Under Construction @ Keele 2017 Under Construction @ Keele Vol. III (3) | Page 63

comprises scene changes rather than the aspect to aspect transitions more familiar
to Japanese Manga). MALM’s breakdown of 75% : 25% : 5% is surprisingly close to
this model, suggesting one of two things could be true:
Firstly, that this structure, comprised primarily of action to action transitions,
has some inherent property that facilitates a certain mode of reading. As McCloud
details, action to action transitions are often the most concise in conveying
information, and this applies regardless of the specific content of the text. Yet, there
is an obvious counter argument to the above: namely, that comics of perfectly
comprehensible meaning have been created with different transitional structures.
This would suggest that another explanation might be necessary. This second theory
argues that a structure of predominantly action to action transitions, rather than
being particularly or specifically useful, in fact entails a kind of hegemonic comics
discourse, mirroring the western mode of storytelling so prevalent in canonical
literature. There is again some obvious merit to this argument, particularly
considering McCloud’s demonstration of the variations in regional styles of comics –
and considering the fact that very legible comics have been constructed with
different discourses. 11
Quite how this discourse of comics constitution actualises power, however, is
under-analysed and as yet poorly understood. Moreover, there are clearly some
problems in considering MALM as being entirely a product of such discourse when it
seems so obvious that an instructional work would benefit from this structure, over
say one with a much higher usage of, for instance, moment to moment transitions.
Yet the fact that this is only due to MALM’s instructive nature further undermines
traditional comics’ use of this same structure. Realistically, then, we can surmise that
MALM is demonstrative of the benefits of such a formation whilst still challenging its
necessity within non-instructional works.
11
Ibid., 70-73.