Page Maus, copyright For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact by Art Spiegelman, reprinted with permission of The Wylie Agency, Inc. Page W. Norton Special Sales at specialsales wwnorton. Includes bibliographical references. Originally published in with the title: Graphic storytelling.
ISBN pbk. Comic books, strips, etc. Graphic novelsAuthorship. E57 It is in that spirit that this posthumous W. Norton edi- tion, the first by a new publisher, respectfully incorporates additional changes. The original editions of this book and its first companion volume, , were pub- lished by Poorhouse Press, a tiny imprint operated on a very part-time basis by Will Eisner himself, and largely overseen by his late brother Pete, who had retired some years earlier.
Ever the ambitious businessman as well as creator, Eisner decided to self-publish his educational titles to keep a foot in all aspects of the comics industry. While Eisner was solely responsible for the editorial side of the Poorhouse Press volumes, all of his numerous graphic novels, magazines and comic books were being published and designed by professional organizations in America and overseas, and he was not, during that stage of his long career, running a true pub- lishing operation himself.
Most of the illustrations, including Eisners own art, were delivered to Poorhouses printer as mechanical boards comprised of simple Xeroxed paste-ups or less-than-perfect photostats. As a result, the printed version of most images suffered considerably.
For the new W. Norton editions, virtually all of the illustrations have been scanned directly from Eisners archived original art or, in the case of other artists examples, from the best available source materials. In some cases, altogether new images were used, including alternate images from Eisners out-takes file.
Four side- bars have been added to illustrate storytelling principles by contemporary cartoonists. In keeping with the authors wishes, we have updated the text, where nec- essary, to remove anachronisms and to reflect the current state of the comics industry and technology.
Minor grammatical errors were corrected and some new text was added for clarity. Additional insightful editing to this edition was provided by Margaret Maloney, with oversight from Robert Weil and Lucas Wittmann. With input from James Sturm of the Center for Cartoon Studies, the various elements were given to Black Eye Design where Michel Vrana, an exceptional designer with long experience in the comics field, worked with talented book designer Grace Cheong to update and improve the layout.
The guidance and ultimate approval of the estate, primarily Ann Eisner and Carl and Nancy Gropper, was at all times appreciated. In this work, I hope to deal with the mission and process of storytelling with graphics. The effort of artists to tell stories of substance with imagery is not new.
He cited major woodcut artists who, in my opinion, established an historical precedent for modern graphic storytelling. Frans Masereel, a Belgian political cartoonist for La Feuille, began producing novels without words. In he published Passionate Journey, a novel told in woodcuts, last published by Penguin Press, New York, This book has an introduction by Thomas Mann.
The famous author enjoins the reader to accept being captivated by the flow of the pictures and the deeper purer impact than you have ever felt before. Masereel went on to create more than twenty novels without words. About that time, Lynd Ward also began publishing graphic novels in woodcut form. He dealt with mans spiritual journey through life. Of greater significance is the resonance of the subjects he undertook. It is these substantial themes that pro- vide encouragement to the aspirations of comics.
A sampling of Wards work is included in this book. It was a spoof of the classic novel done with wordless cartoons. While he didnt have the literary pretensions, or the serious subject intent, of Masereel, Nckel, or Ward, he nevertheless observed the same format.
In , it was reprinted in pocket book format by Dell Books. By then, comic books were well established. My colleague Harvey Kurtzman broke additional ground in this area with his paperback of all-new comics, Jungle Book, in Comics are essentially a visual medium composed of images.
While words are a vital component, the major dependence for description and narration is on uni- versally understood images, crafted with the intention of imitating or exaggerating reality. The result is often a preoccupation with graphic elements.
Page layout, high-impact effects, startling rendering techniques and mind-blowing color can monopolize the creators attention. The effect of this is that the writer and artist are deflected from the discipline of storytelling construction and become absorbed in a packaging effort.
