Beyond the Shadow of Z: Non-Linear Reading and Experimental Approaches to Comics

The aim of this study is to broaden the field of investigation of empirical research on the reading of comics by including aspects related to narrative rhythm and non-linear paths, while associating them with a narrative genre, in this case, the Franco-Belgian humorous comic strip. On the basis of this corpus, on one hand we are interested in the retrograde reading operations induced by visual gags in one page, and on the other hand, we investigate the impact of sequences that we call “chronophotographic”, the latter having received little attention until our study