Arriving To Conclusions

Words and images are inherently linked together. After all, words originally were created as a means for our ancestors to further communication, allowing for shorthand and references to creatures and items that any member in the species could understand through some education. Because of that, words do not need to appear in a story in order for it to make sense. Through learning a language and through the experience of growing up and evolving over time, humans are intrinsically able to understand the words images convey, expressions providing further insight and deepen this understanding.
As an example, in page 28 of The Arrival, the reader grasps early on that the protagonists of the story is unable to understand what the people talking to him are trying to say. In the first panel the audience sees the protagonists with an expression of utter confusion. Panel 2 provides the audience with some context, as the main character puts his hand over his ear, a common form of expression in most cultures which is understood to mean that they could not hear or understand what was said and therefore need repeating. This re contextualizes what we see in the first panel. It tells us that the reason the protagonist was confused before was due to not understanding what the person talking to him was telling him, whereas before the reader could assume his look of confusion was for a myriad of different reasons. This is followed by a series of panels wherein the protagonist tries to explain his situation, fails to find the right words, which leads him to show a picture of his family and try to explain himself one last time before finally bowing his head down in defeat, moving the reader into the next page. It took over 100 words to explain page 28 in The Arrival. 100 words. For one page. In a story with no words of its own, yet still conveys to readers its plot.
That doesn't means words have no reason to exist. Just because a story can be told without words does not mean it has to have no words. Arrival succeeds in telling a narrative without words because the author is well adept at drawing, to the point that he can provide reader the information they need to know without the need to do it through text. In that way it gives the story a unique appeal, since so much of what is popular today mostly tells its stories through dialogue. Words are necessary to a story, even The Arrival still has a title. You would not know what I was talking about otherwise. Those two words are essential to the piece. The Arrival needs a title for the reader to understand what this story is going to be about. Had it just been an image of the protagonists on the boat the reader might assume this was a story about the Titanic, had it been the protagonist with the pet the reader might assume the story was a about the relationship between owner and pet, both images representing big parts in the story, while still failing to tell the reader what the story is about before they even open a single page of the book. No story fully succeeds in being told in zero words, but The Arrival, in being told in two words, gets pretty close.