Unit Content
The graphic narrative, or comic book, as it exists today can be defined as “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer”14. This means that any story that wants to be told, be it true or fictional, realistic or fantastic, romantic or terrifying, can be told through a graphic novel. The initial question to delve into therefore is “why?” Why are graphic narratives so universal? Furthermore, if they are so universal, why are they not higher in the pantheon of respected literature?
Let us first examine why an author would choose to create a graphic narrative as opposed to a prose novel. The famous graphic novelist, Will Eisner, who is credited with being the pioneer of graphic narratives, saw them as “a new and exciting way to address the age-old questions about human nature and the human condition through a familiar but freshly energized and revitalized art form.”15 Right now, no one would call a graphic narrative a comic because of the evolutionary changes and maturity. That is not to say that some GN aren’t funny and full of superhero camp, but today’s topics are far too deep and thought provoking to assign them the term “comic”. This transformation begs the question: how have silly and heroic comics turned into vehicles for such weighty topics as the Afghan War or eating disorders or racism? Eisner again hits us with an understanding of the duality of humanity, light versus darkness, humor versus tragedy:
I think satire is a form of rage, an expression perhaps of anger. There is kindly humor and there’s bitter tragedy. There is a relationship between the two in my mind—I can’t keep them separate. Every time I do a very tragic scene, I can see a humorous scene within the same frame and it can be converted. A man walking down the street and falling into a manhole can be a very tragic thing—or it could be very funny. So much depends on what else is involved. I see humor as an incongruity. There are lots of definitions of what humor is—some think it’s man’s inhumanity to man, some think people laugh because they’re glad it isn’t happening to them, some people laugh because of happiness, or kindness, or even fear— but I see humor as a kind of incongruity. There are a lot of things which do seem peculiar to me and funny to me. I think it requires perspective to see humor as well as tragedy. When you step back, almost the way a painter does in front of a canvas, to look at the humor of something or the tragedy of something, you see it in a kind of clear focus.16
From his description can be taken an explanation of why such dire topics can be made more appealing when drawing is added. In isolation, what is tragic can make you cry and withdraw. In publication, what is tragic is one step closer to the joke we all get, the common understanding of what a shame permeates. In a group setting like the show America’s Funniest Videos, everyone can laugh out loud at the man who fell off his roof putting up sparkle lights, even though had we known this man, our reaction would have been ever so different.
Several graphic novels come to mind when considering this explanation as a possible reason for the growing number of serious topic graphic narratives. By sharing with students a wide range of topics and themes in GN, they will be able to see that any story, even their own, no matter how funny, scary, or touching it is, can translate into images. Additionally as far as images go, seeing that a GN can have a range from hyper detailed images to basic outlines or even images they did not create, will go a long way in relieving any stress about completing all the aspects of a work on their own, particularly the drawings for any non-artistic authors.
First for younger readers, there is Guts by Raina Telgemeier (2019). It is the story of a preteen dealing with all the fears that surround friendship, health, the lead up to middle school, and her battle with anxiety and the uncomfortable health issues that result. This autobiographical account of a girl being diagnosed with an eating disorder and the fallout of such a thing, could be very heavy and possibly difficult for those readers for whom it also describes. What’s powerful is also that the main character finds healing in therapy, a surprising camaraderie, and friendship.
As a graphic novel, this story allows for time to pass while still getting a full understanding of the time that has passed instead of merely jumping ahead. Where a traditional novel would use extra line spaces or dots, this book can use a page or two of sequenced images to move forward quickly without losing the actions being fast-forwarded past.
Telgemeier also does two very pointed things to take some of the pressure off the serious themes of the book. Right off the bat, the drawing style stands out as familiar in the vein of the comics Family Circle or even Garfield with safe, round faces and a lack of anything too angular or disproportionate. This creates a softness that invites the reader to connect with the characters on the page: they are like me… not weird, just… regular. Secondly, when the main character, Raina, is in panic mode, the drawings get absurd or dreamlike, with the added bonus of an alternate green-based color palette by Braden Lamb to further allow for those panels to stand out. The overall use of a pastel color palette gives way to a green color palette, at the same time that calm drawings give way to a dreamlike chaotic state as a way to signify the internal stress of the main character. In one such anxiety attack panel, the main character is bug-eyed, shoes off, literally barely hanging on as the floor falls away from under her. To describe the scene is to hear the seriousness of the situation, but to see it is to think “Uh, oh! Time to ride the crazy train! All aboard!!!” This graphic novel can help young readers access the serious topic of mental and physical health that will make them want to read more rather than hide it under their pillow. One can think: this character is like me, maybe I need help too.
That said, what this book also does so well is allow for the duality of body versus mind. Although the safe, round drawings and muted but colorful palette lend themselves to a regular life with difficult things happening, there is a real world created that can be related to. At the same time, Raina, the main character, has bouts of panic and anxiety drawn and colored to expose the chaos that goes on inside when all hope is lost. Student creators can use this book as an example of how to present an audience with the many sides and thoughts of a single individual, or even themselves if they are creating autobiographical accounts in their graphic narratives. Telgemeier said in 2016 in response to the overcome feelings that this particular part of her life story might have been too personal to share, “So let’s break down those stigmas. Let’s just talk about it.”17 Having students read and then create a graphic novel about their struggles, would be a great way to bring social and emotional learning into the classroom. Using her style of reality vs thoughts in the art would be a great way to show two sides to the human coin.
