Time in Shaun Tan's The Arrival

The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a wordless graphic novel about being an immigrant and trying to start a new life in a foreign land. The style of the comic is set in sepia tones and in a photo realistic manner with bazar backgrounds. This blog will be briefly discussing the story in terms of McCould’s view of time in comics.

For the most part, the comic is told in a very moment-moment way. Each panel usually lead right up to the next one in motion and movement. As McCloud suggests, you can usually figure out how long a panel is supposed to last by its size. They can be small and thus show shorter passage of time over a greater length.

Or it can show a larger sense of time in a smaller length.

Along with the size of the panels, how they are broken up also tells us how we are to read time in relation to them. The first picture is very broken up to tell us quick each viewing of the clouds are while the second only have a slight gutter between panels to show a small time skip.

Both are used very well to let the reader know just how much time is passing between one image and the next. Even the style can let us know when in time we are in the novel.

The above picture has snapshot frames and has the appearance of older and decaying pictures. This lets us know that the events shown here happened a longer time ago compared to the brighter images that we see through the rest of the book. While there seems to be greater leaps in time between panels here than in the rest of the book there is still a moment-moment feeling going on. With the size of the photos being generally the same and being about the same distance from each other, we can easily gather that at least in this woman’s mind these events did happen one after another. It all helps the reader to make sense of this confusing situation by allowing them to move through them quickly and to help better understand what is happening to the main character. 

Intertextuality in Fun Home

Intertextuality denotes the relationship or connection between a specific work and other texts. It is a way of discussing direct references to other works.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel is a text that is absolutely full of references to other works, especially to other magazines and great works of literature. Throughout the story, Bechdel constantly makes reference to magazines like Esquire and GQ how does these affected her life. Through this lens, she explains the change she saw in herself, in her sexuality and preferences, from the time that she was a young girl until she was a grown woman. She also uses her choice in magazines as a representation of how she was different from other girls her age.

In the beginning of the graphic novel, Bechdel compares her family life to that of the family in It's a Wonderful Life. Her family life is the exact opposite of what she seeings in It's a Wonderful Life. At the point of the story when this movie is brought up, the reader does not yet know to what extent the Bechdel family is different from other families. The Addams family is also mentioned.

Most of the book talks about classic novels Bechdel's father spent his time reading. Each time a novel is brought up it is to compare her father or some aspect of her life to what is happening in the story to the characters or the author of the novel. Even the age her father was when he died is compared of that to various authors. Plot pieces in stories are used to parallel Bechdel's father and his actions. Would he have died (Bechdel thinks that it was a suicide) if he had not read Joyce or Proust?

Ever have a read a piece of literature that mentioned this many other pieces. Just about every author of a classic or classic is mentioned at some point in this graphic novel. Fitzgerald, Wilde, Proust, Camus, Joyce, Shepard, Shakespeare, and James are all mentioned in Fun Home.

These references to other texts and popular culture are a huge part of Fun Home. They help to create the time, place, and structure of the world Bechdel lived in while growing up. They explain her family and life. Textual and cultural references make up the world of Fun Home. Without these references the reader would not be able to fully understand how she lived or what she went through. Without them, it would be an entirely different graphic novel altogether...it simply wouldn't be.

-- Kelsey Jaques

Oddly Normal #2

Odd, But Surprisingly Good 

The second issue of Otis Frampton’s Oddly Normal certainly does not pack the same punch as its predecessor, however does employ many comic techniques that are worth looking at. To begin with positives of this particular issue, I’d look no farther than the artwork that continues to amaze me. The use of splash pages offers a creative dimension to the narrative, and provides stunning visuals that demand to be looked at and noticed. While the narrative was very simple, I believe it was certainly effective in being a middle ground that binds the events prior to it, to the inevitable events that will succeed it. In that, we get an issue that, while moving the narrative along, does not work entirely well as a single contained issue. The story here is clearly fragmented, in that it’s overall significance must be further looked at in the grand schematic of the entire work. Reading this in serialized form, month-to-month is already providing to be a big challenge. The story is effective in making you want to read more, but it is incredibly frustrating that more does not come sooner. I suppose this is a good problem to have, as the particular story is keeping me engaged, and making me look forward to the next month, to keep adding to the narrative and completing the story. That being said, I will definitely pick up Oddly Normal when it is collected into a single graphic novel.

            I believe it is important to note that difference between the digital copies of the text, to the physical copy. For the first issue, I read the physical comic, which provided a much better reading experience for myself. As a subjective reader, I am open to the digital medium that comics can now be presented in, however, I greater appreciate the physical nature of the book, as it creates a concrete feeling, and a better engagement in the story. There is really no clear way to explain this, however, I had an infinitely better experience with the comic in its original physical form, rather than resorting to reading it online. In this sense, the medium does act as the message.

