ASTU today was focused on the aspect of comic books, or graphic novels, based off of our reading of Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi. We analyzed passages, looking at the use of images and words, and the relationships one frame played with the next, combined with the layout and design of the panels and gutters.
When I think of Comic books, my mind automatically goes to the Archie comics that I grew up reading. There were the Marvel comics, and the rival, DC comics, even Captain Underpants could be found on a few of the shelves in my house. I had never, unfortunately, ran into any graphic memoirs, such as Persepolis. Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, is her story as a young girl struggling through the terror of growing up in Iran during the Islam Revolution. Yet, I hesitate to call Persepolis a “comic book”, but rather a graphic novel, because, as Kelly mentions, “graphic novels are much longer and tend to be much more complex.” It’s interesting to note that graphic novels came before comic books, starting with Gottfried August Burger’s Lenardo und Blandine in 1783 (Kelly). As some may have noticed, comic book stories go on for some time, usually taking many issues over the course of a few months, sometimes even years, in order to give full backstories and unravel new plotlines before the big finale. A graphic novel, however, is usually done in one to two issues, developing the characters and dealing with the storyline as one might expect in a regular novel or book.
While flipping though my collection of The Death of Captain America: Complete Collection, I couldn’t help but compare and contrast the comic book to the graphic novel. What really stood out to me was, of course, the different medium used in the illustrations. While I don’t believe that the difference between detail on people’s faces is a huge defining factor, it is important to note how, in this case, both the faces in Cap’s story and Marjane’s are both insistently focused on facial expressions, which does a number on getting key concepts and otherwise indescribable emotion across to the reader. Captain America is full of blues, reds, blacks, and whites, keeping the hues dark and mysterious, creating its own story with in a story. Persepolis does something similar, although it’s use of color has come down to simply the combination of black and white, which speaks to the reader in a whole new level, relating to the lack of color in their own lives during a time of war and fear in their home land. There’s also the different uses of panel to gutter relations. Sticking with the idea of black and white, the panels in Persepolis are laid out in a neat, sequential order, always with the white gutters separating each panel. In The Death of Captain America, there’s different layout for different kinds of scenes. For action/fighting scenes, the gutters are black, seeming to blend the panels together as one big, action-packed picture. With the general theme of conversation in the air, white gutters are used seemingly to show the neutrality of the situation. The most interesting use of of panel to gutter, is with the use of flashbacks. The story-teller will have a text box, rather than a text bubble, and there will typically be quotations around their introduction. The panels, in this case, are placed either above a bigger picture from the present, or over top a black background, while still being surrounded by the white gutters.
Comic books are such a fun, interrelated set of stories to get lost in, and it always seems to add such a different idea to the story when illustrations are involved, as noted was well in graphic novels. Always remember to never mistake a graphic novel with a comic book, or vice versa, when speaking with an avid reader, because it might just so happen to be the end of you if you do.
Brubaker, Ed, and Mike Perkins. The Death of Captain America: Complete Collection. New York, NY: Marvel Worldwide, 2013. Print.
Kelly, Debra. “Difference Between Comic Books and Graphic Novels.” KnowledgeNuts. 2014. Web. 18 Mar. 2016.
Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis. New York: Pantheon Books, 2007. Print