Page Layout and Braiding in Hergé’s Seven Crystal Balls
In the last years of the 20th century, the Belgian scholar Thierry Groensteen developed a new way of analyzing comics in his book Système de la bande dessinée. The starting point is the notion of “iconic solidarity”, by which separate but interrelated images form a significant unity. The relations that rule this iconic solidarity are called the “arthrology”, governed by three fundamental operations: (a) Page layout as a result of gridding, or the distribution of the physical space; (b) Breakdown, or the division of the narrative content in panels; and (c) Braiding, or the interrelation of panels from a distance and not by narrative principles. All these operations create a delicate network in comics and any manipulation can alter it with negative results. A clear example can be found in Hergé’s The Seven Crystal Balls. It had a very eventful publication process: first as daily strips, then as album pages, and last as double pages à l’italienne, occupying the whole width of the two pages. The pages prepared for the album suffered notable alterations in the braiding of the panels with the change of page layout from single page to double page. In this paper we will analyze the paradigmatic and syntagmatic consequences of changes in the conception of the page.