The graphics then control the writing and the product descends into little more than literary junk food. Despite the high visibility and attention that artwork compels, I hold that the story is the most critical component in a comic. Not only is it the intellectual frame on which all artwork rests, but it, more than anything else, helps the work endure. This is a daunting challenge to a medium that has a history of being considered juvenile pap. The task is further compounded by the harsh reality that images and packaging elicit the primary reader response.
The traditional production of comics by a single individual has, over the years, given way to the dominance of teams writer, artist, inkers, colorists and letter- ers. Writing, as I use it in comics, is not confined to the employment of words.
Writing in comics includes all the elements in a seamless mix and becomes part of the mechanics of the art form. In Graphic Storytelling, the concentration is on a basic understanding of narration with graphics.
To Dave Schreiner, my gratitude for his skillful and patient editing. His years of experience in comic books has been an invaluable aid. To my wife, Ann, who contributed many hours of logistical support, my apprecia- tion for her interest and endurance. To my son, John, who provided much of the underlying research needed to but- tress the postulations common to a book of this kind, my thanks.
To supportive colleagues, Neil Gaiman, Scott McCloud, Tom Inge, and Lucy Caswell, who generously took the time to read the early dummy and provide me with thoughtful opinions and advice, my gratitude.
Each employ arranged graphics and text or dialogue. While film and theater have long ago established their credentials, comics still struggle for accep- tance, and the art form, after more than a century of popular use, is still regarded as a problematic literary vehicle.
The latter half of the twentieth century experienced an alteration in the def- inition of literacy. The proliferation of the use of images as a communicant was propelled by the growth of a technology that required less in text-reading skills. From road signs to mechanical use instructions, imagery aided words, and at times even supplanted them.
Indeed, visual literacy has entered the panoply of skills required for communication. Comics are at the center of this phenomenon. The rise and establishment in America of this remarkable reading form in the package we know as comic books occurred over sixty years.
From the compila- tion of pre-published newspaper comic strips, comic book material quickly evolved into complete original stories and then into graphic novels. This last permutation has placed more of a demand for literary sophistication on the artist and writer than ever before. Since comics are easily read, their reputation for usefulness has been asso- ciated with people of low literacy and limited intellectual accomplishment. And, in truth, for decades the story content of comics catered to that audience.
Many creators are still content with furnishing little more than titillation and mindless violence. Little wonder that encouragement and acceptance of this medium by the education establishment was for a long time less than enthusiastic.
The predominance of art in the traditional comics format brought more atten- tion to that form than to its literary content. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that comics as a reading form was always assumed to be a threat to literacy, as lit- eracy was traditionally defined in the era before film, television and the Internet.
In their influential book The Medium Is the Massage, Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore point out that societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication. This has been the fate of the comics. Its colorful and pictorial format bespoke of simple content. The years between and saw comics beginning to reach for liter- ary content.
It started with the confrontational underground movement of artists and writers riding a wave of direct distribution to the market. This was followed by a mushrooming of comic book stores which supplied easy access to a broader spectrum of readers. Autobiography, social protest, reality-based human relationships and history were some of the subjects now undertaken by comics. The graphic novel that addressed adult subjects proliferated.
The aver- age age of readers rose. The market for innovation and mature subject matter expanded. Accompanying these changes, a more sophisticated group of creative talents became attracted to the medium and raised its standards. In this environment, the comic book suffered from the comments of liter- ary critics who found it problematic to determine whether comics could properly deal with serious subjects.
This general attitude adversely affected the climate of acceptance. This epitomizes the challenge facing comic book writers and artists seeking a place in our literary culture.
How far comics can go in addressing serious themes is an ongoing challenge. Fortunately, the increase in the number of serious artists and writers attracted to comics as a career is testimony to the mediums poten- tial. And it is my conviction that story content will be the propellant of the future of the comic books. Those accus- tomed to scanning regular columns of type often have difficulty assimilating the haphazard captions in comics at the same time as jumping from image to image.
