Realism and Simplified Images in "The Crow"

Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” invites readers of comic books and graphic novels to explore a new realm of art and literature. He discusses the idea of visual sequential art, meaning that comics use each frame to show movement and the passing of time. James O’Barr uses an interesting tactic to cover time in his graphic novel, “The Crow”. The image includes one page of “The Crow” in which Eric Draven who has been reincarnated to avenge his and fiancé’s murders is speaking to one of their assailants. O’Barr uses lighter image frames to indicate his main character having a flashback to the happy times that he and his fiancé had during their lives together. The images will have mainly black backgrounds as Draven’s thoughts are in the real time of the story and they will show a more prominently white background as he is remembering his life before his death so the frames will often go back and forth between dark and light as Draven experiences these flashbacks (if you watch the movie, these flashbacks are generally indicated by red lights – pretty interesting that color has such an effect on visual cues!).

The thing that I found to be the most interesting in McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” is the use of realism versus simplified images. O’Barr uses the more realistic images in his frames that are showing the aforementioned flashbacks. For me, it gave a different kind of feeling than McCloud discussed. McCloud discussed simplified images to represent the realistic and kind of that our minds will automatically insert the face or the realism into the more simplified. O’Barr’s realistic images made me feel as though Draven was really seeing the flashbacks and the items, like the theater masks, from his life while he is seeing things in his reincarnated form less clearly. The crow in the shown in the second frame of the displayed image is undoubtedly simplified. If you read through the whole graphic novel (which I definitely recommend!) then you will find that Draven can see what the crow sees and communicate with the crow as well so this image may be very simplified to show that Draven isn’t really looking at the crow, but is instead simplified as such just to represent the crow’s presence near the scene represented on this page. I thought that the way that McCloud explained the idea of juxtaposing realistic images and simplified images as a way to relate the reader to the graphic novel in a new way and O’Barr’s use of this juxtaposition really brings “The Crow” into a whole new light in the hearts of those who read it.

McCloud, Scott. The Invisible Art Understanding Comics. HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.

“0b. James O'Barr's Original Comic – The Crow.” The Crow Comics, thecrowcomics.wordpress.com/category/0b-james-obarrs-original-comic-the-crow/.