12.7 Analyzing Graphic Novels
The creators of graphic novels also communicate their messages visually. Graphic novels are stories told through a combination of words and images. In format, graphic novels resemble comic strips or cartoons, but instead of being a single panel, an individual comic strip, or a collection of comic strips produced across time, a graphic novel is a book containing a single story. That story may be divided into chapters, like any other novel. The stories in graphic novels are typically more complex than a comic strip or a cartoon, not just because of the length but because of the stories they tell.
In recent years, graphic novels have moved from a rather shadowy existence in the underworld of adult comix to a form of mainstream media with popular audiences. Where comix were for adults only, graphic novels are written for a wide range of audiences. You can find graphic novels written just for children and others written for adolescent readers or adults. Graphic authors write in many genres about many topics, addressing themes that they find pertinent.
Analyzing graphic novels requires special reading skills as you must pay attention not just to the words and to the images but also to how the images and texts work together on the page. Many modern readers find intuitive ways to read graphic novels as they have learned to read in the digital age and are used to interpreting webpages, movies, cartoons, and video games.
Together, the images and the words in a graphic text tell a story that contains themes, like any other story. For example, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home addresses themes such as gender roles, family life, sexual, orientation, personal identity, the impact of literature, obsession, and home renovation.
Every artist has their own style, so each graphic novel looks quite different from others by different artists—and sometimes by the same artist. Some draw realistic images while others’ artwork looks more cartoony.
Like novels and short stories, many graphic novels contain allusions to other works or to cultural references. They may include figures of speech that reference other texts, historical figures and events, cultural myths, other works of literature, and popular culture. You need to read like a detective, making note of these references and asking why they are included.
You must also pay special attention to the tensions between narration (what is told in words) and monstration (what is shown through images). As you read, ask yourself how the text and the image(s) work together.
In Alternative Comics: An Emerging History, Charles Hatfield provides a list of six questions that can be useful to guide your analysis of a graphic novel (67). These questions are:
- What can I glean from the different codes (images, words, symbols) invoked here? What can I learn from their interaction? How do words and images relate to or approach each other?
- Does the appearance of the written text seem to influence or inflect my reading of it, and if so, how?
- Does there seem to be one unified “message” here, reinforced by the overlapping of codes, or instead a conflict and contradiction between messages?
- How am I to understand this sequence of images, based on what I have to do to connect one image to the next? What is included, and what excluded, from the sequence? How do words and symbols assist, or complicate, my efforts to read this sequence as such?
- How does the layout of this page or surface—the relative size, shape, and positioning of its images— inflect my understanding of the narrative? When I look at this page, am I conscious of its overall design, or of the way I move from one design element to the next? Are there moments at which it helps to be aware of both? How are the boundaries, or margins, of the page used? How are the successive images delimited and juxtaposed?
- What relationship does this page create between time and space? Am I ever in doubt about that relationship?
- How does the design of this publication reinforce or work against its content? Does reading this text feel like witnessing a story, or handling an object, or both?
Graphic novels are packaged like other books, with covers that indicate the author and title of the work—as well as the illustrator. Often times the authors of graphic novels are also the illustrators, or the artist drawing the images, but not always. Between the front and back covers of the graphic novel, there are pages that contain images and words that tell the story the author wants to convey.
Looking at the pages, you will see that the story is told in a sequence of images. Each of the images is contained in a square or rectangle called a panel. Each panel contains a single scene and is separated from surrounding panels by white space that is called the gutter. Keep in mind that things happen in the gutter that aren’t shown in the panels! How do you know? Because the scene shifts from one panel to the next and you aren’t given any information about those shifts, which happen in the interval between panels. Some scenes contain people or animals talking to each other or even to themselves. Dialogue between characters is shown in dialogue “balloons,” with a sharp projection pointing to the speaker.
However, if the character is thinking or talking to themselves the balloon has a series of circles leading toward them instead of a sharp projection. This type of balloon is called a thought balloon. Sometimes panels provide additional information about characters, setting, or plot in square or rectangular inserts in the panel; these small text boxes are called captions. Captions may describe something for a single panel, a page, or even a two-page spread in the book. Typically, you would read the captions and the dialogue and thought balloons in the same order you read any other book—from top to bottom and left to right. But graphic artists like to distract their readers with uncommon images, patterns, and shapes, so as to disrupt their regular reading patterns. Think carefully about the reading choices you make and how they impact your understanding of the panel, page, or story.
Continue Reading: 12.8 Formatting, Citing, and Documenting Visual Sources
