Text as a Visual Image in I Hate Fairyland

The comic book “I Hate Fairyland” by Skottie Young relies heavily on text and narration boxes to tell the story. Applying David Carrier’s ideas of speech bubbles playing as a visual image as well as the narration bubbles’ content being contrasted to the speech bubbles’ content. Carrier says the word balloon is a visualized image of active speech, and the interesting part of the narration bubble in this particular page spread is that the narration bubbles acts as the visual, falling along with the character. It conveys more than textual content, showing the lon

g fall the character endures. It is somewhat difficult to discern how long and how far the character falls, but with the small narration bubbles that fall along with the characters starting at the top and going to the bottom of the page, the reader gets the idea that the fall is long and frightening. As well, the fact that the narration bubbles are small, continuous throughout the panels on the page convey the idea that the fall is continuous and she is unsure when it will end. The distinction between the words such as “amazing”, “wonder”, “magic”, “laughter”, and “joy” emphasizes the juxtaposition of the content and the text and the sarcasm implied.

 

Further, the content of the text in the narration bubbles contrasts the content of the speech bubbles. The narration bubbles explain the magical and beautiful place the character is falling towards, while the character’s speech bubbles exhibit clear terror and wishes not to die. Specifically in the first panel in the first tier, the narration bubble says “To an amazing world…” and her speech bubble reads “I don’t want to die!” The content of the narration repeats the sense of happiness and bliss, and her speech bubbles indicate an entirely different tone. This allows the reader to derive humour and sarcasm in the comic, setting the tone for the rest of the book. Without the narration and speech bubbles, the reader would probably assume the same sort of tone due to the animation and colour scheme of vibrant colours against the dark panels of the previous page. Still, the text emphasizes so much through the different themes between the narration and speech bubbles. It is in this way the idea of David Carrier’s ideas of text and speech in comics that further conveys the meaning in both a visual sense (with the narration boxes falling along with the character) and to set the impression of the rest of the story.

-- Kayla Masaro