Comics without pictures

Here's an interesting thing I read on Marvel Comics Executive Editor Tom Brevoort's blog: in his latest post, he discusses a class he was in where "it was postulated that, if you removed the words from a comic book page and just left the images, what you'd have would still be comics, but if you removed the pictures but left the words, you wouldn't." Brevoort decided to try to debunk the theory by drawing a 6-panel comic without any images, and just words. You can see the result on his original post linked somewhere above.

My 2 cents on this is almost exactly what a commentor on the post said. Word balloons are pictures too. And there are panels! If you ask me, the panels are part of the overall image. I guess it all depends on the definitions of pictures and words. After all, aren't letters themselves pitcures? And aren't words just disguised examples of sequential art? (I think I may be spouting portions of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics now).

Anyway, I don't want to harp on this because Brevoort himself said that this was merely "an interesting exercise" which it certainly is. More power to him for taking the time to try and prove them all wrong.