Hello and welcome to our podcast on how to read graphic novels. We know that there are many semester or year-long courses that exist for understanding graphic novels, but we wanted to give a short primer and tutorial about what graphic novels are, how we read them, and how we more deeply analyze them. So let's go ahead and see what we're talking about. So first off, what are graphic novels?
By definition, they are fictional stories that are presented in comic strip format. and published as a book. So they are very similar and they look very much like comic books.
The typical difference is that comic books are periodicals. They're like a serial. You know, they come out every week, every month, something like that. Whereas a graphic novel is a one-time publication.
Now we did say in the definition that these are fictional stories, but you will see that oftentimes these novels take on fiction and non-fiction topics. Some are completely fictional in nature, very much like a novel, but some find themselves rooted in actual events. So we might have a story like 300 that is based in history, or we might have a story like Mouse, which is an autobiographical look at the Holocaust. Or we might have something like John Lewis's March series that delves into the American civil rights movement.
And so there are original works, things that have just sprung out of people's heads and then been turned into graphic novels, but there are graphic novel adaptations also. So sometimes taking classic movies and changing them into a graphic novel format, or perhaps taking older novels such as The Handmaid's Tale, 1984, texts like The Art of War, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, etc., and adapting them into graphic novel form as well. And so how do we read graphic novels?
In essence, we're going to read these like we would any other written text, short story, novel, etc. We need to agree to read actively for our purpose. If our purpose is simply to enjoy the text, great.
Just make sure that you're clicked in there and you're actively reading and getting out of the book, whatever you want to get out of it. If you are reading this for a class, like always, we have to agree to read actively for whatever purpose the class is using it for. Is it using it for a visual analysis, for a textual analysis, similar to a literary analysis of a novel?
Or is there some other purpose that is going on? But just like any other book, we need to agree to read actively. If we are mindlessly turning pages, we're not going to get anything out of it. Additionally, just like any other written text, we need to make inferences and interpretations. We need to fill in the gaps.
Just because it's pictorial doesn't mean that it's inherently... easier than a complicated classic novel from the Romantic era. There are all kinds of moments where we as readers need to make inferences, and those again are those times where the author sets up a trail of breadcrumbs and they want us to connect the dots with one right answer. But then there are also times where we are forced to interpret the text, where we are given a whole bunch of ideas and we have to come up with our own interpretation. where there could be many valid interpretations of a scene, of a moment, of a chapter, etc.
But the bonus of reading a graphic novel is that we get added layers to help with our analysis. So draw a connection for a second. In film class, when we're studying film, we talk about dissecting film in three levels.
We talk about literary, dramatic, and cinematic. And as we get into graphic novels, we have overlaps with all of those levels in the written word of a graphic novel. So here's what we mean.
In film class, we talk about the literary level. What does a film have in common with literature? Setting, plot, characters, archetypes, etc. But then as we start to take that book and make it visual, so perhaps in live theater, that's the dramatic level.
And so the same thing happens with graphic novels. We don't just have words now, we have pictures. We don't have actor choice, set design, costume, etc.
But we start to have pictures that we can analyze. So how did the author choose to draw our main character, our villain? our setting, etc.
And then eventually, as we are studying film, we get that cinematic level, the things that make film uniquely film. And there is a lot of overlap of that level with graphic novels because authors aren't just drawing little squares without any attention to detail. They are adding elements like we see in film. They're choosing to make things like framing choices or camera angle choices. And so as we are able to understand this structure for analyzing film, there is a lot of overlap with our structure for analyzing graphic novels.
And just as a side note, there are a ton of movies that have been made that are based on graphic novels. Maybe you've seen some of these. 300, V for Vendetta, Tank Girl, Red, Persepolis, the book we're about to read has been made into a movie.
Snow. piercer so the original movie and then eventually the tv series or even scott pilgrim versus the world so graphic novels have that great bridging the gap effect between the written word and film already that many filmmakers have just taken to the next level and just made the film so logistically how do we read graphic novels well we still read left to right and still we go top to bottom but as you can see sometimes we have multiple levels that we need to get through. So we might go left to right, go to a middle row, and then to a bottom row. Or sometimes we get pages like the one on the right where there's just two panels.
And so in essence, we go from the upper left to the bottom right. And so here's where we start looking at the logistics and the analysis piece. We need to look at the visual and the text tracks of these graphic novels to fully understand them. And so the skills we use are very similar patterns to when we analyze, say, political cartoons or films. So we want to look at what are we seeing, but also what are we reading.
And this is where we get that nice overlap between the novel with live theater and with film all wrapped up into these graphic novels. So if we start with the visual track, we want to look at visual track patterns. For example, and this is where we get that. level of film overlap because we can start to see things.
