Due to a lapse in government funding, this account will be inactive until further notice.

So all government snark aside, the readings for today gave me flashbacks into Literary Criticism, especially in relation to how we view and process signs and their meanings. The version of this process presented in lit crit is a simple one:                                                   In life, it is a bit more nuanced and complicate. In fact, as we read the world around us and slowly build a concrete idea of the would around us, we wind up with a version of this diagram that looks more like this: 

(in a true theoretical sense, it probably looks more like this:)

But in the sense that a comic book, or strip, utilizes our recognition of signs, there are dozens of levels at play. The things the McDonald's sign tells us (food, American, unhealthy, french fries) blend together to form a single tapestry of signage. The things a comics page tell us are ties up in our cultural understanding as well as our sense of design and humor. Consider:

Funny? Yes, because we understand the characters (heroes), the problem (oil spill) and the "bad guys" (BP). Here these different literacies come together to create a single, three panel comic that becomes its own discourse by combining the available "signs." So something as simple as McDonald's = unhealthy or BP = bad can become a nuanced critique through the addition of other levels of understanding.