- I know, I know.
Your fingers are already nearing the thumbs-down button.
I won't stop you, but I did want to say
a super quick thing before we get started.
In the interest of full disclosure,
some of you might have noticed that we released
this video yesterday, but there were some weird
audio glitches and editing errors,
so we decided to re-upload it today
and take the extra day to address
some common ideas and criticisms that I saw
in the comment section.
Really just to clarify a few points.
That entire video was voiceover,
so when you see my face here again,
you'll know that it was an amendment
to the original video.
That being said, let's get in to
why I think emoji are comics.
(techno jingle)
How are you doing, you wonderful nerd?
We live in a post-July 28th world
where The Emoji Movie is a thing that now exists.
A couple years ago, I made a video
asking the question if emoji count as comics,
and now I figured would be the perfect time
to revamp that idea, especially because
that video is terrible, and belonged to the Headcanon Series
that most people hated.
But, I think the issue is interesting enough to ask again,
so are emoji comics?
The question is complicated.
We know what emoji is, it's these things,
little cartoon-ish ideograms that are baked
right in to our phones so we can send each other
smiley faces and hearts, and I don't know, clamps?
I'm great with emoji, clearly,
and as much as I would love
to introduce this Scott emoji in to the world,
unfortunately you and I can't create new emoji
because the introduction of new smileys and such
are controlled by the Unicode Consortium.
However, this does mean that defining something
as an emoji is just about as simple as asking
if it's on their official list.
Easy peasy.
But while emoji might be fairly simple to define,
comic, on the other hand, isn't so easy.
To continue plugging my old videos,
we dedicated an eight-minute episode
trying to define comics two years ago,
and I could've easily gone another
10 or 20 minutes on the subject.
We won't repeat too much here.
You can watch it by clicking the link in the description,
but for the sake of this video,
let's go with a fundamental definition
given by and icon of the medium, Will Eisner.
Comics is sequential art.
So, right around here I where is started to lose people.
First and foremost, saying comics is sequential art
was not a grammatical mistake.
We're discussing comics as the medium
where a comic book is simply a product of that medium.
This distinction, although confusing initially
and poorly explained by me the first time around,
is crucial.
When I refer to comics in this video,
you might instinctively go towards Marvel and DC,
superheros and villains.
But I'm referring to something broader,
a lot broader.
In his seminal work, Understanding Comics,
author Scott McCloud furthers Eisner's definition
to explain that comics is spatially juxtaposed pictorial
and other images in deliberate sequence.
That's what I'm referring to when I say comics.
Comic books and graphic novels are merely
two products of a much larger art form
that uses a sequence of images
to tell stories or convey ideas.
AKA capital C comics.
McCloud goes on to explain that in this context,
comics art has existed long before the invention
of the printing press and newspaper funnies.
Ancient paintings and tapestries,
stained glass windows that retell biblical tales,
and heck, even IKEA instruction manuals
are all examples of comics arts.
Because again, we're not talking about Superman or Deadpool,
or whatever, we're talking about an entire artistic medium
that uses successive pictures and images
to tell stories or convey information and ideas.
And boy, if that doesn't sound exactly like emoji.
Unlike an animation where the images
are adjacent in time, one frame, then another, then another,
all taking turns sharing the same space,
comics, on the other hand, is images adjacent
to one another physically.
Pick up a comic and you'll see that no two panels
share the same space unless you're reading a digital comic
in that guided view, but let's not get in to how much
I've come to dislike that.
A string of emoji operates in a very similar way to comics.
They, too, are images juxtaposed physically,
or I guess, digitally, but you get what I mean.
A sequence of emoji is displayed side-by-side,
each with their own dedicated space,
and like comics, syntax is vital.
The arrangement of panels is used
to present a cohesive story or idea.
You don't read a comic by picking a random panel
to jump to in whatever order you want.
I mean, you could do that, but I can't imagine
it would be incredibly coherent.
As McCloud wrote, "Comics utilizes images
"in deliberate sequence."
In this way, it's similar to language,
putting symbols in an intentional order
to create words and sentences,
and scripts for YouTube videos,
an excellent example of long strings of emojis
set in sequence to tell a story is Emoji Dick,
Which translated Herman Melville's Moby Dick
in to, well, you guessed it.
However, because of the limitations of emoji,
the book is effectively incomprehensible
without the original text that is printed under it.
The emoji are used to reinforce the ideas
and provide some interesting context,
and largely, this is how emoji are applied
in everyday circumstances.
Tagging smileys and dancers and pizza emojis
on to other texts, allowing words
and images to work together.
One way that emoji and text can be used together
is to reinforce one another, like putting a laughing face
next to LMAO.
It reminds me of those old comics,
especially during the sixties at Marvel
where stories had unnamed narrators
who would tell the reader exactly
what they see in every panel.
Take this exchange from Avengers #1.
- [Narrator] Suddenly, the mighty fugitive
drops to Earth, his golden pursuer,
unable to stop in time, whizzes over him.
Then, with the speed of a charging dreadnaught,
the Hulk leaps in to the air again,
behind the startled Iron Man.
- [Scott] Now, we could easily crop these panels
to either just the narration or just the images,
and you would still be able to understand
what's happening without reading both components.
They simply reinforce what the other is communicating.
But what makes the medium of comics so unique
is the way it uses both text and imagery
to tell stories and convey ideas,
utilizing different parts of the brain in unison
to decode the information on the page.
And, naturally, emoji can also be used
in tandem with words in this same way.
Not just to reinforce the same ideas,
but to add context which wasn't expressed with words alone.
This combination of words and images
juxtaposed in deliberate sequence being practiced
on the daily by endless amounts of texts and posts
makes me wonder if the world is unintentionally
starting to become more fluent in the language of comics.
More importantly, it means The Emoji Movie
is technically yet another comic movie
featuring Sir Patrick Stewart.
But what do you think?
Do emoji fit in to the comics medium,
either technically or legitimately?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below,
I'm interested to hear them.
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Until next time, my name is Scott,
reminding you to read between the panels
and grow smarter through emoji,
I mean comics. See ya.