A Semiotic Analysis of Visual Elements Particular to the Medium of Comics in Alan Ford by Max Bunker and Magnus

This paper presents the results of a semiotic analysis of visual elements characteristic for the medium of comic books applied to the first seventy-five issues of the Croatian edition of Alan Ford. After a description of the cultural and historical framework, it analyzes individual signs in comics and different elements specific for expression in comic books in Western culture with the aim of exploring which of these signs are present in Alan Ford, and to what extent. The results show that the analyzed comic book is deeply rooted in the visual and literary Western tradition, and that it contains virtually all the characteristic elements of representation in comic books. However, the paper also concludes that certain iconic elements of the vocabulary of comics – i.e. onomatopoeic neologisms – are to a certain extent specific and typical only for Alan Ford