But to a young generation brought up with television, computers and video games, processing verbal and visual information on several levels at once seems natural, even preferable. Printed text lost its monopoly to another communication technology, film.
Aided by electronic transmission, it became the major competitor for read- ership. With its limited demand on a viewers cognitive skills, film makes the time-consuming burden of learning to decode and digest words seem obsolete. Film viewers experience countless lifelike incidents of ordained duration as they watch a screen where artificial situations and contrived solutions become inte- grated into their mental inventory of memories retained from real life experience.
Film actors are more real than people created within text. Most important, watching film establishes a rhythm of acquisition. It is a direct challenge to static print. Accustomed to the pace of film, readers grow impatient with long text pas- sages because they have become used to acquiring stories, ideas and information quickly and with little effort. As we know, complex concepts become more easily digested when reduced to imagery.
Printed communication as a portable source of ideas in depth, nevertheless remains a viable and necessary medium. In fact it responds to the challenge of electronic media by merger. A partnership of words with imagery becomes the logical permutation. The resulting configuration is called comics and it fills a gap between print and film.
In his fine book Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud aptly described comics as a vessel which can hold any number of ideas and images. In a wider view we must consider this vessel as a communicator. It is in every sense a singular form of reading. The reading process in comics is an extension of text. In text alone the pro- cess of reading involves word-to-image conversion.
Comics accelerates that by providing the image. When properly executed, it goes beyond conversion and speed and becomes a seamless whole. There is a recognizable relationship to the iconography and pic- tographs of logographic or character-based writing systems, like Chinese hanzi or Japanese kanji. When this language is employed as a conveyance of ideas and information, it separates itself from mindless visual entertainment.
This makes comics a story- telling medium. NOTE Throughout this book, I use certain terms which ought to be defined and dis- tinguished from one another. They are:. Film and comics both engage in graphic narrative.
COMICS: A form of sequential art, often in the form of a strip or a book, in which images and text are arranged to tell a story. Stories are used to teach behavior within the community, to dis- cuss morals and values, or to satisfy curiosity. They dramatize social relations and the problems of living, convey ideas or act out fantasies.
The telling of a story requires skill. In primitive times, the teller of stories in a clan or tribe served as entertainer, teacher and historian. Storytelling preserved knowledge by passing it from gener- ation to generation. This mission has continued into modern times. The storyteller must first have something to tell, and then must be able to master the tools to relay it.
The earliest storytellers probably used crude images buttressed with gestures and vocal sounds which later evolved into language. Over the centuries, technol- ogy provided paper, printing machines and electronic storage and transmission devices. As these developments evolved, they affected the narrative arts.
All stories have a structure. A story has a beginning, an end, and a thread of events laid upon a framework that holds the two together. Whether the medium is text, film or comics, the skeleton is the same. The style and manner of its telling may be influenced by the medium but the story itself abides. The structure of a story can be diagrammed with many variations, because it is subject to different patterns between its beginning and end.
A structure is use- ful as a guide to maintaining control of the telling. Before a story is composed, it exists in the abstract. At this point, it is still a lot of thoughts, memories, fantasies and ideas, floating around in ones head, wait- ing for a structure.
It becomes a story when told in an arranged and purposeful order. The basic principles of narration are the same whether told orally or visually. It can relate very abstract ideas, science, or unfamiliar concepts by the analogous use of familiar forms or phenomena.
Technology provides many vehicles of transmission, but fundamentally there are only two major ways: words oral or writ- ten and images. Sometimes the two are combined. While film and the Internet have challenged its superiority, print will nevertheless maintain its importance. Stories told with graphic narration must deal with transmission. This has an influence on the manner in which the story is told and will influence the story itself.
It is at this point that the story-teller comes in contact with the marketplace. Readers and viewers identify content with its package. Comics readers expect printed comics to come in a familiar package. A story told in an unconventional format may be perceived differently.
