Intermedial combinations

Media combinations of different basic media types are always, literally, intermedial combinations that involve intermedial relations between different forms of communication. This chapter looks at how words and images on pages convey a graphic narrative in comics. In the specific case of comics, scholars have attempted to categorize different types of interaction between words and images, which create different added values in the process of meaning-making. The chapter presents a few key terms and functions of sound effects, which are then put to use in an analysis of a brief segment from the animated film My Neighbor Totoro. It highlights four types of functions that sound and music have for the narrative structure in the specific radio drama The Unforgiven: sound as a visual marker, words and sound in combination, the use of diegetic and non-diegetic music and verbal descriptions of sound in combination with sound.