Learn how to leverage comic book graphic resources with La soga by Zer
The power of narrating without words: A fascinating experiment in graphic storytelling
Have you ever wondered to what extent you can do without words to tell a complex story? In the fascinating universe of visual storytelling, there are works that challenge our traditional way of reading and understanding. One of these gems is La soga (The Rope), an extraordinary “narrative experiment” published in 2012 by Sergio Arredondo Garrido, who signs under the pseudonym Zer.
This unique work stands as a bridge between disciplines, drawing inspiration from the cinematic genius of Alfred Hitchcock and the revolutionary visual proposals of comic artists like Chris Ware and the brothers Peter and Maria Hoey. What’s truly revolutionary about La soga is how it challenges the limits of traditional narrative, showing us that the written word, although valuable, is not always essential to convey complex emotions and intrigues.
Loosely based on Hitchcock’s acclaimed film Rope (1949), the work immerses us in an intricate crime story where graphic resources take center stage, inviting us to decipher the story through diagrams, innovative visual compositions, and a pictorial language that demands and rewards our attention. If you’re passionate about drawing and looking to expand your creative horizons, explore here new perspectives to develop your own visual language and discover how graphic tools can radically transform your way of telling stories.
The plot behind the silence: A philosophical crime
The story Zer presents to us is as philosophical as it is chilling. David Kentley is murdered by his college classmates, Philip Morgan and Brandon Shaw, who commit the homicide as a kind of moral experiment based on Nietzschean ideas of the “Superman” discussed in their professor Rupert Cadell’s classes. The twisted plan reaches its climax when the killers hide the corpse in plain sight, using a chest as a table to serve dinner at a gathering attended by the professor himself, the victim’s father, his fiancée, and other close individuals.
This premise, already disturbing in itself, takes on a completely new dimension when narrated almost exclusively through visual resources. Zer offers us a character presentation that serves as a map to navigate the complex links between the protagonists of this macabre story.
As we can see in these images, the one closest to the central knot of the rope is David himself, the victim, followed by his loved ones. At the top are the intellectual mentors and the perpetrators of the crime. Brandon and Phillip, the killers, act motivated by the philosophical teachings of their professor Rupert Cadell, taking to the extreme the Nietzschean theories about the superiority of certain individuals over the “mediocre.” This visual composition not only introduces us to the characters but is already telling us fundamental aspects of the plot through spatial arrangement and graphic connections.
The void that speaks: Dialogues without words
One of the most striking resources Zer uses is the presence of completely empty speech bubbles. This deliberate absence is not a deficiency, but a powerful narrative statement: the word is not the only vehicle of meaning in a story. The artist thus forces us to rely on the body and facial expressiveness of the characters, on their gestures and postures, to understand what they are communicating.
This visual strategy challenges our usual dependence on the written word and invites us to sharpen our sensitivity to non-verbal communication. By dispensing with text inside the bubbles, Zer suggests that there is often redundancy between what is said and what is shown, and that visual narrative can sustain itself when well executed.
This approach is not only innovative from a narrative point of view, but also represents a fascinating exercise for those seeking to master the art of conveying emotions and situations through drawing. If you want to perfect your ability to communicate through gestures and expressions, click here to discover practical methods of gestural language in drawing that will dramatically elevate the expressive power of your characters.
Visual planning: Maps of the crime
In La soga, the premeditation of the murder is not narrated with words, but unfolds visually before our eyes through an elaborate system of dashed lines and semi-occupied spaces that anticipate what will happen next:
This graphic resource not only serves to show the meticulous planning of the crime but also functions as a visual metaphor for the plot: lines that intertwine, that sometimes interrupt, but that inexorably lead to a tragic outcome. Zer’s ability to narrate elements as complex as criminal premeditation through purely visual resources demonstrates the narrative potential of the graphic medium when explored with boldness and knowledge.
These visual representations of abstract concepts such as planning, intention, and causality constitute one of the greatest challenges for narrative artists. Mastering these techniques can radically transform the depth of your visual stories, allowing you to communicate complex ideas without resorting to textual explanations.
Graphic synesthesia: Sounds converted into images
Another fascinating aspect of Zer’s work is how he represents auditory elements through purely visual resources. Instead of resorting to traditional onomatopoeias, the artist translates sounds into graphic elements that capture not only their existence but also their qualities.
For example, let’s observe how he represents the sound of the house doorbell:
The long zigzag upper line not only indicates that a bell is ringing but also informs us about its volume, duration, and fluctuations in intensity. Between the beginning of the sound and its gradual decrease, the characters perform several actions, allowing us to understand the time elapsed without needing to explicitly indicate it.
This visual translation of sound elements represents one of the most creative possibilities of the comic language and shows how different senses can converge on the two-dimensional plane of the page. For those interested in expanding the expressive possibilities of their drawings, click here to explore advanced techniques of sensory representation in sequential art and discover how to convey multisensory experiences through drawing.