            One thing I would like to look further into is the following page below. While through a PDF reader, the page appears horizontally, it would be interesting to see how that reading of that page could change in the physical form. I can assume that the book would either need to be turned on its side, or that this page would act as a two page spread, with the spine of the page breaking the middle of it. I would argue that the horizontal page as one solid image would read a lot better than on a physical comic, just because it seems more unified and thus more effective as a “wow, look at this” page. The page is clearly made to represent a climax in this particular issue, and I am rather happy that I got to experience it through a crisp, and clear visual on the computer.

 

Digital Image. How would this translate to the physical text? 

   

Moving away from generalities, I noticed there is a lot in this text that can be applied to the many comic theories we have learned over the semester. For one, in comparison to the first issue, the use of color is almost identical. What I have noticed so far is that there is a heavy use of three main colors, which includes red, green, and bluish-purple. Green to me has been placed in the text to signify anything that is mystical or magical. So whenever something magical happens in the text, usually a character is surrounded by green “streaks” for lack of a better word. Red is often used at moments of climax, or big scenes with our main character, Oddly. In both the first two issues, scenes of climax have used red, and it signifies both a change of pace in the story, and moments of what seem to be both at times of anger and at times where extraordinary or explosive events are happening. Lastly, the use of blue and purple are used at times when the text gets more serious or somber. This color is used as backdrop over the entire text, to relate to the readers the sad or depressing state of our main character.

Issue #1

Issue #2

Issue #2

Issue #1

          

In terms of the connection between the first two issues, there are a couple areas of braiding in which I’d like to touch on. The first, and more obvious one, is the beginning of each work, which uses the same layout to signify the start of the issue. Instead of jumping right into the story, we are given the title of the chapter, along with an image that takes up half the page. This is a unique touch that is added to bring unity between the two issues, and serves as a great starting point, should this issue be collected as one whole story. Additionally, on the last page of each comic, our main character Oddly reveals something, and is left looking at some type of scenery. This is consistent in the first two issues, and I fully expect it to be the same in issue #3. This is just another way to weave the stories together, and create some type of system for story telling. Each issue ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, and we are left wondering what we are looking at, and what will happen next, much like the main character is doing so in her own mind.

Issue #1

Issue #2 

Issue #1

Issue #2

  

             








Another thing I wanted to touch upon is the filling in of time that we have studied with Douglas Wolk. In his work Wolk explains that we as readers fill in the “lapse of time represented by the blankness of the gutter” (Wolk, 131). In this particular scene below, we are given a concrete gutter, but then we are provided with white space. At this time, it is the reader’s job to fill in that time lapse, which is much more open to interpretation without the gutter guiding or reading. Reading this version online, the “white” moment was revealed in two parts over the flip of a page, whereas I would assume that in physical form it would act as a two page spread, without needing to flip over the page ( I would like to read it in physical form as well). However, because I did read it online, time did in fact slow down quite a bit, as this white space transferred over onto another of a page. Like the character was disoriented in this particular scene, I too became disoriented, both in trying to figure out what was going on, and in trying to determine how much time was passing by.

            Overall, I did enjoy the second issue of Oddly Normal, despite it feeling like a fill-in for what is surely to be a much more exciting chain of events. I still give the book the benefit of the doubt, as I am enjoying the art work, and story telling process thus far. With all new comics, or even TV shows for that matter, they do take some time to really find their form, and formula for success. As a whole,  I will continue to read the series as I believe it has great potential to be a fun, and lighthearted comic that includes some really great story telling, and character development.

Grade : B+

God Save The Queen

"Balloons are an extraordinary useful resource for the visual artist" - David Carrier

God Save The Queen is a graphic novel illustrating a young teen that finds out she is half fairie. Making me think of The Mortal Instrument's Clary Fray, I quickly understood the plot and guessed how this comic was going to end (though I was much more appreciative of the fact that this storyline took far less time to get through than TMI series did to accomplish a similar end result).

But the parallels between this comic and similar novels are not what this post is about; I want to talk about how genre is used, along with speech balloons.

Richard Bauman, in his "Introduction: Genre, Performance, and the Production of Intertextuality" explains how "the invocation of generic framing devices such as 'Once upon a time' cary with them sets of expectations concerning the further unfolding of the discourse" (p. 4). This comic does just that:

Not only are the words themselves setting readers up for genre, but the appearance of the text mimics that of an old scroll, which forces us to relate that this text is happening in an archaic place, separate from today's world.

Also, the genre expectations are definitely set: we have a medieval-ish setting, good queens, fairies, evil queens seeking revenge, a good girl who doesn't get along with her parents, and her seemingly knight in shining armour who cannot seem to leave the friend zone. We also see the stereotypical bad boy and his gang that entrance the good girl and leave her BFF Jeff in the dust. What this comic does is twist these expectations upside down. Sure, we can expect the daring main female character to become the heroine that saves the day, but who expects the best friend to die!?

No one.

