This thesis examines the apparent simplicity of comics by exposing some of the layers in which meaning is created in a complex network; it approaches the complexity of comics from the angle of spatio-temporality and separates comics into several spatio-temporal levels that each interacts in the way representation, imagination and experience is renegotiated in comics. Another concern to the thesis is focus on how comics are structured in a network made up by individual elements and how these connect. The thesis uses various theoretical approaches in examining a wide range of comics across genres and formats to illuminate how time and space is constructed in comics. I argue that “time and space in comics” is too broad a notion and that we need to conceptualize a multiple spatio-temporal construction that takes into account the way spatio-temporality of diegesis is represented through the spatio-temporality of structure and in turn how this spatio-temporality is imagined through the spatio-temporality of the reader. Using Mikhail M. Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope, I examine how the configuration of different spatio-temporalities interconnect in the superhero series Top 10. These spatio-temporalities interact with the spatio-temporality of the real world drawing upon experience and I discuss how spatio-temporal structures from the diegesis can also influence our perception of reality using Paul Ricoeur’s thoughts on fiction.
The thesis also examines specific formal elements such as the full page and the black panel and their spatio-temporal effects comparing various works by the same author or comics by man different artists. Building from this, a separate chapter analyses comics’ structure as a network with combining comics theory by Thierry Groensteen with Manuel DeLanda’s concept of assemblage and then uses this concept to analyze the spatio-temporality of the classic album series, Astérix. Finally, the space of the structure of comics and its relation to both the space of the real and the space of the diegesis is explored through Edward Soja’s concept of “Thirdspace” and Michel Foucault’s “heterotopia”.