The format has an important influence in graphic storytelling. In comics, images are generally impressionistic. Usually, they are ren- dered with economy in order to facilitate their usefulness as a language.
Because experience precedes analysis, the intellectual digestive process is accelerated by the imagery provided by comics. Imagery used as a language has some drawbacks. It is the element of comics that has always provoked resistance to its acceptance as serious reading. Critics also sometimes accuse it of inhibiting imagination. Static images have limitations. They do not articulate abstractions or complex thought easily. But images define in absolute terms.
They are specific. Images in print or film transmit with the speed of sight. As an adjective, stereotypical applies to that which is hackneyed. Its drawings are racism. Where and a mirror reflection, it depend on the readers simplifies and cate- stored memory of experience to visualize an idea gorizes an inaccurate or process quickly.
This makes necessary the sim- generalization, it can beinto repeatable symbols. The actual word comes from the method used to mold duplicate plates in letterpress printing. These defini- tions notwithstanding, the stereotype is a fact of life in the comics medium. It is an accursed necessitya tool of communication that is an inescapable ingredient in most cartoons. Given the narrative function of the medium, this should not be surprising.
In comics, stereotypes are drawn from commonly accepted physical charac- teristics associated with an occupation. These become icons and are used as part of the language in graphic storytelling.
In film, there is plenty of time to develop a character within an occupation. In comics, there is little time or space. The image or caricature must settle the mat- ter instantly. For example, in creating a doctor prototype, it is useful to adopt a compound of characteristics that the reader will accept. Usually this image is drawn from both social experience and what the reader thinks a doctor ought to look like.
Where the plot is arranged to support it, the standardized doctor look can be abandoned in favor of a type suitable to the story environment. The art of creating a stereotypical image for the purpose of storytelling requires a familiarity with the audience and a recognition that each society has its own ingrained set of accepted stereotypes. But there are those that transcend cultural boundaries.
The comics creator can now count on a global distribution of his work. To com- municate well, the storyteller must be conversant with what is universally valid.
Certain human characteristics are recognizable by physical appearance. In each of the above, the reader evokes a message out of the stereotypical image. In this example, the stereotype of a strong man reinforces romantic believability while an incongruity that provokes humor is conveyed by using a stereotype of a nerd. In devising actors, it is important to understand why the use of commonly accepted types can evoke a viewers reflexive response.
I believe that modern humans still retain instincts developed as primordial creatures. Possibly the rec- ognition of a dangerous person or responses to threatening postures are residual memories of a primitive existence. Perhaps in the early experience with animal life, people learned which facial configurations and postures were either threat- ening or friendly. It was important for survival to recognize instantly which animal was dangerous.
There is evidence of this in the successful readability of animal-based images which comics commonly employs when seeking to evoke character recognition. In graphic storytelling, there is little time or space for character develop- ment.
The use of these animal-based stereotypes speeds the reader into the plot and helps the storyteller gain the readers acceptance for the action of his characters. SYMBOLISM Just as stereotype employs images of people who can be easily identified in com- ics or film, objects have their own vocabulary in the visual language of comics. There are some objects which have instant significance in graphic storytell- ing. When they are employed as modifying adjectives or adverbs, they provide the storyteller with an economical narrative device.
Computers often use symbols to instruct their operators. These are derived from objects familiar to people in a technical society. Apparel is symbolic. It can tell instantly the strength, character, occupation and intent of its wearer. How it is worn may also convey a signal to the reader. In comics, as in film, symbolic objects not only narrate but heighten the emo- tional reaction of the reader. In this story, the selection of a doll and broken signs evoke sympathy because they are commonly identified with non-combatants.
