Making Comics Without Stories: A Conceptual Approach to Sequential Art

Abstract

This thesis explores the boundaries of comics as an art form, taking Will Eisner’s definition of comics as “sequential art” as a starting point and extending it into the realm of conceptual art. By approaching comics as sequences of images stripped of narrative, language, and traditional representational structures, I test what remains of the form when it is reduced to its most minimal elements. The work consists of abstract, minimal comics that function as both visual experiments and conceptual propositions. Influenced by conceptual art’s insistence on idea over form, these comics are not intended to communicate fixed stories, but to question what it means for a sequence of images to be read as comics at all. The thesis combines these visual works with reflective writing, treating the drawing process and the act of thinking about it as a single, intertwined practice. The result is an inquiry that does not seek to answer what comics are, but to keep that question alive—framing sequential art as an open-ended space of experimentation, interpretation, and redefinition.