What Makes Comics More Compelling? The Art Or The Content?

For the question stated in the title of this post, what makes comics more compelling? the art or the content, I have done a bit of research to figure this out. Going along with this Batman theme that I have started, I am going to use a review of the comic, Batman #14, because it gave me exactly what I was looking for.

This particular issue has the villain The Joker, who is very well known to those of us who have seen The Dark Knight Returns (with Heath Ledger portraying this famous character) or 1989's Batman (where he is played by Jack Nicholson).

It is mentioned in this review that though Joker's script is part of what makes him so terrifying, what really makes him so compelling is the artwork of him. Here is this particular section of Dean Stell's review:

"You're simply not going to find better art in a comic than this. Part of the scariness of Joker comes from the words in the script, but most of it is coming from how the Capullo/Glapion/Plascencia team is drawing him. My god... This is someone who would make you soil your pants if you really saw him. He's so creepy and imbalanced. You don't want any part of this guy. But this art team rules the quiet moments too. There are a lot of 'talking heads' scenes in the comic and those types of scenes rise and fall on the acting of the characters. We even get a classic Capullo splash page where he made Glapion and Plascencia ink/color tons of little drops of blood. I always wonder if Capullo warns his collaborators that such a page is coming? Do they ever play tricks like sending complex pages to the next guy in the art chain at inconvenient times? Like anniversaries? Holidays?"

With this, I would definitely have to say that what makes a comic the most compelling, is the artwork. Sure, the storylines are important too, but since comics don't go into much detail with the script, you have to rely on the artwork to really wrap you in the story. Plus, if there was no artwork or a minimal amount, that wouldn't be a very great comic - tons of details and written images are meant for novels or poetry, which definitely makes sense after reading this review.

Here is some of the artwork from this issue of Batman, so you can understand where we're coming from with this:

Batman #14

Stell, Dean. "Batman #14 - Review." Weekly Comic Book Review. Weekly Comic Book Review, 15 Nov. 2012. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.