Nathan Brown

Graphic Narrative
Dr. George Bailey
10 November 2014

Research Paper

Humans have created images and told stories longer than even language has existed. It is
one of our most base brain functions and little glimpses of it can be seen everywhere in human
nature. I began to notice this when I started studying sequential narrative in its different forms
and it intrigued me. Many people seem to have a subconscious tendency towards sequential
narrative and sequential images that they never notice themselves. In fact, all of humanity has a
tendency towards story; it is what drives the majority of art in the world. It wasnt until I started
studying it that I noticed it in myself as well. Being the skeptic that I am I wanted to find out if I
was just making arbitrary connections between unrelated things or if I was really on to
something, so when this assignment came around I took it as a chance to do formal research on
the topic. I wanted to see if there was any truth to what I had noticed and , being an artist at
heart, if it could be applied to and integrated with my art. Do humans have a natural tendency
towards sequential narrative? If so, how deeply set in our psyche is it? And finally, how can this
information be used by the artist? These are the questions I began with and, hoping that the
sources for this wouldnt be too theoretical, I set off on the hunt for information. I found that
there are a few subjects that relate directly to my topic: human use of sequential imagery in

history, the beginnings of human communication, and the way the brain works in relation to
sequential narrative both physically and psychologically.
Sequential images have been a form of communication for humans longer than even
language itself. Sight is a humans main sense so it only makes sense that we would most easily
read and tell information through images before an organized system like language was formed.
Cave art depicting great hunts were some of the earliest forms of communication in humans and
led the way for language and writing. In the case of the iconic ancient Egyptians, this way of
communicating through pictures eventually became more and more refined. Originally, one
persons depiction of, say, a meal would have differed from anothers merely because of the
artists style or way of understanding. Soon, though, the symbols that made the most sense to the
most people were adopted by more and more people and eventually everyone was using the same
or similar pictures to describe the same things. As it became even more organized, people no
longer needed to draw the picture in as much detail for one another to understand what they were
depicting and pictures turned into symbols. The hieroglyphic catalogue of the ancient Egyptians
was still quite extensive and each one was still fairly literal by the time Alexander the Great
showed up, but over time it merged with other dialects from the area and formed into what is
now Arabic which, like Japanese or Mandarin, still somewhat resembles the pictures from which
they originated.
During medieval times in Europe, stained glass depictions of the bible were the only way
for some people to learn the bibles teachings due to a large portion of the population being
illiterate. These massive windows, which can be found in many medieval churches, were
referred to as The Poor Mans Bible and they depicted the bible frame by frame like a big
comic book. There were also many bibles created before the introduction of Gutenbergs

printing press that were filled with woodblock representations of the Bibles stories. These were
essentially early graphic novels which replaced large sections of the bibles text with descriptive
pictures. To bring it back to our hypothesis, this shows us that pictures in sequence are easier for
a human to comprehend than a structured system like written language.
We want stories with a beginning middle and end, we like shows that are broken up by
episode, we want writers words to evoke images in our heads, and we want pictures to tell us a
story. The pattern does not stop at art though, we live our lives day by day, week by week,
month by month, and year by year; we even break up history into ages, dynasties, etc.. Humans
seem to have a need to list events in a chronological manner. You may say, well thats just how
things happen, its how the earth works. True, and thats the whole point, evolution has adapted
us to the way the earth works. Day and night, summer and winter; these are natural cycles that
the earth goes through, so as its inhabitants we have evolved along with these cycles. This is the
most base aspect of how sequential narrative is engrained in us as a species and it has branched
out to be a part of the way we operate and create. Most creatures on earth are forced to segment
their lives by day rather than keep on going straight through to the end. In order to make the
parallels between human nature and sequential narrative, though, we must get more specific and
get into the workings of the human brain and psyche.
Humans are essentially four dimensional beings because of our exceptional memory.
Our body takes up three dimensions in the form of space and matter and our mind taps into the
fourth, the fourth dimension being time. This connection we have to the fourth dimension is
experienced by us as memory. Almost all creatures can tap into this fourth dimension via
memory, save for maybe bacteria and other extremely small beings, but in humans this
connection is special because of the acuteness of it. Humans can remember longer than other

animals and (in part thanks to language and other tools that humans have at their disposal) with
much better clarity which gives us a unique relationship with time and how it relates to life.
Before we go any further, we need a base understanding of how memory in the human
brain works. Memory essentially works by creating an interlocking grid of different emotions,
specific memories and events from the time, and relating memories from other times. This is
why certain aspects of a memory will be stronger than others. Lets say, for example, your
significant other proposes to you. Your memory of them actually saying the words and that
section of time will most likely be very clear to you while you may have no recollection of them
telling you about what they had for lunch earlier that day. This is because, at the moment that
they proposed, you were experiencing a convergence of a multitude of different emotion,
memories, and thoughts, while when they were telling you about their lunch you most likely
would have very little emotional response at all. Each of these emotions, memories, and
thoughts that come to you as an emotional response to an event will act as a sort of mental push
pin, tacking the memory to your brain. A memory that has a hundred push pins securing it to
your brain isnt going anywhere for a long time, but one that has only one pin in it will likely
soon fade away. So a memory of a significant event within a larger timeline will stick with a
person and stand out to them more than secondary events. Taking all of this information about
the workings of memory into account, we can come to the conclusion that memory selectively
records things based on significance and relevance to other memories. This can largely explain
human tendency towards stories told primarily through main events and significant actions. It
feels right to us to experience story in this way because it is how we recall things ourselves.
But what is the point of all this, is there any reason to know this information? This is an
important question It is important to know this information as an artist because it is a bit of

the science of art. It informs the artist on a technical level and could offer a new perspective on a
story. Knowing the way that story is related to the human mind could allow an artist to better
understand the way that their own story might affect the reader. Something that I have taken
from this research, as an artist, is that pictures can be made to evoke more emotion when poses,
actions, and backgrounds are tweaked to be focused on causing a specific emotion rather than
focused on portraying reality. For a while I thought that art was entirely about the viewer. I felt
that the artist should create but push in no specific direction and let the viewers experiences and
personal feelings create something for them. I still feel that there is merit in this method in some
ways but something Ive noticed from this research is that what makes stories and experiences so
fulfilling might not always be what is happening but the emotions that come along with those
events. Knowing the types of things that lock a memory into a persons mind can help an artist
to create unforgettable moments and stories. We can see from the way that memory works that
we remember main events best but anyone can attest to the way we remember being drastically
different than, say, a literal video of that moment. When the artist looks at how to portray a
certain moment or scene they could literally portray it and let the audience create their own
emotions or they could take things into their own hands and alter perspectives, colors, lines,
lighting, and anything else to mold the audiences mood and emotions in the way they wish. In a
way it sounds devilish to manipulate someones emotions like that but that is what the audience
pays for.

Works Cited
Duffy, Damian. "Learning from Comics on the Wall." Visual Arts Research 35.1 (2009): 1-11.
Print.
"History of Stained Glass." Stainedglass.org. Stained Glass Association of America, 2012. Web.
28 Oct. 2014.
Mastin, Luke. "The Human Memory - What It Is, How It Works and How It Can Go Wrong."
The Human Memory. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2014.
Miller, Greg. "How Our Brains Make Memories." Smithsonian Magazine May 2010: 1-6. Web.
28 Oct. 2014.