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Overall, I enjoyed completing this assignment and was able to practice and reflect on what we’ve discussed over the class through the process. The first step, which was drawing the storyboard, was the most challenging yet most interesting part for me. The process of turning an essay into comics made me think about ways to change it into a more concise narrative since the ultimate goal was to effectively recount the story in the least number of pages possible. Therefore, I re-arranged some parts of the story in order to have more pages for the ending part where I could slow down, leaving the readers something to think about. It was through completing this assignment that I began to realize that the smoother the comic reads, the more time and energy the author has used to conceive the storyboard, but readers could easily underestimate the difficulty of creating a seamless narrative. In addition, compared to the essay, I tried to add some humor and interesting details in my comics as I realized that the readers could easily lose interest in pure accounts of personal experience.

As for drawing, I used procreate since it allowed me to easily make changes and add text and color. Initially, I was planning to draw a black and white comics, but later found that color would be particularly helpful to signal transitions and create a certain ambiance. For instance, in my comics, the first and last few pages were colored in pale blue while the others were in brown, thus encouraging the readers to notice the relationship between different parts and pay attention to how they are indicative of the protagonists’ personal growth.

One thing that I wish to improve on is the layout of the page. While uploading the pages onto my website, I noticed that the layout for the first few pages is really compact, while other pages are more spaced, which might disrupt the reading. Also, I wish to come up with ways to include fewer texts by coming up with more informative visuals in my future projects.

Overall, I think this assignment was truly successful in the ability to compose a text in a new mode/genre. I was able to implement stylistic choices that are unique to the literary form of comics successfully. For example, the way I created mixes of gutters and non gutter-panels, and the way I combined physical reality with fantastical elements to convey a narrative more effectively, were both stylistic elements only possible in the comic medium. I kept in mind the pages on how to create a comic, and the works of Hilary Chute in constructing a carefully designed comic. I kept in mind the idea of all-at-onceness in this comic narrative, as some pages were specifically designed to show the full expansion of my conscience towards reading at given periods in my lifetime. Although I had a full fledged first draft in comic book form, after receiving feedback from peers and redrawing panels, I was able to rework texts, make pages more packed and concise, and add significant numbers of new panels to further respond to critiques and suggestions. My ability to give effective feedback for my peers, as well as receive was a strength of mine in this assignment, and it was something I found profoundly beneficial. Even in a short morning class period, I still found I was able to give and get considerable and useful constructive feedback and comments. 

To write this literary narrative as a comic was very different in that it required significantly more amounts of visual thinking. However, I believe this style of narrative felt much more natural for me to create, as visual creativity is a natural impulse for me. Interestingly, through the drawing process, I was able to remember unique and related details to the periods of time in my life I was describing. In this way, it was a much more descriptive way of getting “the meat” out of the general story structure I was describing. Although I had been suggested to just follow one simple period of growth and learning and drill into that one moment, I felt resistance, and an inability to leave out both ideas. Both felt very necessary to me as a writer and reader, but neither was less important. Although my interest in comic books was pivotal to reading, so was how that relatively transitioned into a love for other visual mediums, which eventually steered me away from reading. I was very happy with the final product of this project. I thought the story, the message, and the overall narrative of reading and writing as pertinent to my life was very meaningful and accurate to me. Had I had more time, I would have carefully constructed my text to be more consistent and clear, and I definitely would have loved to convey vivid colors in my story. That would be the only downside that was ineffectively demonstrated in this narrative, as colors of vivid imagination played a pivotal role in my interest in comics, and novels as a form, and very personal to me.

For an assignment which, to me, was by far the most challenging and difficult, I chose to focus on what made sense to me the most from what we’ve learned and the pages that have had an effect on me. My thesis was that while Stitches was better in its choice of image, they were similar when it comes to their choice of moment and the flawlessness seen in the two pages. The similarity also lies in their upbringing. Therefore, comics was the solution for them to present their story the best way possible.

Annotating helped in making me think more about comics generally and the two pages more specifically. It made me think more critically about things that I would have just spent a second on otherwise. When it comes to the format, my English from the first place is not my strongest suit, so writing in the new format made it extremely more difficult. It changed primarily in making me revise the essay more and more. The assignment led me to shed light on topics that I would not think about. The single biggest thing I would say is how emotions/feelings could be displayed in a way much, much more effective than an actual movie.

