Traditional models for composite texts like comic strips, graphic novels, and video games often gloss over the importance of the visual structure of the works. Such models fail to account fully for the significance of panel and frame work in the development and understanding of the text. This panel seeks to address the overlaping structural concerns of comics and video games.

The first paper focuses on Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes; noting the strip's significance for exploring the heavily constrained contemporary comic strip medium, while its vocal author simultaneously condemns other comic strips, and other media like comic books and video games for not requiring further exploration and expansion of their boundaries. The second paper deals with both comic books and video games using "The Last Express" with its use of panel movement and rotoscoped characters as a remediation of the more traditional conceptualization of comic book formats. The final paper focuses on the similar reading that takes place with comic strips, graphic novels, and survival horror video games in the retraceable nature of reading and of playing the clearly panelled or defined areas. Together, the papers seek a further understanding of how the holistic composition of image, text, and the structural boundaries can best be critically approached.