The city in the frame. Intersections between comics and architecture

Abstract

Comics, purely a spatial medium, represent the point where words, sequences and images meet, possessing a big potential of building powerful stories about people, places and emotions. The flexible hybrid graphic medium of comic strips, which combines in their structure, the narrative element, space and movement, have always had a strong connection with the notion of the “city”. Functioning as a narrative generator, the urban landscape is an important plot element, even atmospheric, and symbolic protagonist, remaining ideologically associated to the original story of the comic. A rich and varied manner of expression, not only used as an amusing artistic medium dedicated to children and teenagers, comics can be a stimulating manner of rapidly promoting the political, cultural and aesthetic particularities country of its origin.