ABSTRACT
The ability of empirical investigations to engage with more interpretative traditions such as narratology, literature, and comics studies more generally still remains quite limited. This chapter suggests that the methodology illustrated sets out a beneficial framework for taking dialogue between empirical studies and abstract interpretation further. Most empirical studies of comics and graphic novels to date have drawn on the assumed sequential reception of panels. On the side of comics, this work makes ready contact with considerations of the interpretative 'work' that readers evidently must perform to bridge the gutter separating panels. On the side of empirical studies, focusing on sequencing has opened up many suggestive points of similarity with verbal discourse processing as researched for several decades in psycholinguistics. The materials used as stimuli for the gridding experiment were created by manipulating color pages taken from several Western comics sources that offered a sufficient variety of panel sizes for ready inclusion in our constructed pages.
