CONCRESCENCE AND THE KINETIC POTENTIALITY

At the end of CONCRESCENCE AND COMPLICATION I wrote:

....since I've gone to great effort to expound upon the ways in which complexity can only be judged through examination of the four potentialities, I won't repeat that argument here, except to say that I've allowed for the possibility that symbolic complexity is not the only form of complexity.

Some time before adopting the term "concrescence," I illustrated the ways in which different comics-artists constructed fight-scenes, arranging all of the "quanta" of kinetic representations in order to satisfy the reader.  I used Jack Kirby FANTASTIC FOUR #3 as an example of a "good kinetic discourse," while Mike Zeck's SECRET WARS was an example of a "bad kinetic discourse."

Here's a more specific example of Kirby art from the same FF Annual:

In the previous panels, the Cobra leaps on Captain America's back. The Cobra's "kinetic quanta" consists of attacking enemies in a "snake-like" fashion, while Captain America is the epitome of speedy athleticism. Not only does the hero stymie the villain's attack by slamming Cobra into a wall, he then uses the Cobra's body as a bludgeon against his next opponent. Since the Executioner is a super-strong demigod, the hero has to then duck and dodge his opponent's blows-- though the ending of this particular contest is not seen, since Kirby moves the action to other heroes and villains, all battling to prevent the wedding of Reed and Sue (or something like that).

In contrast, here's a scene from Zeck's SECRET WARS, in which a bunch of heroes attempt to make a frontal assault on Galactus:

Zeck may well have been constrained to follow the demands of editor/writer Jim Shooter, but whoever was to blame, there's no attention to the logic of the combative activity depicted here. The good guys shoot rays or throw rocks, Galactus shoots rays back at them. There's no attention to the distinctive "energy-quanta" represented by any of the heroes, much less Galactus, who, based on previous depictions, shouldn't even bother to engage in such a fight. The same scene could've been created with different heroes in place of those used.

In the case of the kinetic phenomenality, the operation of concrescence depends on bringing together disparate elements into what appears a seamless whole, just as it does with respect to symbolic discourses.