Last post, I wrote about reality in Szymon Kudranski’s Something Epic #1. Today I want to continue that discussion by looking at the beginning of issue #2 where Danny confronts his mother’s cancer diagnosis and discusses the semiotic nature of words, specifically the manner in which words only represent a part of reality, not the whole. When we read words on the page, we take them in with our eyes or ears and our brain transforms those symbols into images, reconstructing them within our minds. In this manner, we form the reality from the words.

When I read Julie Orringer’s The Flight Portfolio before heading to Marseille, I had no clue or geographical context for the spaces that Varian Frye and others traversed in the novel; however, when I read Anna Seghers’ Transit after returning from Marseille, I could see, albeit through a contemporary lens, the Canibere, La Joliette, and other districts in Marseille. My mind recreated the space from my own experiences in the city. This act of creation within our minds is what Danny examines in the opening of issue #2.

The issue begins much as issue #1, with various panels depicting a hospital scene. The first issue shows Danny’s brith, and the first page of the second issue, broken down into twelve panels, shows Danny’s mom’s in the hospital. The panels show the exterior of the hospital, medical professionals walking down the hall, a nurse inserting an IV into Danny’s mother’s arm, and other images. Two panels show Danny, picking up from the end of the first issue, looking at his mother’s diagnosis. In the first panel, we see his shilouetted in profile, and in the second we see a closeup on his eye. The page ends with a panel highlighting the word “cancer.” Over this final panel, Danny narrates, “Words.”

With this opening, Kudranski foregrounds the images, making us think about the movement and meaning sans words. This move corresponds with Danny’s narration on the next two pages where he details the ways that words, while forming meaning, do not constitute reality. Over a two page spread, which shows an overhead shot of Danny’s mother lying in the hospital bed surrounded by medical equipment and Danny sleeping on the couch, Danny comments on the creation of language and words. He states, “We invented them to better communicate — to describe ideas and emotions, to share our thoughts and feelings. Because as humans, we crave connection; that innate need to share and become closer with one another.” Before written language, we had “pictograms,” and these conveyed meaning and feeling to others. Words on the page serve as an extension of “pictograms,” they are made of symbols (letters) that when joined together and organized in different orders create meaning within our minds.

We may think that we comprehend words at a speedy rate, but in reality we interpret visual images at a much quicker rate. Think about reading this sentence. As you read it, your mind begins to fill in the next word before your eyes even see it. Your mind works to construct the meaning because it seeks order and, through experience, can guess, with relative accuracy, the next word in the sequence. Danny mentions this as well. He states, “You might think words are our primary form of communication. Far from it, ninety-three percent of human language is visual. We think in pictures first. Our brain processes visual information much faster than words — 60,000 times faster.” When we see the visual, we take it in and interpret it, eventually transforming it into words, yet the words we use do not necessarily convey the full experience of what we see, or I’d add what we touch, taste, hear, or smell.

Letters and words, as I’ve mentioned, are, at their cores, symbols. Ferdniand de Saussure, in Course in General Linguistics, points out that words exist as signs and these signs consist of the signifier and the signified. “The linguistic sign unites,” de Saussure writes, “not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image. The latter is not the material sound, a purely physical thing, but the psychological imprint of the sound, the impression that it makes on our senses.” The sound-image is why we say, at times, that we hear a text speaking to us. Instead of using “concept” and “sound-image,” de Saussure proposed using signified and signifier respectively. The signifier is the word, and the signified is what we associate with the signifier.

We see de Saussere’s insight at work in Something Epic when Danny details his initial thoughts at first reading the word “cancer” in his mom’s medical paperwork. Initially, the word conjured an image of “a happy crab and lobster playing beach volleyball in the sunshine.” Danny doesn’t say where this image comes from, but we can assume that it derives from the zodiac symbol cancer, a crab. The playful scene on the beach, though, quickly changes becoming something else in Danny’s mind. He sees “some hungry crustacean gnawing at [his] mom from the inside, trying to get out.” The image of the crab or lobster remains, but that image becomes conjoined with the medical cancer infecting his mother, thus conflating the two concepts (signified) of the sound-image (signifier).

These images, though, pale in relation to the reality of the cancer. Danny continues, “In reality, those six letters couldn’t even begin to describe a tenth of what my mother would go through. It was just a word on paper.” The truth of the cancer multiplying within Danny’s mom did not match the concepts that Danny created within his mind upon first seeing the six letters organized on the page. Yet, as he points out, Danny’s “imagination gave it life.” Danny created the concept within his mind, conjuring up images and feelings to help him understand and cope with what was happening to his mother. In that manner, “[e]verything we experience with our senses,” Danny tells us, “creates images in our minds. Using words, we try to paint the picture, but it’s our imagination that holds the brush.” We hear the sound-image, the word, or we read it, and our minds create the concept, creating it from our own experiences and senses.

The cancer that infects Danny’s mother is not the same that infected my mother. Her experiences were not my mother’s experiences. Danny’s experiences in that moment were different from mine, due to age and other factors. All of our experiences, though, inform us and form connections within our minds that construct concepts when we encounter words and ideas. We bring these connections together, and the connections we make, that pulse through our brains, are not the same as anyone else’s connections because, as Danny continually points out, “We are all unknown creators.” Our minds prove this point.

What are your thoughts? As always, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Twitter @silaslapham.