Fantasy
What you read and see on the page is often fantastic, and the structure of the storytelling comics engage is fundamentally informed by fantasy. In comics, anything can happen: Visitors from other planets fire lasers from their retinas and lift buildings with their bare hands. Invincible, beautiful warriors are shaped from clay, and nerdy scientists are transformed into green-skinned behemoths and balletic pugilists who swing from New York City skyscrapers. Civilizations are abundant throughout the universe, and not one but many other-than-human races share the earth with us—mutants, water-breathing Atlanteans, Eternals, Deviants, gods old and new, immortal Amazons, mole people. Beagles lead rich, linguistically mediated fantasy lives; cats plot world domination; raccoons perform spectacular burglaries; impossibly gorgeous and overendowed women and men enjoy endless orgasms; space gods rove the universe eating planets; robots build their own families and establish their own polities; and businessmen and magicians travel into alternate dimensions unbound by euclidean geometries and walk on winding pathways of crayon-smudged color. Due to comics’ serial production—generally appearing as ongoing stories paced by intervals, whether daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly—action and occurrence are elongated, elaborated, as well as condensed and abbreviated. Time moves backward as well as forward, as...