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