Week Two

What does Khordoc think that Aterix series does better than Hergé’s Tintin?


The common traits in comic books are the use of speech balloons. Khordoc describes this common trait through the comic series Aterix. Throughout the text he draws upon certain elements of these speech balloons (such as the tail, shape, colour, content, etc of the balloons) whilst comparing differences with other comics such as Herge’s Tintin series.

Although the characters are the main narrators, Khordoc feels that although Hergé incorporates onomatopoeia within his works to produce the result of sound, it isn’t enough to be audible like other comic books. This could be because the Tintin series is influenced by other Belgian comics in terms of their complicated story lines, and also the reason why the text within Tintin’s speech balloons take up almost half of the panel. Although each panel has detailed drawings, it still relies heavily on the text. Whereas Asterix would occupy but a little space and at the same time convey a lot of information through both balloons and pictures.

In the case of silent balloons, Asterix uses punctuation (such as exclamation and question marks) to tell the reader how a character feels or what they’re thinking, whereas in Tintin, because it’s a more textual series, it would most likely explain what the character is thinking which would take up time. “Precise words would be slower to convey the feeling then the immediate significant transmitted by the punctuation” Khordoc (2001).

According to Horricks (2004), how have perceptions of comics as a media changed?

In the early 1950’s comic books were perceived to be a bad influence on New Zealand’s young generation at that time. It was thought that comic books were corrupted and could lead children, later in life, to commit crime or go to war. “It may be perfectly true that all of these media have been responsible, over the centuries, for “eroding the most fundamental habits of humane, civilised living”” Horricks (2004).

Reference List


Horricks, D. (2004). The perfect Planet: Comics, games and world-building. In Williams, M. (Ed), Writing at the Edge of the Universe. Christchurch: U of Canterbury Press.

Khordoc C. (2001). The Comic Book’s Soundtrack: Visual Sound-effects in Asterix. In Vernum, R. & Gibbons, C. (Eds.), The Language of Comics: word and image, (pp. 156-173). Jackson: U Press of Mississippi.