Skip to main content

Harley Quinn and Black Canary

By Anonymous

In this comic, Harley Quinn is messing with Black Canary by making her think that she has caught explosive slippers when in actuality, they are just regular slippers that Harley wears around the house. This is a great example of the principles that McCloud lays out because it shows many different aspects of what he was talking about. In the first two panes of the comic, the artist shows movement by adding abstract lines out towards the audience in the first pane and then horizontally in the second pane to show what direction the objects are moving in. These lines make the reader feel like they are in the story themselves. The author also does not add in the background art in these panes because they want you to focus on the action and facial expressions without distraction from the scenery. In the third pane, we see a close up of Harley Quinn's face which shows detail so we can vividly see her reaction to these events and at the same time, get the feeling of "other" as McCloud spoke about. This feeling of "other" is important in this moment to see Harley Quinn as the villain and to give her a sense of eerie-ness while she tells Black Canary that the slippers she just threw are explosive. In the next frame, we see their surroundings again which is important because it gives the reader the sense of urgency since we are reminded that they are in a small, underground place. We also see the return of the abstract lines so we know which direction Black Canary threw the slippers and how fast she threw them. In the second to last pane, the entire background is abstract lines which is important because it shows the sense of chaos and irregularity that Black Canary is feeling. In the last pane however, all of the chaos suddenly stops with the absence of the abstract lines as Harley Quinn tells Black Canary that it was just a joke! It is important to note as well that throughout the comic, there is a consistent light source of a light/lime green which adds to the creepy/dingy feeling of their surroundings.

Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 4, 2019 at 7:43 PM

    Hello!

    While I was reading your blog post, you made excellent points about the artistic styling of the background in each panel. I never thought about it when the background would be absent while a character gives a long speech or talk about something important that might be used for later in the graphic novel. I also like how you dissected each panel and used the information from McCloud book to explain the panel.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Junji Ito and the Art of the Uncanny

By Anonymous
As discussed in Chapter 2 of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics , the Japanese style of comic book art holds several notable quirks. While early manga artists tended to favor simplistic, yet distinct styles that paved the way for a number of internationally renowned characters, contemporary manga artists have since favored a hybrid style that juxtaposes the cutesy, rounded characters of yesteryear with the realistic and richly shaded settings that have since become popular. Building on this, McCloud describes a phenomenon in which Japanese comic artists have used realism to objectify--that is, to emphasize the "otherness" of certain characters, objects, or places--elements of their work and further separate these elements from the reader. I have chosen the work of one of my favorite comic artists, Japanese horror icon Junji Ito, to further illustrate McCloud's point. Though McCloud describes this phenomenon in the context of Japanese comic book art, he is usi...
1 comment
Read more

The Two Faces of Anarchy in V for Vendetta

By Anonymous
As someone who has only seen the movie version of V for Vendetta once many years ago and have never read the graphic novel, I wasn’t exactly sure how similar or different the movie version would be to the graphic novel. I was in for a surprise when I discovered just how vastly different, they are from each other. With that being said, they do have some similarities when strictly looking at the motives of the characters. Let’s dive into those motives and how the author and illustrator of V for Vendetta achieved getting these motives across to their readers. In Scott McCloud’s chapter of Understanding Comics “ Blood in the Gutter ” we are presented with different panel – to – panel transitions, and an introduction to the term “gutter” as being the white space between the panels which is where the audience of reader “takes two separate images and transforms them into a single idea” (McCloud, 66). After finishing reading V for Vendetta , several themes or ideas that were most prevalent...
Post a Comment
Read more

Maus: A New Type of Nonfiction

By Anonymous
The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of the nonfiction genre is the biography. A thick book full of pages about the life of a specific individual. Barely any visual aids, if any, and a monotonous voice throughout that makes these great to fall asleep to. In summation, I had a very rigid and bland view on the nonfiction genre before reading Maus by Art Spiegelman . This graphic novel is so entertaining that it was hard for me to believe that it is nonfiction. I did not think that nonfiction books could be anything but a glamorized version of a textbook. However, Spiegelman was able to prove everyone that nonfiction was not such an inflexible genre, and could tell a story instead of simply informing.   He incorporated many other creative elements to make his story different from all the other Holocaust tales in existence. Firstly, by making the characters animals, he adds a somewhat otherworldly aspect to this retelling of his own father's experiences. I think t...
Post a Comment
Read more