Left lying in the snow broken and abandoned, they not only testify to the innocence of the victims, but solicit the readers condemnation of the killers. As comics demonstrated the capacity to marshal techni- cal elements in a disciplined order, they found ready patronage. This demonstrates the order of thinking when an instructional comic is created. Skills are learned by imitation. While many cartoonists stories are primarily concerned with character and plot, what most interests Huizenga is the way the various elements that make up a comic are diagrammed on the page and how the reader processes that information.
Huizenga once worked for a company where he was responsible for creating visual explanations and diagrams. This work had a direct impact on his comics. In this piece, created for the Center for Cartoon Studies, Huizenga boils down the essential steps of putting together a comic book. To a reader interested in the excitement of graphic effects or bravura art, this is quite enough. In fact, a plot with too much density can be an impediment.
In order to successfully satisfy this, the artist requires from the writer little more than a plot that centers on a single problem, as in plots that center on pursuit or acts of ven- geance. Most often, the solution is so uncomplicated, violent action and special effect art must sustain interest.
This format was not new, but its renaissance offered highly skilled illustrators and sophisticated writers a compatible vehicle. In this form of graphic storytelling, the writer and artist retain their sover- eignty because the story comes from the text and is embellished by the art.
The leisurely rhythm of this kind of graphic storytelling allows the reader time to dwell on the art alone, which is mainly concerned with itself. The artist can freely use oil, watercolor, wood engravings or manipulated photography.
The skill demands of these techniques are often so great that the art might overwhelm the story. In the marketplace, however, it makes for a very attractive package and con- forms to the traditional idea of a book. These symbols serve to establish the premise within symbolic plot and characters. The storyteller selects an event of interest which can stand alone. The writer counts on the life experience or the imagination of the reader to supply the impact of the story.
The readers appreciation hinges on the telling of it. It requires that the artist portrays believable acting. Since characters are dealing with internal emo- tions, subtle postures and gestures must be true- to-life, instantly recognizable. Powerhouse layouts or excessive rendering technique, which can overwhelm and distract the reader and dominate the story, are counter- productive in this form.
Below are the critical elements of a story that are never made explicit to the reader. In the story that follows, they are implied and are an invisible part of the narrative. The storyteller is always confronted with the difficulty of selecting a revealing incident that will withstand the readers judgment of what is believable. The unadorned drawing style, a simple scrawl, make her coimics look as if they could have been drawn on the day of the events described, and easily captures the ebb and flow of her life.
The art is deceptive; it looks refresh- ingly unlabored yet clearly there is a careful attention to detail, form and proportion. The answer to this question precedes the telling because it is a fundamental con- cern of delivery. The readers profilehis experience and cultural characteristics must be reckoned with before the storyteller can successfully narrate the tale.
Successful communication depends on the storytellers own memory of experi- ence and visual vocabulary. This trait can be used as a major conduit in the delivery of a story. Its exploitation can be counted upon as one of the storytellers tools. Empathy is a visceral reaction of one human being to the plight of another. The ability to feel the pain, fear or joy of someone else enables the storyteller to evoke an emotional contact with the reader. We see ample evidence of this in movie theaters where people weep over the grief of an actor, who is pretending while in an event that is not really happening.
Wincing with vicarious pain when observing someone being hit is, according to some scientists, evidence of fraternal behavior, the work of a neuropsycho- logical mechanism developed in hominids from very early on. On the other hand, researchers argue that empathy results from our ability to run through our minds a narrative of the sequence of a particular event. This not only suggests a cogni- tive capacity but an innate ability to understand a story.
There is a whole body of clinical studies to support the conclusion that humans learn from infancy to watch and learn to interpret gestures, postures, imagery and other non-verbal social signals.
From these, they can deduce meanings and motives like love, pain, and anger, among others. The relevance of all this to graphic storytelling becomes even more apparent with the claims by scientists that the evolution of hominids ability to read the intentions of others in their group involves their visual-neural equipment.
This was possible, they contend, because as the visual system evolved it became more connected to the emotional centers of the brain. It helps, therefore, for an image maker to understand that all human muscles, in one way or another, are con- trolled by the brain. Based on the understanding of empathys cause and effect, we can then come to the fashioning of a reader-storyteller contract.
