Narrative and Assumptions about the Graphic Novel

Fig. 1. Wonderful Life with the Elements cover (Yorifuji)

When I first glanced over Wonderful Life with the Elements in the Leddy Library graphic novel collection I immediately thought to myself “is this actually a graphic novel?” I certainly could have moved on to a different selection, one more clearly a graphic novel, but my inability to immediately answer this question caught my attention. A study of the work itself and an analysis of it through points made by Scott McLeod and Anne Magnussen lent framework through which to understand Yorifuji’s work as a comic and solve my confusion about it.

What is it about Wonderful Life with the Elements that made it so difficult to categorize as a graphic novel? Admittedly this required more thought than I expected, and perhaps while these characteristics might be seen more readily by experienced comics readers, as someone who has never read a graphic novel before and only occasionally read daily comics, perhaps I suffered from more extensive and limiting assumptions of what comics can be. Even as someone who has studied the complexities of both literature and art, I had never given much thought to comics as an area of serious academic study, theory, and critique. It seems to reside in a world separate from each but ultimately is a combination of both in many instances.

My initial impression was that there was no narrative in this book, as in I was not following events or characters and this struck me as a necessary part of comics. However, when I went back and looked at various definitions of what comics are, I began to understand the complexity of the genre and also the diversity of opinions about it.

My first contact with any comics theory was with Scott McLeod’s Understanding Comics and so I began my analysis through his simple definition of “sequential art” (5). This interpretation made me able to see this work as a comic clearly. I could find a sequence of art that made some type of flowing narrative, in that it connected facts and developed an understanding about the characteristics of the given scientific element.

Fig. 2. "Helium" (Yorifuji, 66)

Next, I reexamined Magnussen’s definition. What I found was not what I expected, my initial response to her definition was very different from McLeod’s but I actually found that her definition reinforced my understanding of narrative, which Magnussen deemed is generally used to interpret the “complex sign” (193) which to my understanding she means to denote the item created from drawings and text which constitute most comics. This I could clearly see in Yorifuji’s work, or rather his comic.

Narrative is not necessarily easy to point out in comics, but with an understanding of the function of narrative in comics I have been able to more clearly find it and make connections in the structure of the genre that I had not been able to before, nor had I been aware that I was missing out. Wonderful Life with the Elements lead me to challenge my assumptions about comics and develop another step towards understanding comics.

by Jessica Steinhoff

Works Cited

Magnussen, Anne. “The Semiotics of C.S. Peirce as a Theoretical Framework for the Understanding of  Comics.” Comics and Culture: Analytical and Theoretical Approaches to Comics. Eds. Anne Magnussen and Hans-Christian Christiansen. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum P, 2000. 193-207.

McLeod, Scott. Understanding Comics. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994.

Yorifuji, Bunpei. Wonderful Life with the Elements: The Periodic Table Personified. San Francisco: No Starch, 2012. Print.