It's *cough cough* Abstract Art

From Here to Eternity? Gone with the Wind? Casablanca? Pretty Woman? None of the above.

Leonard Starr's "Mary Perkins: On Stage" is a soap opera newspaper comic strip from the sixties. Starr's work is incredibly detailed and rendered very realistically. He put tons of effort into not only making his characters unique, but his backgrounds as well. So, a panel like this is rather unusual for him, with the background completely obliterated by radiating lines. So why would he abstract a background?

Abstracting a background is one of the things that comics can do that is rather unique to the art form. Film can drop focus on the background, but anything more than that and it's a little alien to the medium. Comics have the luxury of letting the artist establish an environment, and then, when necessary, abstracting it--or holistically dropping it--for the sake of drawing focus on the characters. There are actually several reasons to do this, and several ways. The reason I'm focussing on is when a scene's emotion needs to be the central focus. Notice how the lines are radiating from the couple, as if their kiss has so much energy it's affecting the world around them. In this other example, a panel from Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson's "Secret Agent Corrigan," Adrienne's shock at what Burke just said is emphasized by the jagged and disrupted brush strokes around her. In my example, the woman's sadness is emphasized by the darkened background.