• Identifying the images
• Icons

The Oxford Dictionary defines 'vocabulary' as "a body of words used in a particular language." A person's vocabulary is said to consist of the number of words that a person is familiar with. These are language-oriented definitions of the term. But as a visual medium, comics have a different language, and hence a different vocabulary. Because comics are a hybrid of visual and written language, their vocabulary is also mostly visual in nature.

Scott McCloud points out that there are two ways in which people in general, in all walks of life, experience all things, including images. The first is through their senses, while the other is conceptually, through their mind. For example, when you smell a flower, you do it through your senses, but when someone describes how it smelt, you experience the smell as a concept in your mind. The concept may not have anything to do with the "real" smell.

Similarly, in the case of images, we essentially interpret them as concepts that represent reality, which McCloud calls "icons". These icons can be extremely realistic, or be toned down to basic features, such as in the case of cartoons. According to McCloud, the more "cartoony" an image is, the more we identify with that icon. A realistic image reminds us that we are external to it; while a more universal representation means that we think of ourselves as within that representation. For example, when we look at a picture of the Mona Lisa, we never think we are the Mona Lisa, but when we look at a smiley face, which has only a curve for a mouth and two dots for eyes, we can easily see ourselves represented by that smiley. McCloud feels that this is the reason why we find comics so believable and interesting, because we see ourselves as art of the characters that exist in that world.

However, it is also true that not all comics use cartoons; indeed, a lot of graphic novels today use increasingly realistic images and drawings, so perhaps we are seeing a shift from the reader as a character towards the reader as a spectator. But even in such cases, the reader still remains a participant, reading between panels, as we have seen in the previous section related to transitions.

The entire vocabulary of comics is much more than images and words on the page, it also includes that which is in the reader’s mind (McCloud, Understanding Comics, 1993, p.27)

The power of the smiley face (McCloud, Understanding Comics, 1993, p.45)