Author: rshew

Compelling Graphic Narratives

With all of my experience with reading novels and graphic narratives, I believe that graphic narratives have an edge over traditional storytelling due to the potency of the relationship between image and text.  Whereas traditional stories or novels only utilize text to emphasize any particular theme and leave images up to audience imagination, I enjoy..

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Motivating a Vigilante

Reading through The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, I found the relationship between one’s identity as a vigilante and one’s motivation to be an interesting, but also complex, theme in both stories. Prevalent throughout Frank Miller’s tale is the idea for super villains like Harvey Dent and the Joker. Although the public believes in redemption..

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Robin’s Role in Batman

During my reading of Batman Chronicles, I began to lose interest in the stories as I began to notice in Batman many of the elements/plot structure that had bored me in Superman.  With that said, I thought the issue that first starred Robin was the most intriguing story of the collection, if only because of the first few pages!. Alongside the cover page that we had discussed..

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Fun with Speech Balloons in Bande Dessinée

With Adéle Blanc-Sec being our second work deemed as Bande Dessinée, I’m particularly interested in comparing elements of Jacques Tardi’s work with that of Hergé’s Tintin, namely the prevalence of bold punctuation marks and other imagery within speech balloons. As we’ve discussed in class, Tintin contains innumerable instances of question marks and exclamation points within text bubbles in..

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Ormes’ Creativity and Single Panel Context

While reading the selections of Jackie Ormes’ works, I was first intrigued by the distinct format of Torchy Brown compared to that of Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger.  With Torchy Brown typically comprising 4-6 panels per strip and Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger being a single panel comic, I found it interesting how Ormes commented on similar issues in two different styles of..

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