Comic Strip

comic strip, series of adjacent drawn images, usually arranged horizontally, that are designed to be read as a narrative or a chronological sequence. The story is usually original in this form. Words may be introduced within or near each image, or they may be dispensed with altogether. If words functionally dominate the image, it then becomes merely illustration to a text. The comic strip is essentially a mass medium, printed in a magazine, a newspaper, or a book. The definition of comic strip as essentially containing text inscribed within “balloons” inside the picture frame aspires to a certain orthodoxy in the United States, but it is unworkable and would exclude most strips created before about 1900 and many since. The term graphic novel is now established for the longer and more novel-like coherent story, and the term sequential art is also in use.