Lit. of Comics & The Graphic Narrative

This week I selected two comic books to read: Herge's Tintin in  The Calculus Affair  and Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge in The Second-Richest Duck.  After reading  The Calculus Affair , I realized why my dad loved reading Tintin comics. The comic had a lot of action and adventure which keeps you wanting to read more. The illustrations are fun and show a lot of emotions and movement willing not being too detailed. There is a lot of use of color that makes the illustrations stand out and brings the whole comic together. The comic also has a decent amount of words in speech bubbles, at the top of the panel, that sometimes take over the illustrations.  While the Tintin comic was good, I enjoyed  The Second-Richest Duck more. I enjoyed the larger illustrations and the use of less text bubbles. It was a very lighthearted and easy read. The use of bright colors and clean illustrations made the comic more enjoyable. Also, while reading this comic, I was imagin...

Winsor McCay's Little Nemo , George Herriman's Krazy Kat , and Charles Schulz's Peanuts are popular comic news strips. Comic strips can be about a page long or can be a series of pages creating a short story. While reading these comics, especially Little Nemo , I was interested in the detailed and colorful illustrations. Because of the detail and color, the speech bubbles got lost as they were overpowered by the illustrations. However, I noticed that the speech bubbles were small and didn't have much text like other comic strips I have seen. This shows that the words weren't given much importance as the illustrations were the main focus. Thus, it is easy to overlook the text.  Overall, I enjoyed reading each comic strip and seeing the differences in illustrations, style and story. I was able to actually see the appeal of the comic strip and may explore more on my own now.

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud had many interesting concepts throughout. It talks about the history behind comics and discusses the many techniques artists explore in order to get their message across in the comic yet still be relatable to the readers. An idea that stuck out to me was, "Our identities belong permanently to the conceptual world. They can't be seen, heard, smelled, touched or tasted. They're merely ideas. And everything else - at the start - belongs to the sensual world, the world outside of us" (McCloud 40). He says that things we have experienced in life can be separated into these two worlds or realms. There's the realm of the concept and the realm of the senses. This idea of these two worlds was interesting as they change the feel and concept of the comic. On one hand, there is the physical world. For the physical world, an artist would use realism as it helps portray the beauty and complexity of the world. On the other hand, there...

The Arrival  by Shaun Tan, is a wordless comic that tells a story just with images. Many comics use text to convey the story but Tan doesn't and it actually works. Through his use of surrealism in his illustrations, Tan is able to express the idea of immigration and displacement but also evoke emotions from the readers. As the illustrations are the main focus of the comic, Tan puts in a lot of details to help the reader follow the story. For instance, each character gives off so much emotion and are rendered as real people which makes it easier for the reader to understand the story and connect to it. While growing up, we learn about how facial expression and body language can indicate how we feel in different situations. With that in mind, we are able to get a sense of what is happening in the story as the characters' expressions change throughout. The position of their arms, mouth, eyes, etc. change which each "scene" which help indicate what emotion it bein...