Picto-verbal representation: Types and features of unreliable narration in comics

Scholars have underestimated comics as an art form. This article uses an analysis of unreliable narration to show the complexity of this narrative mechanism in comics and, in turn, the sophistication of comics. Groensteen divides comic narrators into reciters and monstrators, and this distinction provides the basis to discuss unreliable narration in comics. This article categorizes comics with unreliable narration into mono-sequence and dual-sequence unreliable narrations according to the picto-verbal relationship in the works. Moreover, medium-specific features of comics such as spatialization of time and panel designs lead to unique types of unreliability.