Somebody has taken written words from a script or from a play or from a novel and made them visual. And so like the live theater still over on the right, we can look anywhere we want. We could follow the actors around who are being spotlighted, but we can also look in the back corner and see what that actor is doing. Over in the upper right and see what that actor is doing. And so we have the same ability with graphic novels because we have the visual element.
And so we can look at the background, which is all the way in the back of our panels, the mid ground, which is kind of medium, and then the foreground. And usually the things that are the most important are going to be placed in the foreground of a panel, but we don't get to discount the stuff that's farther back. Because just like live theater, we can look anywhere. We should take advantage of that as we read graphic novels.
So examine that depth. When reading graphic novels, we have that nice overlap with film or cinematic level when we examine framing choices and the grammar that inherently goes with those choices. So when we are talking about film or about graphic novels, what is framed is what is drawn in the box of a panel. So we might have a close-up where the image takes up about 80% of the panel. And the grammar there is that whatever's there is exceptionally important.
It could be a cue to foreshadowing. It could be a piece of a motif. But it's drawing our attention to something that is very impactful.
A majority of the framing in film and in graphic novels tends to be that medium shot, which is basically head to about knees. And so that's a very neutral framing choice, where there is no dramatic element either way. But then we move to a long shot, where in film, the subject being filmed is very small and seemingly very far away.
And so the same stuff can happen in our graphic novel, like you see over on the right, where we have a long shot of this small character walking away. It implies that the subject is powerless because she is so small, contrasted with the set that she is framed with. Also like that cinematic level of film, with graphic novels, we have the ability to interpret artists'choices. with regards to camera angles and the grammar that is inherent within those. So the most neutral camera angle choice is that of eye level, looking directly at a subject.
But if we want to start to imply other things such as power structures or power relationships, we can make a low angle. And this is where the camera is looking up at a subject, either in film or in a graphic novel. On the flip side, if we choose to film or draw something at a high angle, This is where the camera is very high looking down on something and this is going to create that power imbalance where whatever is being framed in that high angle is very weak or powerless because the camera is looking down on it. And one of my favorites in both film and the graphic novel is the idea of a dutch angle.
And this is where the horizon has been tilted or canted or angled. And so in essence it is showing that the situation is emotionally unstable. There's something nervous about the characters. There's something unstable about the situation. Perhaps emotions are about to get very high and fired up and angry because like the horizon, the emotions are very unstable.
And so we see that nice overlap between graphic novels and that cinematic level of film. But because these are graphic novels, we also have things to read. So we need to be reading those text track patterns.
And so the two big ones are the ideas of speech bubbles. So this is where words are coming out into the piece. And so if we have that speech bubble that is a kind of solid line, that is going to be direct speech. This is what characters are actually saying themselves.
Typically, if we have speech bubbles with clouds or little bubbles, that's when we see what characters are thinking. They haven't said them out loud. If we have...
jagged lines, the implication is this is what characters are shouting. Additionally, just like normal written novels, graphic novels also use the idea of narration. And so at times we will see that narration progressing the story, and that is just seen as a voiceover, usually without a bubble. One last item here that overlaps with the idea of that cinematic level of film is the idea of transitions between panels in a graphic novel.
And we call this space the gutter. And so in film, we as readers are going to mentally and automatically fill in the gaps of the gutter with our own inferences or interpretations between those panels. And this is what the original film was like, where an entire film strip was actually a bunch of little tiny pictures pieced together.
And each of those panels was separated by a little black bar. But as you ran them through a film camera, the gap seemed to disappear because our brain wants to fill the gap with image. And so while it was only 1 28th of a second, our brain was actually filling a gap. And we see that same thing modeled here with graphic novels, except we're not moving at 28ths of a second.
And so when we have panels and there is a gap between them, that is literally called the gutter. But our brain is going to want to fill in there and say, what is actually happening? between these two panels. And so we inherently and naturally should be doing that as we are reading these graphic novels.
And this is very similar to film editing. These gutter transitions do have a grammar. So like in film, if we see a dissolve, that means time has passed.
If we see a hard cut, that means something else. And so very similar here in the graphic novel land, the transitions have their own grammar. But another thing we should be tracking in addition to that visual track, that text track, and then just space. So that's about it. As we have said, you could certainly take semester-long or year-long courses on how to accurately read graphic novels, explore a whole bunch of novels that are out there.
But we wanted to give a short tutorial to get us started as we begin to read some graphic novels in class. Thanks so much for watching. If you have any questions, please bring those in. We'll get those answered.
Otherwise, thank you, and we will see you soon.