Comics
Overview
Comics denotes a hybrid
Hybridity
Hybridity refers in its most basic sense to mixture. The term originates from biology and was subsequently employed in linguistics and in racial theory in the nineteenth century. Its contemporary uses are scattered across numerous academic disciplines and is salient in popular culture...

 medium
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...

 having verbal side of its vocabulary
Comics vocabulary
Comics vocabulary consists of many different techniques and images which a comic book artist employs in order to convey a narrative within the medium of comics....

 tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...

 or information
Information
Information in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...

 only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy
Synergy
Synergy may be defined as two or more things functioning together to produce a result not independently obtainable.The term synergy comes from the Greek word from , , meaning "working together".-Definitions and usages:...

 by using both visual (non-verbal) and verbal side in interaction
Interaction
Interaction is a kind of action that occurs as two or more objects have an effect upon one another. The idea of a two-way effect is essential in the concept of interaction, as opposed to a one-way causal effect...

. Although some comics are picture-only, pantomime strips, such as The Little King
The Little King
The Little King was a comic strip created by Otto Soglow, famously telling its stories in a style using images and very few words, as in pantomime.-Publication history:...

, the verbal side usually expand upon the pictures, but sometimes act in counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...

.

The term derives from the mostly humorous early work in the medium, and came to apply to that form of the medium including those far from comic.
Quotations

...'comic' simply means funny, so the word is inadequate. To tack on the word 'adult' has resulted in a style of magazine suitable for only some adults, glossy comics barely containing their airbrushed breasts, leaving little room for genuine content.

Paul Gravett Escape Magazine 1

...in a visual medium, a comics format ... the writer works for the artist, in the same that the writer in a movie works for the director.

Samuel R. Delany The Comics Journal 48

The British novel has become so thin-blooded and out of touch with anything. And television drama's been pretty much emasculated. Comics is one place where no one's looking. And you get this work out, which would once have been some bizarre film by Lindsay Anderson, but now there'd be no possible way of getting that funded. Comics' marginalisation allows you to do a lot that you wouldn't be able to do otherwise.

Grant Morrison The Comics Journal 176 p. 82 (1995)

 
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