Sequencial Art in Comics: Osamu Tezuka and Time Through Panels

Merit Eads
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The comic, by its definition and common concept, is an art form that is bound by tangible, specific limits. When we think of the word comic, the most defining trait of the genre that comes to mind is the panel: “a separate or distinct part of a surface[,] such as [a] comic strip,” or “a frame of a comic strip”. However, just because a story is portrayed in a medium with strict rules, this doesn’t mean that artists haven’t found inventive and thematically enriching ways to break these rules, shifting them to their advantage.

​Osamu Tezuka, a prolific Japanese manga artist who authored many influential and renowned titles such as Astro Boy, Black Jack, and Phoenix during his lifetime, experiments heavily with the panels in his work. Tezuka often relies on a pattern in which the more thin, elongated panels reflect a shorter span of time; in this way, a scene with very quick changes in movement can be portrayed with a single page filled with numerous “snapshot” panels. Take, for example, this page from Tezuka’s The Book of Human Insects (read right to left):

Each panel takes up the entire width of the page, and with minimal text in each panel, this is the perfect set-up for the reader’s eye to move, essentially, straight down from the very top to the very bottom of the page. With a single sweep of our eyes downward, we take in each panel for a length of time mirrored by its height. The second and third panels are so thin that they can be “read” visually almost simultaneously. The rest of the panels are slightly taller, giving them more substance and allowing them to “last” longer, but they each reflect a moment in this dance performed by the two women. They are red not necessarily as specific steps in the dance, but more as snapshots of a continuous movement, which we are meant to read once again in a “sweeping” motion, flowing downward without any stops.

​Using the same technique with different results, the first panel in this page from Tezuka’s Black Jack (read right to left) is set up to mirror a cinematic downward pan as might be used in a film. The large amount of text demands our attention for a decent amount of time, and then our eyes must scan over the titular Black Jack’s frame and the patient he is working on. Tezuka then reverts back to the “short panels as short moments of time” pattern that we explored above, having the rest of the page be taken up by two panels that show short, clipped images of Black Jack’s hands laying the final touches on his patients’ prosthetic body.

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Tezuka also innovates his own patterns, using them in new ways with the same basis, such as in this example below from Hi no Tori ​(read right to left)​:

 Still relying on the iconography we have come to expect from his work, Tezuka now creates a two-page spread that forces the reader to slow down and take in the scope of this moment. Each panel, rotated from the short-and-wide shape we are used to, extends from the top to the bottom of the page, signalling that this page portrays a slow, still moment instead of a quick scene heavy with movement. Each panel shows the reflection of a pagoda in the water, and the scene changes only slightly from each image to the next. As readers, we are given plenty of time to observe and absorb not only the serene imagery and how it is disrupted, but the accompanying dialogue as well.

Tezuka is a master at his craft, visually enriching his works with many aspects not discussed here, such as the shape, placement, and weight in his panels, but his creation of time through each panel as a "scene" one might see in a film acts as a firm base on which his other exploratory techniques can shine through.

*Note: Due to differences in publisher translation, some examples are read from left to right.

Ode to Kirihito (read left to right)

Ode to Kirihito (read left to right)

Black Jack (read right to left)

Citations:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/panel 
https://miscdotmisc.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/the-brilliant-framing-and-paneling-of-tezuka-osamu/
​http://mangabookshelf.com/2010/04/07/ode-to-kirihito-vols-1-2/