Another book that allows the art of the graphic novel to share the burden of the content’s intensity is Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery, written by Mat Johnson and illustrated by Warren Pleece (2009). This is the story of a Black man passing for white in the South in order to report on racism and lynching for a New York newspaper circa 1930. Johnson wrote this book almost as a thought exercise, having grown up being able to pass as white many times himself and knowing the story of Walter White, the NAACP investigator who passed for white to report on racism and lynchings like the main character does in the book. This historical fiction graphic novel does not have the feel good content brightly depicted in three panels in the Sunday Comics section. So why present this difficult content as a graphic novel? Johnson explains:
I wanted to tell a story I’d never seen told in comics before. And I wanted it to take place in a world that I hadn’t seen in comics before either. I think this story would have been more “normal” as a literary novel, but it offered a chance to do something really interesting in comics, both in seeing how the form could bring the story to life in a powerful way visually, even for people who don’t know much about the people. And in the forms potential to reach people who would never pick up a novel or history book about the period or the issue of lynching in America.18
Here we see that the author wants the average comics or graphic novel reader to experience a different genre in order to read a very difficult story, one they wouldn’t likely pick up in another form. He puts the difficult subject matter into a form that allows it to appeal to a different audience.
The mood of Incogenero somehow (incredibly) allows the reader to have all the feelings of rage and anger and injustice while still feeling compelled to read more without flinching. Some ways that Johnson and Pleece do this are by keeping the color palette in the black and white or brown and white spheres. Without the vivid colors of some graphic novels, the emphasis is on the detailed, realistic faces and places in what seems to be an effort to make the story as realistic as possible, while nodding to it indeed being set in the past. Additionally, there are scenes that are not confined to a panel, but extend to the edges of the page. These images display an artistic expanse that makes the world open and real and not bound by a fixed panel, making it more like real life. Lastly, there is some levity in the story when one character pretends to be from another country and fools the locals with their English accent. It is enough of a break in the tensions of the book that make the end of the charade evermore disastrous. From this book one can think about how to explore the what if’s in history and how the visual nature of this medium allows for a rewriting of such life and times in a way that is engaging, painful, and hopeful while in the front seat for all the action.
The choices Johnson and Pleece make are helpful when creating your own graphic novel because it invites the author/artist to consider how to create the focal point of different parts of the story. When does the emphasis need to be on the images and when does it need to be on the words? McCloud19 points out that a comic face connects more to the reader the less it resembles an actual face, and thus a real person that is not the reader. When choosing to add details, the graphic novel moves the reader closer to the story of the character(s) and away from allowing the reader to become the character. Is your audience supposed to observe the action or become a part of it?
Race and identity is also addressed in the graphic novel American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (2006), but more in line with the need for assimilation. While not an inherently racist concept, it comes from a desire to put off parts of oneself that are not desirable and put on what appeals to and is accepted by the masses. The ideals to subscribe to in this model of community have deep racist roots however, because the primary ideals are often racially or ethnically based, ie. straight or blond hair, light skin. In addition, if members of the ideal group take on qualities of the assimilating groups, those qualities go from undesirable to desirable, ie. body contours and full lips.
Yang chooses to tell three seemingly unrelated stories, all of which however have the same problem: not belonging. While the main character of one mythical story works to achieve an even higher status than those who shunned him, another more identifiable character tries to deny who he is in order to be more like those around him, and finally one character, it turns out, has completely and utterly transformed himself in order to be acceptable- possibly more so to himself than to others.
Yang became a graphic novelist because of his experiences and he suggests using comics and graphic novels with reluctant readers to get them into reading.20 Additionally, if you want your students to create GN, American Born Chinese is a great example of how to put your life story into graphic novel form in a way that exposes personal vulnerabilities, interspersed with alternate genres, like myths, all in ultimately one story with art and colors that symbolize culture. He gives the advice that getting the work completed is the main goal. This is so important in a time when curriculums assign passages instead of entire books:
...never to let perfection get in the way. If you are too obsessed with making things perfect, you’ll never finish — and the feeling of finishing something is so important to have, it has to feel very familiar — finishing a project, seeing a project all the way through. Finishing is more important than perfection.21
Using comics or graphic novels in the classroom is about giving access to students that otherwise would not or even could not engage fully to make it to the end. For students that struggle with reading, for kids that shy away from writing, graphic novels can be a way in.
