This thesis proposes that the multiplicative relationship inherent to what I call the “comics grammar” enables unique communication of empirical and experienced duration. Put differently, comics spatializes the temporal. This comics grammar is capacious enough to include breaks in these conventions as a hallmark of the artform, and as a defining feature of the comics-inspired reading strategy that the thesis outlines. Each body chapter includes close-readings of three recently published graphic novels (in order of their publication): Richard McGuire’s Here (2014), Inés Estrada’s Alienation (2019), and Bishakh Som’s “Apsara Engine” (2020). Each of these works demonstrates elements of the comics genre (splash page, gutter, cartooning) that I argue open literary and aesthetic possibilities to problems in Literary Criticism, Climate Fiction, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Comics Studies. I include nine original illustrations, rendering this project itself an example of “pictures times words.”