This article provides an analysis of Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore's "The Medium Is the Massage," a visual-verbal text that is generally acknowledged as innovative but seldom taken seriously or read carefully. The analysis draws on the visual language vocabulary developed by Scott McCloud in "Understanding Comics" and argues that the field of composition studies would benefit from more sustained and sophisticated readings of visual-verbal academic texts even as the field shifts from analysis to design. (Contains 3 notes.)