Literature of Comics and Graphic Narratives

The pieces that I read this week were a short series of Little Nemo strips by Windsor McCay, Krazy Kat by George Harriman, and Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Waterson. Some things I've noticed that all these stories have in common is that they are very precise and straight to the point, compared to what graphic novels and comic books are today. They are short stories in their most basic form. They don't typically last longer than a page, and rarely have a follow up to compliment the first spread. Many of these aren't terribly exciting, but they're still entertaining and are the sort of things you look at and read when you need something to do. You can certainly get lost in them, reading them dry until there isn't anything more and you've spent a few hours of your life without realizing it. Despite the fact that the entertainment value isn't astronomical, they still tend to end on a joke, or a reveal of some kind, or just have something interesting to say. My fa...

Cinema as we know it very much had its beginnings in stories such as The Arrival, told by author and artist Shaun Tan. To create a story without words and only through images seems difficult to us now, as we rely so heavily on auditory explanation, but it's not as hard as one would thing if they know what they're trying to communicate. Tan uses gesture, clear drawing, and value to express moments people have experienced in their lives and can relate to in order to tell his story. There are very many wonderful examples of this in The Arrival , but ones that stood out to me the most are the those that use specific imagery that we as viewers are already familiar with. For instance, there is a scene where a couple are trying to find a way out of the wreckage of their city and to escape, and they ask a man for help. He shows them a map, but indicates to them that it would cost something by holding up two fingers and rubbing them together with his thumb. They offer him a trinket; al...