The sto- ryteller expects that the audience will comprehend, while the audience expects the author will deliver something that is comprehensible. In this agreement, the burden is on the storyteller. This is a basic rule of communication. In comics the reader is expected to understand things like implied time, space, motion, sound and emotions. In order to do this, a reader must not only draw on visceral reactions but make use of an accumulation of experience as well as reasoning. The devices used in the telling bind the reader to the storytelling.
For the storyteller this is a matter of control. Graphic Novels for Children and Young Adults is the first book to offer a critical examination of children's and YA comics. The anthology is divided into five sections, structure and narration; transmedia; pedagogy; gender and sexuality; and identity, that reflect crucial issues and recurring topics in comics scholarship during the twenty-first century.
The contributors are likewise drawn from a diverse array of disciplines--English, education, library science, and fine arts. A must-read for incorporating digital literacy into your classroom! Equip your students with essential 21st-century media literacy skills, as they read, write, speak, and create art within the context of digital storytelling, and reach deeper understandings in all areas of the curriculum!
In this second edition, both novice and technologically adept K educators will find: Practical techniques to combine storytelling with curriculum content Tips for exploring effective storytelling principles through emerging digital media as well as via traditional literacy skills in reading, writing, speaking, and art Visual aids and video clips that illustrate best practices in media composition.
The Complete Companion covers every aspect of the Whedonverse through insightful essays and interviews, including fascinating conversations with key collaborators Jane Espenson and Tim Minear. Over 40 contributors have been brought together by PopMatters, the acclaimed international magazine of cultural criticism, to provide an irresistible mix of analysis, interpretation and sheer celebration. Whether you're a student looking for critical approaches to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or a Browncoat who follows Nathan Fillion on Twitter or, let's face it, both there is plenty here to enjoy.
We live in a high-tech, multimedia world, and it's proven that many young people respond best to graphic communication, yet most of our classroom activities still emphasize print communication.
Even inquiry-based approaches to learning often stress writing lists of questions, reading texts, and writing papers. Thepotential of graphic inquiry in teaching and learning warrants exploration. It's new. It's graphic. And it is the first of its kind. Designed to bridge theory and actual practice, Graphic Inquiry has applications for new and practicing educators and librarians. This visually rich book provides numerous, standards-based inquiry activities and projects that incorporate traditional materials as well as emerging social and collaborative technologies" The essays in this collection discuss how comics and graphic narratives can be useful primary texts and learning tools in college and university classes across different disciplines.
With a combination of practical and theoretical investigations, the book brings together discussions among teacher-scholars to advance the scholarship on teaching comics and graphic narratives—and provides scholars with useful references, critical approaches, and particular case studies. Late nineteenth-century Britain experienced an unprecedented explosion of visual print culture and a simultaneous rise in literacy across social classes. New printing technologies facilitated quick and cheap dissemination of images—illustrated books, periodicals, cartoons, comics, and ephemera—to a mass readership.
This Victorian visual turn prefigured the present-day impact of the Internet on how images are produced and shared, both driving and reflecting the visual culture of its time. So is the case with Graphic novels presently, which will have to stand the test of its time to reach that level of universal acceptance. Though with the turn of the century it has developed its own grounds to thrive upon, but in many institutions it has yet not gained that level of acknowledgement.
It still stands on that threshold of discourse over its literariness, many a times. It can be observed that the demarcation between literary and nonliterary has become blurred lately, with a positive indication and invitation for new ventures.
As a result of which different types of experimental novels are emerging day by day. Graphic novels are gradually overshadowing the conventional comic series form because they provide stand-alone stories with a more complex plot, owing to the impatient and chaotic age. Anything as simple and humorous like Chacha Chaudhary and Champak, or the superhero tales like Phantom and Nagraj would seem inappropriate in the contemporary age.
