This paper seeks to provide a formal definition of “heteroreflexivity”, a term which was conceived in order to describe a form of reflexivity specific to self-illustrated books, and whose efficiency may be tested through its application to comic books and graphic novels. Far beyond the obvious phenomenon of intermediality and irreducible to the mere – and apparently redundant – idea of “self-reflexivity”, these mixed media do not always result in a unified reflexive gesture but rather entail series of reflections of the work and the self. As a result of mixed media being modelled on a system that is heterogeneous to it – even though this system is part of the work and the work part of the system – these works can be seen to display a reflexive discontinuity.