Response to Jim Steranko's Narrative Theory

     I have found Jim Steranko's narrative theory very helpful. It works to clarify many different aspects of comic creation, and is exteremly helpful in that regard, giving advice as it does to panels set-ups, lighting styles, shot styles, and overall page set-up in addition to many other more specific things. It is meant for a slightly different audience than I, which is something which I take issue with. It goes over the translation from text to art as though that act were a collaboration between two different people, the writer and the artist. However being in the position where I lack that other person to run ideas against I find myself at an advantage and disadvantage over what the text describes.
    Being that the reading is 18 very content rich pages, I'll go over it by general section as opposed to a closer inspection. The first section covered good content, regarding how the writing process in completely linked to the very visual art process, and the links between visual images and the services that provides to the overall narrative. Steranko put forward an interesting point when he mention how he had tailored his work to three different distinctive levels of reader, doing so using the combination of intrinsic and extrinsic meanings linking the images. The point of what he was describing is essentially to copy to a certain extent the writing in the art of the story. To use the reader inferred links between images to bring the story to a more basic art level that ca be grasped by a less developed audience. This tactic does its work twice, bringing the story to a younger audience and reinforcing and in fact adding depth to the story perceived by the more writing and text oriented reader.
   In the next general section Steranko covers specifics of the linkages between images and a couple specifics of panel construction. One of the first things he brought up is the temporal manipulation of the panels in an effort to better cover the story. To me the temporal manipulations represent the differences between your average straightforward movie and movies like Memento and Pulp Fiction. It can definitely enhance the story but at the same time, if your story requires temporal manipulation to keep it fresh and interesting, then bigger things are wrong with the story. as far as the other panel manipulations go, he recommends and explains pretty standard things, things we have covered in lecture before like the viewpoint or style of shot used in the individual panels, and the lighting of each panel with regards to character lighting.
   In the next section Steranko goes over some very interesting information regarding operating in a standard comic book setup where the viewer is actually reading two distinct pages of comics at once as part of a spread. this information was less useful for me as the work that i do is of a more digital nature and will not have that same kind of layout, he does however also discuss some alternate layouts for comics that can enhance the message or plot being delivered.
  In the final section Steranko goes over the creation of one page of comics. He went through each of the panels describing each of his design decisions, basically following all of his previous advice.