Music and torment: Emotional scores
With similar mastery, Zer addresses the representation of music and simultaneous thoughts. In a particularly powerful sequence, Brandon Shaw, one of the killers, performs a piano piece at the request of the victim’s aunt. What begins as a representation of musical notes is soon invaded by the pianist’s turbulent thoughts:
This sequence, which extends over a full page and part of the next, shows us imposing mental landscapes where mountains, rain, and wind break in, along with images of collapses and, significantly, the rope that torments the killer’s conscience. The simultaneous visual representation of external music and internal chaos creates a powerful dissonance that communicates the character’s psychological dissociation much more effectively than any verbal description.
This ability to represent different layers of reality simultaneously is one of the unique superpowers of the graphic medium. Music, an intangible element by nature, takes visual form and intertwines with the character’s internal demons, creating a reading experience that is, paradoxically, more immersive than many detailed textual descriptions.
The mapped dialogue: Conversation maps
In another brilliant demonstration of narrative innovation, Zer presents us with a visual map of a conversation between the characters. On the page following the piano sequence, we find on the left a list of topics discussed during the evening: weather, food, love, culture and arts, death, intellectuality, and, crucially, David Kentley’s absence.
At the top, we see the initially calm faces of the participants, but as the conversation approaches more delicate topics and especially David’s inexplicable absence, their expressions dramatically transform, revealing concern and tension.
This visual representation of the conversation not only tells us what the characters talked about, but also how they reacted to each topic and how much time they devoted to each one, all without using a single word of dialogue. The informative efficiency of this visual resource is extraordinary, condensing what could have occupied several pages of dialogues into a single graphic composition that is immediately understandable.
Measured emotions: Visual indicators of concern
The visual scheme shows us, through circles of different sizes, which were the most significant topics for each character. We thus discover that Philip Morgan, one of the killers, focused on discussing culture, death, and intellectuality, while David’s close ones showed greater concern for his absence.
Particularly revealing is the case of Professor Rupert Cadell, who doesn’t spend much time talking about death but does show notable interest in other topics related to David’s disappearance. His final face, marked by concern, significantly contrasts with Philip’s haughtiness, establishing a visual tension that anticipates the following events.
This way of visually mapping the concerns and emotional reactions of the characters represents a narrative innovation that considerably expands the possibilities of the medium. For artists interested in developing sophisticated visual narratives, discover here practical resources to master the representation of complex emotional dynamics and learn to create your own visual systems to map interactions between characters.
The anxious mind: Thought ramifications
As the evening progresses and David’s absence becomes more disturbing, Zer allows us to access the anguished thoughts of the victim’s father. While the professor tries to reassure him by suggesting a simple delay, the father imagines a series of increasingly terrible scenarios: a traffic accident, an armed robbery, a violent fight.
The fascinating aspect of this sequence is how Zer uses visual ramifications to represent growing anxiety and catastrophic thoughts. We don’t just see the final thoughts, but the very process of their formation and multiplication, as if we were witnessing in real-time the workings of a mind overwhelmed by worry.
This ability to visualize abstract mental processes is one of the most fertile territories for experimentation in contemporary comics. The human mind, with its associations, fears, and hopes, finds in visual language an extraordinarily suitable vehicle to represent its complexity.
The visualized philosophical debate: Dangerous ideas
A crucial moment in the narrative arises when the professor confronts Philip about the implications of his philosophical teachings. The discussion revolves around Nietzschean concepts such as the “Superman” (Übermensch) and the controversial notion of “murder as an art form,” a radical challenge to conventional morality.
What Philip fails to understand, blinded by his pride and desire to prove himself superior, is that these ideas were raised as intellectual exercises, never as invitations to action. The visual representation of this philosophical exchange allows us to see how the same ideas can be interpreted in radically different ways depending on the moral disposition of the receiver.
Divergent interpretations: Guidance versus domination
With great visual subtlety, Zer shows us how the same philosophy produces opposite moral interpretations. For Philip, the concept of the Superman justifies his right to crush those he considers inferior, while the professor conceives it as a responsibility of guidance and elevation.
This fundamental divergence, visually represented, encapsulates one of the central ethical debates of Western philosophy: how do we interpret the ideas of overcoming and transcendence? As justification for domination or as a call to greater responsibility? The power of the visual medium to represent these complex philosophical dilemmas demonstrates its capacity to address topics of profound intellectual complexity.
The representation of abstract ideas is perhaps one of the greatest challenges for any visual storyteller. If you’re interested in exploring how to translate philosophical concepts and intellectual debates into the language of drawing, visit this space to discover innovative methods of conceptual visualization that will expand your creative horizons.
