While Byrne strays from some conventions by giving direct thought in word boxes, Ware breaks many more with his integration of word and image in Jimmy Corrigan. Let us turn to the scene where the main character, Jimmy Corrigan, is in the hospital after being hit by a truck (figure 13; there is no pagination). On this particular page, Jimmy is alone in the room and must urinate in a box for the doctor’s examination. He has just met his dad for the first time, and is very confused over the entire situation. Immediately in our first panel, Ware displays his typical use of connective words: the first image has a vertical word box in which ‘and so’ is written downward, in large, coloured letters. In all panels, the images are accompanied by written language in various forms. Most of this language appears in neither clouds, nor balloons, nor boxes, but is simply written in diegetic space. The language even follows the surface of objects in diegetic space in some instances. In the tenth panel, in the upper right corner, the words ‘He said I was a mistake’ are written along the perspective lines of the wall, while the words ‘Sitting right there → ’ is written similarly, seemingly on the floor. The reader is supposed to understand the comments are not actually written on these surfaces in diegetic space, and allow for some self-conscious playfulness on Ware’s part.

The comments themselves are clearly direct thought, as the first two instances (‘OW’ and ‘sharp edge plastic sharp’) show. Most sentences are fragmented to show the everchanging and associative nature of the thought process. But this is not only achieved linguistically. The typeface of Jimmy’s comments changes from elegant into larger, bold letters when Jimmy forcefully tells himself not to think about women (‘NO NO DON’T THINK’). In the twelfth and thirteenth panel, Jimmy thinks ‘but HE’S the mistake I made coming HERE. Where I don’t know HIM don’t know ME mom’, where all the words in low caps are in handwriting and the words in caps are larger and bold. The words in caps are also coloured red, to further underline their importance. The colour of the words in handwriting changes continuously to fit the changing background colours. The word ‘mom’ in these panels is written smaller, and thus gains significance as a small thought in the back of Jimmy’s head. Ware does not restrict himself to written language; there are also several thought clouds on this page. Interestingly, Jimmy is seemingly talking to himself in the written language outside of thought clouds, while the thought clouds show his more primary thoughts in images. There are two thought clouds in panel 6, both with an image of a female body. In the next panel, Jimmy tells himself not to think about this, and there is again a thought cloud with a female body in it, this time crossed out. The images in the thought clouds come to pass for Jimmy’s mind’s eye unwanted, while the written language is the more rational voice of reason, telling him to think of something else.

It is clear now that words in comics often have a graphic dimension; changes in shape, size and colour are usual techniques to add effect. Uspensky recognized four planes on which subjective narration manifests itself in words:

- The ideological;
- The phraeseological;
- The spatial & temporal;
- The psychological plane (6)

Analyzing words in comics requires another plane: the graphic. To understand them, we have to take their form into account. When words enter the graphic plane, they become images to some extent. The different typefaces give emphasis to character narration, just like adjectives do: ‘He told himself gravely: “Now we will have to wait”.’ Thinking ‘gravely’ can be expressed by typefaces, or even the shape of the thought balloon in comics. The relation of words to the image is also very important: their placing, the devices used to place them in diegetic space and the source of both the image and the words can all be considered. The last of these requires some elaboration. In the Fantastic Four example, the source of both the image and the words was linked most directly – the direct thought of the words stems from the same character as the perceptual focalisation in the images. In the scene from Jimmy Corrigan the words are direct thought, but the perceptual point of view in the image is not that of the character (in most of the images). Still, the images have some emotive focalisation – notice for example the changing background colour in panel 2 – 5. We explained in our introduction that focalisation in images is not restricted to perceptual point of view, but can take all kinds of forms. Long scenes with perceptual point of view in images are quite rare in both film and comics. Other, less obvious forms of focalisation, however, are very common. We will discuss this more explicitly in chapter 2.