Stitches (by David Small) and Fun Home (by Alison Bechdel) are two graphic novels memoirs that describe the authors’ relations with their unusual families. I chose page 219 of Stitches and page 255 of Fun Home to find the similarities, differences, or observations that I found comparing the two. In their comics, both David Smalls and Alison Bechdel describe their upbringing and growing up with a dysfunctional family. I chose the two pages since they do an excellent job of explaining the more significant themes in both comics. The two selected pages differ in how emotions and, relating to McCloud’s framework, choice of image are displayed, with Stitches being more detailed. On page 219 of Stitches, the therapist and Small’s eyes clearly show the devastation David felt, combined with the therapist’s hesitance preparing to share how Small’s mother hates him. While reading Stitches, this was the only page (apart from David complaining to his mother about his grandmother) where I felt the emotions in a way comparable to watching a sorrowful scene of a movie. However, on page 255 of Fun Home, the feelings are more described than drawn, particularly when Bechdel notices the fear in her father’s eyes. Bechdel chose to write this as a text instead of a more detailed image showing her father’s emotions. While this might be subjective, I felt more emotions in Small’s choice of image.

   In addition, as Hillary Chute notes, “Comics is not an illustrative form, in which the words and images match, but rather one … in which the words and the images each move the narrative forward in different ways the reader creates out of the relationship between the two.” [1] In the two chosen pages, the choice of moment was reasonably similar. Both Small and Bechdel connected the dots flawlessly, making it easy for us as readers to create relationships between the words and the drawings. On page 255 of Fun Home, the three panels’ similarity from one scene to another, showing Bechdel and her father (while reading, talking, and in the car), convey the unnoticed connection between them. Noticing the fear in her father’s eyes, reading, and going to the movie made me connect what was not shown much earlier—the unexpected similarity between the two. Similarly, on page 219 of Stitches, moving to Small’s reaction and back to the therapist made me feel the tension Small felt. A strain that struck me not by looking at Small’s eyes but also at his therapist’s. While the scenes are different in terms of the way in which the message is portrayed, both share the flawlessness in moving from one panel to the other.

 When it comes to the choice of image, Stitches, compared to Fun Home, was able to deliver a more emotional effect that was exceptionally well done, especially on page 219. The choice of moment, in addition, was well-made on the two chosen pages and generally throughout the two comic books, simplifying it for the reader to understand the general theme in both. The two writers, David Small and Alison Bechdel, shared a similar upbringing: dysfunctional, immensely mysterious families. From Small not knowing about his mother’s sexuality, Bechdel not knowing about her father’s (and exploring and realizing hers, eventually), to Small realizing how his mother hates him, and Bechdel discovering her father’s unique story, a story somewhat relatable to her. Therefore, it is essential to acknowledge the extraordinary way both writers expressed their past and narratives. Comics, surprisingly, was their method of describing something that might not be describable otherwise.

  [1] Chute, Hillary. Comics for Grown-ups? from Why Comics?: From Underground to Everywhere. HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2017.

The past few days have been exhausting, but I can finally see the finish line. All in all, drafting, storyboarding, writing, and drawing a comic has been pretty fun and decent means for detachment in the shadow of looming mid-terms. Even after drawing my fairly ambiguous storyboard, I wasn’t sure which direction I wanted to go in textually. I am content with how my comic turned out, though. I drew from scenes in my textual literacy narrative, though took a different in terms of plot structure. I think it all worked out for the best, though. I am happy with the end result. My only concern is that certain stylistic mechanisms are a little too vague.

Turning my narrative into a comic was a process that consisted a lot of thinking. I think the first thing I did was just start drawing. I really wasn’t sure where I wanted to go, so it seemed like a good idea to start there. I started with the introduction of my narrative and then moved on to my actual relationship of books and how it changed. It was hard to know what you needed to include in both literay and visual representation. I think I could still improve in making my comic express what I want.

MAY CONTAIN LANGUAGE !