ABSTRACT
Picturebooks, comics and graphic novels are rich and complex media, combining image and text in different formats and playing on the interdependence of these signifying systems. This chapter looks at the similarities and differences between these media, which exist largely as separate areas of publishing, although changing patterns of ownership in publishing mean this separation is being eroded. It also explores aspects of the grammar of the media, the challenges they offer the reader and flags up some of the ways in which critics have chosen to approach these visual forms.
