The codes of comic books

Sequential art
From an art theory perspective, comic books are defined as a sequential form:

a succession of figurative images which, taken together, tell a story.

By this definition, works such as the series of lithographic prints produced by Albert Feuillastre – presenting humorous depictions of day trips from Paris to Versailles in 1842 – are pioneers of the comic form.

Anatomy of a panel
Do you know the origin of the division into boxes of a comic book page?

The practice of dividing the page into strips and boxes can be traced back to the early days of comics, when they would appear in newspapers.

This modular format allowed editors to maintain the narrative sequence if the layout needed to be changed to accommodate other content on the page.

As the standing of the medium evolved, the composition of panels gradually broke free from such formatting constraints.

Authors are now free to play with the format of their panels, making them as dynamic and varied as they wish. This is a fine example, with the street-side façade of the Palace spread across two pages in order to capture its immensity and convey the scale of the crowd.

CMYK printing
How do colors bring a comic book story to life? 

Comic strips were long associated with the CMYK printing method, requiring each image to be split into four layers corresponding to black and the three primary colours – cyan, magenta and yellow – which can be mixed to obtain a vast chromatic palette.