Let me explain it with a comic…
Something I’ve been thinking about lately is how graphic novels present ideas, concepts, or experiences that would otherwise be difficult to portray. Now I realize that this is an extremely banal point, and that one could say that of any creative medium, arguing that the artist chooses the medium that he/she feels to be the best way to convey his/her feelings or thoughts. However, I’ve noticed the way comics or graphic novels are used to explain technologically or ideologically complex concepts. Take for example the comic book on Dialectic Marxism read by young Marjane Satrapi, or more recently, a comic explaining Google’s new browser “Chrome” (here) or this comic by Jorge Cham explaining the LHC, the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex (here) (Or even a comic book explaining comic books, Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, so meta!). The two latter are clearly designed to “dumb down” extremely complex scientific and technological ideas by using visual vocabularies that are easier to understand that the jargon of web programming or quantum mechanics. However, this requires the use of visual metaphor, orbs to represent sub atomic particles or little anthropomorphic windows. What distinguishes these two comics from say, Persepolis, is that they use visual metaphors to portray things, quarks or lines of code, that don’t have any (or barely any) corporeality. This is similar to what David B. does in Epileptic, he creates visual metaphors not only for his brother’s epilepsy, but also for every obscure esoteric concept his family tries out.
This brings us back to the question of why these authors (Google and Jorge Cham included) chose the form of comics. Well, one could easily argue that these comics play off of the age-old adage: a picture is worth a thousand words. One could also say that the “tech” comics are using pictures in much the same way that a children’s book would. As we grow older, we are praised by parents and teachers as we slowly abandon books with illustrations. I’m sure many of us can even remember the first “real” book we read without any pictures. However, it is difficult to argue that the visual language in Epileptic is illustrative in the same way that children’s books are illustrative. So again, why did David B. choose comics? Why did Google and Cham choose comics? Well, here’s what I think: because these are the only way for us, humans, to comprehend these ideas, concepts, illnesses; through imagery, through visual metaphor. Like Nabokov said of himself, we think in images.
However, visual metaphors in comics can also be a powerful tool for making what would be almost too horrible to see in photographs or read in prose approachable, understandable. Satrapi said, she drew what she couldn’t write, and wrote what she couldn’t draw. The images of torture and war communicate the detail and horror of those experiences, but reading them, we are shielded by her cartooning. An even more extreme example of this shielding would be Art Spiegelman’s Maus.
If there really was some magical equation that 1 picture = 1000 words, well then, graphic novels wouldn’t need text. However, the “magic” of graphic novels emerges in that tension, that space between visual abstraction and text. In that space is ambiguity and room for the reader’s imagination and interpretation.
Lessons In Comic Art, by Will Eisner
