In The Graphic Novel. pp. 167-179

Saraceni, Mario. 2003. The Language of Comics. New York, NY: Routelage

Shipman, Hal. 2006. Hergé's Tintin and Milton Caniff's Terry and the Pirates: Western Vocabularies of Visual Languge. Paper Presented at the 2006 Comic Arts Conference.

Singh, Ashok K. 1981. Impact of Comics Reading on Perceptual Skills. Psychological Studies, Vol. 26.2, pp. 86-87

NEW Smith, Nancy R. 1985. Copying and Artistic Behaviors: Children and Comic Strips. Studies in Art Education.Vol. 26(3). Pp. 147-156

Stainbrook, Eric J. 2003. Reading Comics: A Theoretical Analysis of Textuality and Discourse in the Comics Medium. Doctoral dissertation. Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Tan, Ed S. 2001. The Telling Face in the Comic Strip and Graphic Novel. In The Graphic Novel. pp. 31-46

NEW Tanaka, Takamasa , Kenji Shoji, Fubito Toyama, and Juichi Miyamichi. 2007. Layout Analysis of Tree-Structured Scene Frames in Comic Images Paper read at International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

Toku, Masami. 2001. What is Manga?: The Influence of Pop Culture in Adolescent Art. In Journal of National Art Education, March 2001. New Jersey: The National Art Education Association

Toku, Masami. 2002. Children’s Artistic and Aesthetic Development: The Influence of Pop-Culture in Children’s Drawings. Paper presented at 31st INSEA Convention, New York

Toku, Masami. 2002. Cross-Cultural Analysis of Artistic Development: Drawing by Japanese and U.S. children. Visual Arts Research, Vol. 27, p. 46-59. Illinois: University of Illinois Press

Töpffer, Rodolphe. [1845] 1965. Enter: The Comics: Rodolphe Töpffer's Essay on Physiognomy and The True Story of Monsieur Crépin. Ellen Wiese (Editor and Translator). Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press

Tversky, Barbara, and Zacks, Jeffrey M. 2001. Event Structure in Perception and Conception. Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 127, No. 1, p. 3-21

Walker, Mort. 1980. The Lexicon of Comicana. Port Chester, NY: Comicana, Inc

Weber, Heinz J. 1989. Elements of Text-Based and Image-Based Connectedness in Comic Stories, and Some Analogies to Cinema and Written Text. In M. Conte, J. Petofi, & E. Sozer (eds). Text and Connectedness: Proceedings of the Conference on Connexity and Coherence, Urbino, Italy, July 16-21 1984. Pp. 337-360

Wellman, Henry M., Hollander, Michelle, and Schult, Carolyn A. 1996. Young Children’s Understanding of Thought Bubbles and Thoughts. Child Development, Vol. 67, pp. 768-788

Wellman, Henry M, et al. 2002. Thought-bubbles help children with autism acquire an alternative to a theory of mind. Autism, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 343

Wilkins, David P. 1997. Alternative Representations of Space: Arrernte Narratives in Sand. In Biemans, M., and van de Weijer, J. (Eds), Proceedings of the CLS Opening Academic Year ’97 ’98. Center for Language Studies

Wilson, Brent, and Marjorie Wilson. 1977 "An Iconoclastic View of the Imagery Sources in the Drawings of Young People." Art Education, Vol. 30.1, Pp.4-12.

Wilson, Brent, and Wilson, Marjorie. 1987. Pictorial Composition and Narrative Structure: Themes and the Creation of Meaning in the Drawings of Egyptian and Japanese Children. Visual Arts Research, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Issue 26). Illinois: University of Illinois

Wilson Brent. 1988. The Artistic Tower of Babel: Inextricable Links Between Culture and Graphic Development. In Hardiman, George W. and Theodore Zernich (Eds), Discerning Art: Concepts and Issues. Champaign, Illinois: Stipes Publishing Company

Wilson, Brent. 2000. Becoming Japanese: Manga, Children’s Drawings, and the Construction of National Character.Visual Arts Research, Vol. 25.2. pp. 48-60.

Woo, Benjamin. 2004. Untangling Comics. Undergraduate Honors Thesis, Queen's University

Yannicopoulou, Angela. 2004. Visual Aspects of Written Texts: Preschoolers View Comics. L1- Educational Studies in Language and Literature, Vol. 4, pp. 169-181

Yus Ramos, Francisco. 1998. Relevance Theory and Media Discourse: A Verbal-Visual Model of Communication. Poetics, Vol. 25. p. 293-309

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