Birthright #1

Creator, Writer: J o s h u a   W i l l i a m s o n

Creator, Artist: A n d r e i   B r e s s a n

Colorist: A d r i a n o   L u c a s

S u m m a r y

Birthright #1 integrates two worlds of reality and fantasy.  The story begins in an autumn park with a father, Aaron, and his young boy, Mikey, playing catch. However, circumstances change when Mikey suddenly disappears.  Few weeks have passed and Aaron is accused of murder while his entire family falls apart.  However, after a year Mikey suddenly shows up as an adult in their lives claiming he has returned from a magical land called Terranos.

Right from the beginning the artistic style conveys simplistic lines and easy transition between panel to panel.  In Scott McCloud Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art indicates that simplification leads to identification where the reader recognizes and identifies with the characters.  Williamson is doing that so. He is presenting an intellectual and emotional relationship with the readers with clean/crisp images and easy font letters.  He is playing with different panel shapes to associate different types of mood and effects to enhance suspense , and passions within the reader.  It also pushes the reader in certain ways as they try to deal with something new.  His skill of allowing the reader to internalize with the characters gives a sense of mortality, a sense of how we reflect our own lives.

There are also sensory interpretations. In Duncan and Smith’s Experiencing the Story both the images and text affect the meaning altogether. However, it is the sound that suggests a powerful effect that builds the reliability of our ears. Williamson’s ability to use sounds helps establishes the character’s role. The image on the right depicts how young Mikey is faced with a monster. The sound of both the creature and Mikey suggest the appraisal of feelings and sensation (getting a prey or running from the predator). Time and space are one here making the reader pause for a moment to grasp the situation. Hence, our ears become more perspective as we pay attention to sound and pay less attention to our sight.

As with all comics, spacing is crucial. In Pascal Lefevre’s The Construction of Space in Comics suggest that the use of space presents different kinds of meanings. The diegetic space surrounding Mikey’s life makes the reader become more active as they try to put the fragments together. It is a place which allows speculation, fascination, and questioning. Here Williamson is presenting the set value of an individual life and the great diversity of experiences the characters had and/or are going through. Moreover, Jesse Cohn’s Mise-en-Page: A Vocabulary for Page Layouts looks at the page as a unit of design. There is a tension between sequence and sequence of a page that our eyes try to create meaning from everything. For example, the image below intrigues the reader to try and take it all in at once: the fantasy world, creatures, death, destiny and reality.

Williamson is resonating here the starkness of Terranos and the normalcy of reality.

 Similarly, Thierry Groensteen’s System of Comics indicates the importance of the relationship between the panels on a page (spatio-topica). Like Lefevre, Groensteen focuses on the fragments that link everything together. Readers are more absorbed in the story trying to contextualize the narrative. Birthright's use of colour, panel size, and panel placement becomes important to the functions of framing and eye movements. For example, the use of a burning and vibrant orange/red color of autumn and Mikey’s disappearance to the end page foreshadows that things are not what they seem, that something evil lurks around. On the contrary, the use of black and navy blue represents the normalcy of reality, of ordinary life, of singularity. Birthright prompts a wider illustration of human expectations that valorizes the questions of the impossibilities between reality and fantasy. 

Overall, I enjoyed the read and can't wait for the second to come out in November.