The likes of Herge's "The Adventures of Tintin," to the
original "Batman" comics by Bob Kane, despite being wildly different
in seemingly every regard, basic narrative, characters, even locations and
approaches to adventure literature; both are equally capable of inspiring
morals along with having many similar approaches to conveying their individual
narratives. For example, one massively popular trop of visual narrative is to
start off with establishing shots that familiarize new comers to the literature
or old fans to the location or characters, often with mental narrative of the
protagonist informing the audience whats going on. Both comics also use
sequential, action to action art where the start, climax, and ending of a
particular action or gesture is explored by the artists, showing these
characters "move" despite only showing static poses. Adventure
comics as a whole create these larger than life heroes and characters that,
regardless of their direct relatability to the individual reader, relate and
learn themes from these stories in order to explore the narrative in their own
ways, while many times still perceiving the desired end that the writer, (and
sometimes the artists) wishes to convey. Realistically how many people relate
to the billionaire goth orphan who decided dressing up like a bat while putting
small children into pant-less onesies is sane? How many teenage people travel
the world on a weekly basis to go climb mountains, fight off criminals, and
find treasure while escaping death constantly...? And yet these characters and
those like them in the adventure genre are able to cement themselves in our
conscious because of and separate of the adventures they go on, its more than
just the villains they fight and the quests the conquer, it’s the conflicts
they struggle through and the human emotions they explore over the course of
these adventures.
Jarod Frank Analysis of Shaun Tan’s, “The Arrival.” Shaun Tan's, “The Arrival,” is a fantastic example of conveying narrative themes and complex character interactions without the use of dialogue. Through the emphasis on gestures, body positioning, and facial expressions, we are able to “fill in” to a great degree what we imagine the characters are conveying; regardless of anything literally being said. One such fantastic example of this is when the main immigrant man is trying to find an apartment, beginning by asking another man where it could be. We see the quizzical look he local man as he looks over the immigrant, who pulls out a drawing pad and draws a bed, pointing to it. Such a natural progression of actions, reactions and continued actions are the basics of human communication, not necessarily needing words to convey an experience we all are familiar with: questioning. While the situation is mundane, the comic being able to convey this series of emotions here and n...
Comments
Post a Comment