The visual detective: Clues and connections
As the plot advances, Professor Cadell begins to gather clues about what happened. His investigative mental process is represented through an ingenious system of concentric circles and magnifying glasses that emphasize seemingly insignificant details: Kentley’s hat forgotten in the house, the chest used as a table during the evening, Brandon’s growing nervousness and drunkenness, the rope with which they tie David’s books for his relatives to take, Philip’s suspicious vanity, and, of course, the inexplicable disappearance of his student.
The choice of the circular format for this mental diagram is not coincidental: it emphasizes how these clues constantly orbit in the professor’s mind, gradually connecting to form a coherent image of the crime. The magnifying glasses that amplify certain elements visualize the very process of investigation, where some details suddenly acquire crucial relevance.
The solved case: Truth in a diagram
The narrative climax arrives when Rupert Cadell finally connects all the pieces. Zer masterfully summarizes this moment of revelation through a relationship diagram where the professor explains what happened, links all the collected clues, and presents the definitive conclusions of his investigation.
This final diagram is not just the resolution of the mystery, but also a culmination of the visual narrative strategy that has guided the entire work. The case is solved not through a dramatic confession or an explanatory monologue, but through the visualization of connections between facts, objects, and behaviors. It is the triumph of visual logic, perfectly aligned with the nature of the medium.
Reading guide: The artist conscious of his innovation
Aware of the boldness of his proposal and the challenges it poses to the conventional reader, Zer includes in the last pages a guide on how to interpret his diagrams, iconography, and pictograms, as well as a brief summary of each page so that the reader can verify if they have correctly understood the narrated events.
This metanarrative gesture underscores the experimental nature of the work and, at the same time, reflects the author’s awareness of how he is expanding the boundaries of comic language. Far from constituting a weakness, these explanatory pages form an integral part of the project, inviting the reader to reflect on the mechanisms of visual narration and to develop new reading skills.
The master influences: Ware and the Hoey brothers
Zer’s narrative innovation is part of a tradition of graphic experimentation whose most prominent figures are Chris Ware and the brothers Peter and Maria Hoey. From Ware, Zer takes the use of complex diagrams, icons, and pictograms that challenge traditional sequentiality and linearity of reading.
On this page from “Jimmy Corrigan – The Smartest Kid on Earth” (2000), we can appreciate how Ware constructs visual narratives that demand active participation from the reader to unravel their multiple layers of meaning:
However, while Ware often creates narrative branches that remain open to multiple interpretations, Zer, working within the conventions of the crime genre, leads all narrative lines toward a definitive resolution, “a knot tied to perfection when the case is solved.”
On the other hand, from the Hoey brothers, Zer adopts the elegant use of rounded panels and the technique of backgrounds that communicate and spread between lines:
This fragment from “The Inter-office Memo” exemplifies the Hoeys’ approach to comics as a medium of infographics and conceptual illustrations, where each visual element has a precise communicative function. Like them and like Ware, Zer forces us to de-automate our habitual reading modes, inviting us to a more contemplative and analytical experience of comics.
Visual language pushed to the limit: Towards new narrative horizons
What makes La soga such a significant work in the landscape of contemporary comics is its practical demonstration that visual elements can predominate over words in the construction of complex narratives. Zer has meticulously studied the innovations of his predecessors and applied them to the creation of a story that maximally exploits the unique capabilities of the medium.
This work reminds us that comics, in their purest essence, are above all a visual language. We can dispense with words, we can seek alternatives to the linguistic signifier, but we cannot renounce the image, the true core and raison d’être of this art.
For contemporary artists, La soga represents an invitation to formal experimentation, to the search for new expressive paths that expand the limits of what comics can communicate. At a time when many narrative media converge and influence each other, works like this remind us of the unique and still not fully explored potential of graphic storytelling.
Let’s narrate!
As we have seen throughout this analysis, words are not as necessary as we tend to believe for building powerful and complex stories. Visual elements can take center stage when studied and experimented with based on the teachings of innovative masters such as Chris Ware, the Hoey brothers, and, of course, Zer.
These artists have bequeathed us revolutionary ways of telling stories that celebrate the most essential and distinctive aspect of comics as a language: its visual dimension. They invite us to free ourselves from our dependence on words, to explore the potential of pure visual meaning, and to profoundly renew our ways of reading and creating.
The question that remains floating is: why not dare to follow this path? Why not explore the infinite narrative possibilities that open up when we let the image speak for itself? Are you ready to revolutionize your way of telling visual stories? Start your exploration journey here and discover tools that will allow you to create visual narratives that transcend the conventional limits of the medium.
The future of comics belongs to those who dare to experiment, to those who understand that each visual element can carry deep and complex meanings. Inspired by works like La soga, we can move towards a narrative art that maximally exploits the unique possibilities of drawing to tell stories that no other medium could narrate in the same way.