A story that doesn’t rely on juxtaposed color palettes or super detailed drawings are the graphic novels Persepolis by Iranian author Marjane Satrapi (2004-2005). This memoir of growing up during the Islamic Revolution in Iran, is much more about listening in on the revelation about someone’s childhood. In an almost crude, black and white comic style, an incredible story of persecution, war, hope and triumph emerges. Satrapi uses the images in her graphic novel to spark instant recognition and therefore tell the story at a pace that resembles natural speech. She understands that images in a graphic novel register in the brain quickly, “You see a picture and you understand perfectly, immediately, the basic thing that’s happening. It’s probably more accessible because we are in a culture of images now. People are used to seeing stories that way. They understand looking at pictures.”22
The Persepolis graphic novels’ lack of color and details are good examples for students wanting to create their own art for their graphic novels. In fact, when talking to teachers and students, the biggest hesitation in creating a graphic novel is drawing ability. This doesn’t have to be a barrier. It turns out that many GN authors are not the illustrators of their books. Therefore, some of the load of a graphic novel project assignment can be relieved for students by focusing on either the words or the drawings, but not necessarily both. Being a good writer and being a good artist are not the same things! Either simple drawings like Persepolis can be the expectation, or alternate sources of images can be used, such as coloring pages found online or AI generated images. Caldwell and Moore found that for younger students just the drawings are enough to be the story: “drawing is a viable and effective form of rehearsal for narrative writing at the second- and third-grade levels and can be more successful than the traditional planning activity.”23 Likewise, for a more writing focused assignment, the images can be provided and the students produce the words. In the end, the goal is to have students be able to access and later recall the story when they need to. How to choose images is explained in unit companion YNI Meta of Manga DIY.
The serious topics of the graphic novels already discussed must now give way to the silly, colorful, and sometimes explosive work: Human Body Theater by Maris Wicks (2015). This graphic novel adopts a pastel color palette of pinks, blues, and yellow to take young readers on a tour of all the different body systems and the important parts of those systems. Again, like Guts, the usage of lots of green is usually reserved to spotlight specific situations. The narrator aka tour guide of the book is a funny skeleton set up on the stage of a broadway theater pulling the curtain back on the inner workings of the human body for kids to learn from personified viruses, blood cells, organs, and more. Had this book been anything other than cute and friendly, the subject matter would have been far too gross and inappropriate for kids. Wicks said, “The medium of comics allows me to take information that is already out there and frame it in a way that is engaging.”24 Students are extremely curious about how the world works, and this book puts complicated science vocabulary and knowledge into a form that has the reader wanting to know more.
Creating a Graphic Novel in the Classroom
There have been a lot of good notes presented so far to take from several wonderful graphic novelists in preparation for creating a graphic novel in a classroom setting for and by students. Foremost, is the acknowledgement that the subject matter of a graphic novel can range from vulnerable to serious, from historic to silly, and from war to digestion. And as important is the acknowledgement that the art in a graphic novel can take many forms, from black and white minimalist to realistically detailed and from limited color palettes to shadowy depths. For example, Incognegro uses expansive, detailed drawing to give a sense of time and space while inviting the reader to think that the story has taken place in a time apart from our own; while Persepolis uses stark black and white with simple figures and settings to allow the eye to quickly move through the panels so that the pace of the visual story stays with the pace of the reading in order to be in conversation with the reader; and in further contrast, Human Body Theater uses cute characters and a vibrant yet muted color palette to pass along important scientific information. Lastly, as most graphic novels have a writer and an illustrator that are not the same person, creating graphic novels for and with students should never be hindered by artistic ability. There are an abundance of images and image generating tools on the Internet that can be of assistance. Additionally, there are enough examples of graphic novels that use shape and color more than recognizable images to tell a story that students can also take inspiration from. Scott McCloud makes it clear that drawing a simple figure is a choice when he juxtaposes a cartoon version of himself vs a realistic drawing of himself, both set in comic panels. Additionally, online artists Campos28 uses basic shapes, like circles and squares, and different colors to make comics that focus on the story and Locklear29 draws figures heads out of different colored shaped heads with bodies, no faces at all!
While the books mentioned above are not a collection that any one group of students would read in their entirety, due to the varying target audiences they address, a teacher would be wise to think about how each one delivers a compelling message in such unique and diverse ways in so much that each student could do the same when they produce a graphic narrative. Creating a graphic novel in the classroom is about choosing to tell a story in a way that is engaging, compelling and accessible. The examples shared here demonstrate that in all their dynamic ways.
The one book that perhaps any grade could benefit from checking out is The Cartoonists Club: A Graphic Novel. It was written by two graphic novel experts who we have heard from previously: Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud. While both authors have other books that would be helpful for writers (Telgemeier’s Share Your Smile: Raina's Guide to Telling Your Own Story and McCloud’s Understanding comics: The Invisible Art), this one has the best of both worlds as they have collaborated on a wonderfully insightful narrative how-to that is easy to read and follow. Through the tale of a middle school after school club called The Cartoonists Club, the reader is taken on a journey from not even thinking about comics to creating publishable works, all the while building friendships, even in the face of challenges. They include step by step, student friendly directions for comic making. An added bonus in the end is an interview with the authors. Although the target audience for this book is 3rd-7th, high school students could easily view this as not just a guide, but as image templates to emulate as a way to approve of opening it up to check it out.
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