But were the expectations met? I would say so. Good prevails over bad by the end of this comic, just like everyone thought it would.

My next topic is the use of speech balloons alongside paintings.

The images in this text are beautiful, realistic looking paintings that have comic balloons added. Mike Carey and John Bolton did a fantastic job working the two forms together to make a beautiful graphic novel. 

David Carrier, in his "The Speech Balloon: Or, the Problem of Representing Other Minds" says "words and pictures in comics are intimately connected, mutually translatable, but disjoint categories of things" (p. 39). This is true when it comes to this comic, because you need the text to understand the pictures. Though the pictures could stand alone, the text is needed because some sequences of events are scene-to-scene, not aspect-to-aspect. Without the words there would be some confusion.

Carrier also mentions that "if there is speech, there must exist a speaker" (p. 43-44). This plays with the use of notebook paper text seen throughout this text. It illustrates the "nature of mental representation" (p. 44) that Carrier talks about too. The readers realize that Linda is recounting the events that happened in her journal, after the events have all taken place. This indicates that she is obviously a survivor of the great fight between herself and the evil queen.

The speech balloons in the photo below are an example of how balloons and images work together to form concrete meaning. When Linda sees her dead friend Jeff, his speech balloon is ghostly with a fluid tail, grey background and white text. This works to show he is dead because the balloon colour palate matches his body's colour.

God Save The Queen is a fantastic graphic novel that shows how realistic painting and the comic genre can be meshed together to create a beautiful work of not only literature, but art. Mike Carey and John Bolton are an exquisite team, and I cannot wait to explore more of their work.

Daniela Palombo

Stumptown: The Case of the King of Clubs

Rucka, Greg. "Stumptown." Stumptown. 1st ed. Vol. 3. Portland: Oni, 2014. Page 1. Print. The Case of the King of Clubs.

Stumptown Volume 3 #1 is a mystery/crime theme comic by Greg Rucka, Justin Greenwood, and Ryan Hill. Its story centers on private investigator Dex Parios and her life solving crime. This is the third volume in a series of five, and based on the few reviews I read it is not necessary for readers to have knowledge of other volumes prior to this one. Because this is my first time ever purchasing a comic, I did some research. While looking up this title I also learned that Dex’s brother, Ansel, has Downs Syndrome, not solely a stutter like I initially thought he did. I thought this based on the way his text is shown in the comic. I also noticed that this comic is probably for a more adult audience because of the sexual innuendos that appear on the first few pages between Tracy and CK.

Rucka, Greg. "Stumptown." Stumptown. 1st ed. Vol. 3. Portland: Oni, 2014. Page 9. Print. The Case of the King of Clubs.

Rucka, Greg. "Stumptown." Stumptown. 1st ed. Vol. 3. Portland: Oni, 2014. Page 4. Print. The Case of the King of Clubs.

In terms of the story, it is simple enough for a first time reader to pick up. Characters Tracy, Dex, CK, Mercury and Ansel are introduced and memorable. Not much of their past is mentioned, but it is easy enough to realize that there is a rivalry between Portland and Seattle and this will carry through to the next issue.

The colour palate chosen for this series is dark, consisting mostly of deep greens, purples, and blacks. The final panels of the comic are the darkest, using dark blues and teal to not only emphasize that night is drawing near, but to add effect to the murder in the story. These panels also use a bright red to really highlight the blood on Dex’s hands. In terms of panels, a regular grid is used. There are instances in which the panels are overlapped which causes the reader to focus; it almost gives a film-like effect because it forces the reader to look closer, like a camera would zoom in.

Rucka, Greg. "Stumptown." Stumptown. 1st ed. Vol. 3. Portland: Oni, 2014. Page 26. Print. The Case of the King of Clubs.

Text and speech bubbles are very easy to follow. The writer and artist seem to be in sync in terms of portrayal and the conveying of ideas, especially in the panels that have the crowd cheering in the background. What I mean by this is that the cheering is symbolized by jagged and capitalized white text that is placed behind the speech bubbles that are clearly outlined and contain text in a font that looks handwritten. I think that this effect is very cool, especially if the reader has been to a sports arena before. It makes the reader feel as if they are there.

Rucka, Greg. "Stumptown." Stumptown. 1st ed. Vol. 3. Portland: Oni, 2014. Page 18. Print. The Case of the King of Clubs.

This comic is made in serial form therefore the cliffhanger the reader is left with in this issue will be picked up next month. The cliffhanger effect is very effective, like in a TV series, because it gets readers and viewers coming back for more. Because so much was left out in terms of why there is a rivalry between Portland and Seattle, why Mercury would murdered, and who exactly Tracy and CK are, I want to read the next issue and fill in the missing spaces.

This is overall a great first comic experience because I cannot wait to see what the next issue holds.

If you want to read this issue yourself, here is a link to find it via comiXology.com

- Daniela Palombo