Blog

  • What do you do with a comic?

    Based on some disagreements I’ve had with people lately, I’m curious what the general populace thinks. Please take my poll (and pass it on!): Blog Polls Blog Polls Blog Polls Also: If you choose “other” for either one, please feel free to say what you think in the comments. Thanks!

  • Brainwaves for non-sequitur visual sequences

    Here is another repost of a review I did awhile ago (1/22/09). This study examines the neurocognitive processes involved with comprehending a series of pictures, like in comics. The experimenters pulled frames from an animated movie to create static picture sequences. There were two possible endings for each sequence: one with a normal ending, and…

  • I own a metaphor!

    I am now the proud owner of an original piece of Drew Weing art! Drew is selling pieces from his excellent works,and I chose this one: I like this one so much both because it reflects a feeling common to both comic authors and academics (of which I’m both), as well as it shows a…

  • Taking a year off

    Astute followers of this website will have noticed a conspicuous lack of an announcement of my ComicCon talk this year. In fact, I am taking a break from the Con this year and instead presenting at a cognitive science conference this weekend in my current town of Boston instead of going to my hometown of…

  • Looking at Comics in the Brain with Lasers!

    Nagai, Masayoshi, Nobutaka Endo, and Kumada Takatsune. 2007. “Measuring Brain Activities Related to Understanding Using near-Infrared Spectroscopy (Nirs).” In Human Interface and the Management of Information: Methods, Techniques and Tools in Information Design, 884-93. Heidelberg: Springer Berlin I had originally reviewed this article several years ago back in 2008, but after recent research of my…

  • 9 years… 1 to go?

    As of May 31st, this website has now been up for 9 years! Woo! A couple notes… Yesterday I formally proposed my dissertation, which means I am hopefully on track to finish my program by the end of next school year. That means I’ll be running experiments from now until hopefully around October gathering data.…

  • “180º Rule”… not so much

    This is a review of an experiment that tests the “180º Rule” of film editing using eye movements, and finds that no evidence for negative cognitive effect is found. The 180º Rule claims that in film editing, when showing two characters on the left and right of a shot, it would be confusing if the…

  • Cross-cultural cognition via French Comic Translation Censorship?

    I recently found this very interesting post about the “censorship” of French translations of Marvel Comics. Apparently this will be a chapter in a new book, but the examples they have posted (some relinked on the side here) are very interesting from the point of view of cross-cultural psychology and meaning. While the post shows…

  • Summer in spring!

    As of Friday, I have officially entered Summer Break (here in a very rainy New England Spring), which means I’m hoping to have lots of interesting projects going soon. One of my goals is to resume blogging more frequently, at least a post a week. I think this should be doable given what I have…

  • Comics as a Binary Language

    The paper “The Comic as a Binary Language” by J. Laraudogoitia examines the structure of comics by converting the contents of panels into binary code. Coding a broad number of Eurpoean comics, a panel holding the protagonist of a story (“lead character”) is given a “+” while a panel without is given a “-“. The…