More on comics
As we came back to school recently, we learned more about comics and their connection to the human condition. We learned about more of the authorial choices specific to comics. The choices comic authors make are often visual: they use the layout of the comic, the imagery, composition, lighting, color, and proportion, along with the typical literary devices employed in storytelling. Some unique features of comics include the panels, which convey the primary visual information, the gutter, or the spaces in between the panels, bubbles, which often contain words and dialogue, and the emanata, or symbols near character heads that convey exaggerated emotion. There are many more elements that are unique to comics which we may discuss further.
We continued our analysis of the Peanuts comic strip where Lucy and Linus discuss scripture and television repeats, and the Donnelly work that uses a fantasy setting to talk about relationships and making amends. These works use seemingly juvenile means to convey deeper meaning, which can be a bane as people see the work as something meant for children, and a boon because with clever choices and the right symbolism, you can get away with anything. Ultimately, comics heavily work within the restraints of a certain number of panels and designated space to convey a story with visual symbols, and the limits of the medium can ironically lend itself to many possibilities. The ink in a bottle is finite but it spreads wherever the author needs it to go, for as long there is paper, a printer, and someone to read the work.
This is an 8 panel, longer Peanuts strip where Lucy and Linus bicker about television and sighing. This shows sibling disagreements and how siblings may excuse themselves using an appeal to ethos.
This is a work by Liza Donnelly. Initially I thought the piece was about reconciling with your prejudices towards people due to the use of a nonhuman dragon, but looking at Donnelly's body of work made me realise it has more to do with healing from the trauma of relationships and recognizing the red flags in a relationship.