Today, we are living in an age of re-presentation, an age revival of myths and culture, where the artists are exploring the conventional and traditional myths in an unconventional form. Now it is delving into all sorts of social, political and psychological issues. Graphic novels become a powerful medium to interact with the society at large because of its advantage of using both, visual and literary devices. One can also say that it incorporates the best of both the o lds e ause o el as a ge e offe s the highest o ta t zo e to the eade s as suggested Mikhail Bakhtin in Epic and Novel and visual devices or anything visual for that matter has greatest impact on our se ses.
All li es a ith the a e p essi e pote tial M Cloud. The la guage that e use is also a modified form of those lines into meaningful structures.
Scott McCloud demonstrates it as: As a result of this compatibility between words and pictures, there is no possibility of any chasm between what the author wishes to convey and what the reader perceives out of the presentation. If we observe, at the inception of our formal education, we enter the world of language. We ge e all sta t ith the sho a d tell ethod M Cloud 8 where words and images are interchangeably used to transmit a connected series of ideas.
Hence, the process of ide tifi atio o es i to pla. Gokul Gopalk ish a i his a ti le A t i Co i s suggests that o i a t has always been considered a low art, a poor cousin to both literature and other art forms, guilty of catering to a elati el i fa tile eade ase.
Toda , the g aphi o elists a e eaki g a a f o su h o e tio al practices, entrenching an experimental world of varying contents with a bold and contemporary outlook. Storytelling has been an integral part of Indian culture since a very long time. Much before epics and mythologies came into existence, Indian culture was passed on from generations to generations in the oral tradition of storytelling. Most of us have been brought up reading mythologies in graphic art form, implanting the seeds of eligio a d o alit i us th ough the figu es of the De as a d the Asu as.
It deals with the the e of Na ada Ba hao A dola ot o l as a social commentary but as a bold anti-government statement. In the recent years graphic novels have set an unconventional landmark raising the standard and expectations of its reader one after the other. Sarnath Ba e jee s Corridor earned enormous praise and tremendous popularity. In the Indian context, it is e e said that to ot k o Co ido o Ba e jee is a shee lasphe Vish aj oti Ghosh s Delhi Calm takes us back to Delhi when PM Indira Gandhi declared emergency in the state, it is an odd mixture of facts and fiction.
The first Indian female graphic novelist, Amruta Patil through Kari , takes a huge leap and chooses the subject of a young adult caught up in the web of psychological and social rubrics. It highlights the diffi ult of the ho ose ual p otago ist i o de to su i e i the s og it.
A d the list goes o ith number of eminent and notable works like Kashmir Pending, Harappa Files, Hush, etc. The world of graphics has come out as a color palette which offers us a wide range of colors and mixtures of all sorts. Like all other fields of Literature, this genre or rather sub-ge e has also u de go e o elizatio. The popularity of graphic novels has rejuvenated the dying comic culture. Aniruddha Sen Gupta in the introduction section of the magazine Marg De issue sa s I I dia, pa ti ula l , o i s a e pa ti ula l poised.
Visual narrative forms are perhaps more diverse like everything else here than anywhere else in the world. In the friezes of temples, the rockfaces of caves, the borders of saris, the mud wall of homes, the bark of trees, the plates of copper, the crackling surfaces of dried palm leaves- in such diverse media have our traditional artists and storytellers found the vessels for their offerings.
In a country where the written word is not within the grasp of many, pictures and spoken words have formed the channels th ough hi h sto ies ha e flo ed f o e a to e a. The a tists ould t ha e fou d a suita le platfo to sho ase thei tale ts, had the e ot ee pu lishe s like HarperCollins, Campfire novels, Penguin, Sage, to name a few who have provided them with an opportunity to break the shackles of convention and give voice to their intentions as well as imaginations.
