Critics reading narratives as progressions, that’s to say, from beginning to end, prefer to see meaning emerge as a result of the interaction between different elements in the narrative, rather than of the imposition of a priori cultural schemata. This article, however, argues for the possibility of using a priori cultural schemata, as long as these pass through the filters established by theories of narrative progression. To show how this is done, this article interprets Frank Miller’s comic 300 by letting a tool of cultural-semantic analysis interact with narrative tension in the form of suspense, curiosity, and surprise. It argues that the back and forth between narrative tension and the tool accounts not only for the content of the comic but also for its basic narrative rhythm.