Week 5 - The Graphic Novel

This week I read A Contract with God. What I like about this story is it brings visual interpretation to a now well talked about era. There is also a lot of rhetoric in this story that feels natural, many of the people moving into the tenements were immigrants and it comes across in the language used in the story. Another thing I noticed was the text was bigger and used more than the images themselves. It is clear in this tale that text is very important. When Frimme Hersh yells it has dynamic lines and gets darker and bigger. Sometimes the text bubbles will become black, it can also be incorporated into the background. These text choices are often different to comic books which have a very specific layout and are delineate.

I also read much of the comic Blanket. It definitely was not something I would have thought to read on my own. At first I didn’t think it was all that interesting but as I continued to read for whatever reason I did not want to stop reading. I enjoyed how relatable it was to so many people as it covered a large array of issues many people go through. It talked about issues with parents, siblings, religion, fitting in, love, etc. and while not all people will experience all of those in their life time its guaranteed they will experience at least one of those things. In particular, the point about escaping from reality through art is one that every one in our literature class can all relate to. It was an interesting comic to read especially because I would not have thought to read it otherwise.