As to bring in anything new and different is no less than a challenge, especially in a country as diversified as India, where almost every individual owns a completely different set of ideologies owing to the different cultural roots. Some of the Indian graphic novels have also made a notable use of cultural and folk tradition. Megha Maie i Bhimayana: Thirst for Khulla observes that: The ite s o i e te t a d i ages to dis uss so ial a d politi al issues a d deli e this information to the reader in the quickest most descriptive way possible.
Graphic novels allow authors to provide their readers with a multi-sensory slap in the face. The combination of picture and text forces the reader to come face to face with the social issues these autho s a e po t a i g.
This visual confrontation is something textual novel, which just features text, cannot provide to the level graphic novel does. Considering the scenario in the West, by the last quarter of the 20th century, the term comics hasd suddenly become anachronistic. This a ade i i te est as paralleled by a growth in production of comics for adults in Britain and the United States.
As cultural critic Roger Sabin explains in his book Adult Comics , the e had al a s ee o i s fo adults, a d adults had al a s gai ed e jo e t from comics ega dless of the ate ial s supposed audie e, ut i the late s those hild e ho had e a ed o i s oo of the s e e o olde a d sought o e ealisti a d atu e o i s. The ajo American comic publishers responded with more violent material and, sometimes, more intelligent comics— many of them in the form of books and albums, mimicking the marketing of comics in Europe.
These were the immediate precursors of what would come to be known as graphic novels. The te g aphi o el as fi st used i the late s afte the su essful pu li atio of Will Eis e s A Contract with God Though long considered as a less serious art form they have started acquiring a mainstream position somewhere in the last decade of 20th Century. This subgenre is a vibrant admixture of a plethora of subjects where the creators believe in giving wings to their imagination.
It permits the artists to emancipate creativity in the best way possible as art demands liberation of thoughts and feelings, and this genre in particular allows to probe into those complexities to the highest level possible.
Representation of the theme becomes the key factor in this case and the writers have an advantage of using text and picture to convey their message, creating a deep impression on the minds of the readers. East and West have always existed in terms of polarity with each other. Although with reference to graphic novels they are still in developing phase across the world.
The real variation exists in themes taken up by artists and the way they are represented in East and West, owing to the cultural differences and social practices. With the advent of graphic novels, there is an evident interdependence and intertextual coined by poststructuralist Julia Kristeva in references across boundaries with an additional global treatment.
Also as Child e s lite atu e in contemporary time has gained a lot of attention in the field of literary discourse and criticism, similarly sequential art form is no more limited to the concerns of the kids. With the turn of century to the twenty-first, graphic novel is witnessing its golden age. It has successfully intervened in the arena of adults drawing their concerns towards multilateral flaws in the society. A visual narrative is a story primarily told through the use of visual media like graphics, photographs, illustrations, etc.
The te isual a ati e has ee used to des i e e tai ge es of isual sto telli g f o photo essay, documentary film to comics and graphic novels. The basic characteristics of visual narrative include- a persuasive plot with a view, a subject with pressing social, environmental or spiritual value and an appeal explicit or implicit to bring the change in attitude and behavior of society. As this genre is a productive result of the condensation of visual and literary devices, it thus becomes inevitable to trace the history and compatibility of words and images.
Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics has gi e a ela o ate a ou t o the sa e. They sta ed sepa ate, efusi g to i … like oil a d ate. The itte o ds e e becoming more specialized, more abstract and more elaborate and less and less like pictures. O e as obsessed with resemblance, light and color all things visible; the other, rich in invisible treasures, senses, emotions, spirituality and philosophy.
In a way, pictures and words had reached the end of a year long journey. Now they could only thrive individually. With the onset of Impressionism, western art moved towards the abstract vertex which was nothing else than culmination of the old forms, the ultimate study of light and color.
It was soon followed by an explosion: Expressionism, Dadaism, Futurism, Surrealism, Fauvism, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, Neo-plasticism, Constructivism, and with these art returned back to the realm of ideas.
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