The internal architecture of suspense: The enunciation rhythm in the graphic novel Cachalote

Abstract

The recent graphic production has expanded the boundaries of comics by multiplying the means of placement and circulation, the market, and cultural attention to these artistic discourses. Looking at this cultural expansion, in this work, we examine the graphic novel Cachalote (2010), produced by Daniel Galera and Rafael Coutinho, having emerged in this scenario and presenting characteristics of experiments in language in transit with other artistic practices. With the purpose of having a reading of the practice of suspense as responsible for the thread of narrative, reader adherence and its influences and gains for a comic experimentation, we selected a French semiotic theory, in the proposal of Pietroforte (2009) and in the theory from McCloud’s comics (2008) to detail the narrative rhythm of suspense as regularities and inventions of comic book expression. In this way, an analysis of the graphic novel allows a look at the artistic result of the intense artistic practices of the recent comics and their aesthetic gains.

Keywords: Cachalote, semiotics, suspense.