Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42205590›Full record

ArticleLanguage resources and evaluation2026

The properties of panels in global comics: frequency and size of 76 K panels in 1,030 comics from 144 countries.

Neil Cohn, Andrew T Hendrickson, Bruno Cardoso, Bien Klomberg, Irmak Hacımusaoğlu, Ana Krajinović, Sharitha van der Gouw, Fred Atilla, Abe Simons, Tim Hankart and 14 more

Abstract read
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Language resources and evaluation, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

24 authors.

Neil CohnDepartment of Communication and Cognition, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands.ORCID 0000-0003-0074-1995
Andrew T HendricksonDepartment of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands.ORCID 0000-0002-5690-2412
Bruno CardosoDepartment of Communication and Cognition, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands.ORCID 0000-0002-4569-0610
Bien KlombergDepartment of Communication and Cognition, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands.ORCID 0000-0001-6386-7785
Irmak HacımusaoğluDepartment of Communication and Cognition, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands.ORCID 0000-0003-0026-3188
Ana KrajinovićDepartment of Communication and Cognition, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands.ORCID 0000-0002-0858-7606
Sharitha van der GouwDepartment of Communication and Cognition, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands.
Fred AtillaDepartment of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands.ORCID 0000-0003-1061-4420
Abe SimonsDepartment of Communication and Cognition, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands.
Tim HankartDepartment of Communication and Cognition, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands.
Nanne van NoordInformatics Institute, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.ORCID 0000-0002-5145-3603
Sam TitarsolejInformatics Institute, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.ORCID 0000-0002-4191-6758
Fernando Casanova MartínezDepartment of Spanish Philology, General Linguistics and Theory of Literature, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain.ORCID 0000-0001-8542-2656
Tomás Gaete AltamiranoDepartment of Psychology, Universidad Autónoma de Chile, Santiago, Chile.ORCID 0000-0001-8216-7434
Marianna PagkratidouFaculty of Science and Health, School of Psychology, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland.ORCID 0000-0002-0161-1554
Michał SzawernaInstitute of English Studies, University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland.ORCID 0000-0002-1196-6834
Nicolas VerstappenFaculty of Communication Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand.ORCID 0000-0002-7265-1502
Heinz Insu FenklDepartment of English, State University of New York, New Paltz, USA.ORCID 0009-0004-3882-3827
Leandro KruszielskiDepartment of Theory and Foundations of Education, Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil.ORCID 0000-0002-8938-9272
Anna Marta MariniInstituto Franklin, Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid, Spain.ORCID 0000-0001-8268-2516
Gaurav SinghIndependent Researcher, Lucknow, India.ORCID 0009-0005-3161-7518
Dušan StamenkovićFaculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, Niš, Serbia.ORCID 0000-0002-0121-4591
Miloš TasićFaculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Niš, Niš, Serbia.ORCID 0000-0003-4355-2326
Yen Na YumDepartment of Special Education and Counselling, The Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, Hong Kong.ORCID 0000-0002-2165-6813

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Panels are a fundamental unit of comics, yet basic data about their usage in comics from around the world has not been widely investigated. Here we analyze panel information in the TINTIN Corpus consisting of 1,030 comics from 144 countries-comprising over 14,000 pages with over 76,000 panels-all annotated using the Multimodal Annotation Software Tool (MAST). We examined both the number of panels per page and the relative size of those panels to their pages, finding that they varied in dimensions of the style that they are drawn in, the global region they come from, the typological properties of the languages spoken by their authors, and the year of their publication. In addition, a clear tradeoff occurred between these dimensions of structure, where larger panels appeared for fewer panels per page, and vice versa. This relationship appeared to be "universal", persisting similarly no matter the variation across style, region, language, or publication date of the comics. Altogether, this work reveals that the structure of panels on comic pages involve a tension between variability across numerous sources and universal consistencies of properties that persist across all comics.

Indexed as

ComicsCorpus analysisLinguistic relativityMenzerath–Altmann lawPanelsVisual language

Identifiers

PMID42205590
PMCPMC13201344

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.