Comics Rollback
2022-02-04

Comics Rollback

I'm currently on tome 3 of Freaks' Squeele by Florent Maudoux. It is excellent, and it reminded me of one of my bad habits.

Comics are particular. Before I could read, I was attracted to them, I guessed the story, probably mostly misunderstanding it. That left me with a bad habit: I skip the text, I am drawn by the images. I have to stop and force my focus on the text.

This exercise forces me to rollback and amend the story that the images rushed to my mind.

I have the impression that it occurs only with comics, where text and images are mixed and the suggested movement across the page blanks out text blocks. Plays and movies have image and sound in synchronization. Stories and books bring the word, there isn't another thing to synchronize, maybe a few illustrations.

Video games are the most immersive probably, and less "single track" than the other media. In (catholic) churches there are comics without much phylactery in the form of the stations of the cross. You're sitting under a station and your mind wanders. Mind-drift might also happen while reading a book, I read, but my train of thought goes off-track.

Back to the rollback necessary with comics, it happens often in role-playing games, where a situation is described, conclusions are jumped to and answers to questions trigger some rollback. Or the referee or a player made a mistake and has to rollback their description or action.

Comics aren't role-playing games, but, at least for me, they share this need for rollback.