There are many ways that a point can be made, but what better way to touch an audience than with the many unique qualities that a graphic novel has to offer! After reading a wide variety of them, I was able to pinpoint that what makes graphic novels so effective is the use of closure and style of art.
So what do I mean by closure? Well let’s take a look at As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial by Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan. According to McCloud, there are six different types of closure, “moment to moment,” “action to action,” “subject to subject,” “scene to scene,” aspect to aspect,” and “non-sequitur.” On the page above, we can see how McMillan, the artist, uses moment to moment closure on the first two panels, and the bottom three are scene to scene. Let me say that the images on this page broke my heart. I'm the type of person that easily cries while watching a film, and I think the music has a lot to do with influencing my emotions, but the fact that paper and ink are able to do the same is incredible to me. I’m not one hundred percent sure what type of animal that is, but look at it’s cute little face and it proudly saying “Mama, look! I helped kill one,” and then boom it gets killed. I honestly wanted to cry. You just don’t do that to a baby animal.
The whole page focuses on the scene where the little baby gets killed. On the first panel, it shows a happy and proud baby, and the second one captures that very moment when he gets shot just a few seconds later. Now, the bottom three panels are all from that same scene as well, but they each focus on different parts. The one on the bottom left shows the mom holding her baby, the one in the middle shows one of its brothers or sisters attacking the robot that killed the little baby, and the one on the right shows a hippo crying over its death. By showing us different time periods and perspectives within that same scene, we are able to experience it as if we were really there. McMillan focuses on many different details so that we can notice everything about the scene, and that is one of the great qualities that graphic novels possess.
Furthermore, art is able to show emotion, and it has the power to influence our emotions as well, so that is why trying to deliver a message through the form of a graphic novel works. They are easy to connect with, they are entertaining, but most importantly, they are able to have an influence on the reader because they are able to put themselves in the position of the characters and travel through their world from their perspective. The style of art in this graphic novel is simple and cute, something that is very appealing to the human eye, and it allows us to empathize with the characters. Like I said before, my heart shattered when I saw the little baby animal getting killed, and then seeing the mother’s reaction made it even worse, but that really helped me understand how these animals desperately wanted to save their home by having to sacrifice their own lives. This page is full of emotion. The animals are in the middle of all the action, and we experience a tragic death. By showing serious situations like the mother holding its dead baby, our emotions get triggered. I’m not kidding when I say that I really felt like crying when I first came across that scene. He just didn’t deserve to die.
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So what do I mean by closure? Well let’s take a look at As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial by Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan. According to McCloud, there are six different types of closure, “moment to moment,” “action to action,” “subject to subject,” “scene to scene,” aspect to aspect,” and “non-sequitur.” On the page above, we can see how McMillan, the artist, uses moment to moment closure on the first two panels, and the bottom three are scene to scene. Let me say that the images on this page broke my heart. I'm the type of person that easily cries while watching a film, and I think the music has a lot to do with influencing my emotions, but the fact that paper and ink are able to do the same is incredible to me. I’m not one hundred percent sure what type of animal that is, but look at it’s cute little face and it proudly saying “Mama, look! I helped kill one,” and then boom it gets killed. I honestly wanted to cry. You just don’t do that to a baby animal.
The whole page focuses on the scene where the little baby gets killed. On the first panel, it shows a happy and proud baby, and the second one captures that very moment when he gets shot just a few seconds later. Now, the bottom three panels are all from that same scene as well, but they each focus on different parts. The one on the bottom left shows the mom holding her baby, the one in the middle shows one of its brothers or sisters attacking the robot that killed the little baby, and the one on the right shows a hippo crying over its death. By showing us different time periods and perspectives within that same scene, we are able to experience it as if we were really there. McMillan focuses on many different details so that we can notice everything about the scene, and that is one of the great qualities that graphic novels possess.
Furthermore, art is able to show emotion, and it has the power to influence our emotions as well, so that is why trying to deliver a message through the form of a graphic novel works. They are easy to connect with, they are entertaining, but most importantly, they are able to have an influence on the reader because they are able to put themselves in the position of the characters and travel through their world from their perspective. The style of art in this graphic novel is simple and cute, something that is very appealing to the human eye, and it allows us to empathize with the characters. Like I said before, my heart shattered when I saw the little baby animal getting killed, and then seeing the mother’s reaction made it even worse, but that really helped me understand how these animals desperately wanted to save their home by having to sacrifice their own lives. This page is full of emotion. The animals are in the middle of all the action, and we experience a tragic death. By showing serious situations like the mother holding its dead baby, our emotions get triggered. I’m not kidding when I say that I really felt like crying when I first came across that scene. He just didn’t deserve to die.
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