During the 6th lecture of the series we looked at the following sources of inspiration and storytelling devices:
Graphic Novels: Creatives
The main points covered about the works under discussion in this seminar.
La Perdida
A gap year like no other. When the other is seen only through the narrow view of a fish out of water in an 'exotic' land we know are heading for trouble. 'Playing at life' is a phrase that comes to mind when I consider how vulnerable the truth can be. There is Mexican sunshine in Jessica Abel's drawings. Remarkable transformation occurs when one gets 'lost.'
The Alcoholic
Looking at the pros and cons of addiction set against the backdrop of 9/11 when stress is at its maximum. It shows that no subject is off limits, and that human life goes through many dark corners in order to make the person whole. Dean Haspiel's illustrations evoke the British 'Kitchen Sink' dramas of the 1960's despite the action occurring in 2001. A lost weekend can become the norm when you cannot stand on terra firma.
Epileptic
I have an older brother and much of my childhood was seen through a lens that directly related the fact that he was the heir and I the spare. What happens when the heir is not the child your parents wished for? What are the consequences when fear and ignorance reduce illness into embarrassed denial? David B. locates us in a pastoral France that has shadows in all senses of that word. The coils of this family drama are there in every detailed page as we see the author's emotional state and inescapable shame.
Black Hole
You are young, horny and have puberty and exams to contend with. plus your parents are very annoying at this age. This book by Charles Burns is as intense as it is thrilling. It proves that we become adults not as independent beings but as characters shaped by how our peers and parents think and act. Or at least what we think they are thinking. In black and white the images create a sense of suffocating finality.
Blankets
Craig Thompson's gentle but disturbing summer of chaste love explores the notion of what it is to be a good Christian. Like Black Hole mentioned above the teenagers featured are young, horny and have puberty and exams to contend with. However unlike the more liberal actors in that book, abstinence is the commandment to follow. Thompson sets the story in a snowy landscape when the two 'lovers' uncover the fact that feelings come from the most perplexing of places.
Are You My Mother?
Alison Bechdel creates the follow up to Fun Home (the story of her father's life and death) with Are You My Mother? It is a book that is designed to help the author position herself in closer alignment with her mother. It does achieve this but not without a lot of internal struggle and difficult home truths that are suddenly faced. As Oscar Wilde once penned "All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his."
The Harlem Hellfighters
Volunteering to take part in the War to end all wars but unwanted by their own Government. Our heroes join French Regiments and take on the ultimate challenge of humans in conflict. Caanan White's drawings are powerful, unflinching, and direct. Max Brooks writes with smooth authority has he shows us what it means to be a 'Black' man in a Klu Klux Klan dominated world. It was framed as a battle of good versus evil when it is really only ever evil pretending to do good. Each soldier is on his own journey but he is doing so with his comrades and as the most successful fighters in later stages of World War 1 the Harlem Hellfighters really should be more widely appreciated.
Exit Wounds
In Rutu Modan's novel the Intifada is no joke. If you are trying to live your life in the politically tense and contentious modern Tel Aviv, Israel, you are acutely aware that Palestinians and others want the land back. Can finding those you love to serve to reshape one's personality? At what point do you discover that you weren't searching in the first place? A Rosebud moment if you will. Keep your head down and keep moving.
Persepolis
Hands down Marjane Satrapi has created a classic text that approaches the Rites of Passages that must be confronted by everyone when a whole nation changes almost 180 degrees in a matter of months. We are lucky sometimes to grow up in interesting times and I believe this fuels this vibrant story. This might be the only time when a comic and its animated translation both work brilliantly without either missing a beat. A masterpiece of visual storytelling and very funny.
References
Abel, J. and Priego, E. (2006) La perdida. 1. ed. edn. New York: Pantheon Books.
B., D. (2006) Epileptic. 1st American pbk. ed. edn. New York: Pantheon Books.
Bechdel, A. (2012) Are You My Mother? Boston: HarperCollins Publishers.
Brooks, M. and White, C. (2014) The Harlem Hellfighters. First edition edn. New York: Broadway Books.
Burns, C. and Reynolds, E. (2017) Black hole. The Fantagraphics studio edition edn. Seattle, Washington: Fantagraphics Books.
Modan, R. (2021) Exit Wounds. La Vergne: Drawn & Quarterly.
Ruth Anne Robbins (2006) 'Harry Potter, Ruby Slippers and Merlin: Telling the Client's Story Using the Characters and Paradigm of the Archetypal Hero's Journey', Seattle University Law Review, 29, pp. 767-1031.
Satrapi, M. (2017) Persepolis. Paris: L'Association.
Tamaki, M. and Tamaki, J. (2014) This one summer. 1. ed. edn. New York, NY: First Second.
Tamaki, M., Tamaki, J. and Scheer, S. (2019) Skim. Erste Auflage edn. Berlin: Reprodukt.
Thompson, C. and Fliege, C. (2015) Blankets. Hamburg: Carlsen.
Establishing Adulthood
Period Poverty
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