Panels from Frank Santoro’s CHIMERA

“At a basic level, reading a comic is a process of joining fragments. This is often done with clear guideposts for the reader: narrative captions tell us “two days later” or “back at the house”; the repetition of characters and backgrounds allows the assumption of time or motion; or an initial panel sets the stage for the relation between characters and objects in the panels which follow. This process becomes more complicated and reader intensive as the guideposts are removed or hidden.—Derik Badman