korvo

As a comic artist, this is a topic I’m really passionate about and I was happy to see such a well articulated and researched article on this subject! You did a great job covering it. Thank you for sharing your work!

Comics have unique limitations like any other medium. You mention not being able to have long passages as a limitation but you’re comparing comics and books too much by doing so. A long passage can span the course of pages of panels, accompanied by an array of images. The pacing of the text can elicit a different reading experience because you have to pause and consider the associated panel.

The second “limitation” you mention is also taken from a perspective that I just can’t agree with because it feels like you are comparing comics to movies. You are right, comics generally cannot physically move (there are examples of animated webcomics that do though), but then you need to consider WHY an artist deliberately decided to snapshot a moment. Sure, you can argue it’s a truncated experience, or you could argue that it brings attention to that particular moment and highlights it as significant. Why this expression, why that composition, why is the panel this shape, what is included in the framing, what is being cropped? You can do a lot of analysis on just a single panel in a comic depending on how you approach it.

I think it’s very helpful to look at adaptations to see how different mediums can elevate or take away from a story. For example, I recently read the graphic novel adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. The artist did an amazing job at taking advantage of the way that comics uniquely work as their own medium in adapting the story, making use of the paneling, varying colour palette, and dynamic style to create a really powerful presentation. I don’t think Slaughterhouse Five is easy to adapt either, time travel and the fractured narrative play such an integral part of the story that no one’s attempted another film adaptation since the 70s. But comics were the perfect medium for an adaptation.

If you work with comics as an educational tool, you have to work with it as its own medium. Books, movies, comics – they are all excellent tools for teaching but they all require different approaches to be useful.

I found this article interesting! I’m not familiar with the source material so I am curious about the parallel between the A-virus and adulthood. Because, while their individual fears of falling to toxic masculinity and losing individuality are things that can be worked though, ultimately adulthood and aging is unavoidable. This is purely a question from someone that isn’t familiar with Disgaea 4 but is succumbing to the A-Virus just as inevitable as becoming an adult? Is that something that they have to come to peace with ultimately or are they able to cure it?
I question comparing something like a virus to becoming an adult if it’s something that is meant to be fixed within the universe of the game. However, if it really is something that just cannot be avoided then it’s an interesting metaphor.

I love that each of these critical voices all have their necessity as well. A good writer cannot be without any of these voices or there will be a lacking element. We need the Unruly Child to cheer us on and be passionate about our ideas, the Gatekeeper to make us criticize and reflect on our work, the Imagined Reader to have us consider the broader appeal of what we write, and the Technician to help make everything more coherent and refined. When they all work in harmony together, it can lead to something truly wonderful. Thank you so much for writing this article, it has given me a new way to visualize my creative process and the forces that both drive and hinder it.

Honestly, dystopias sometimes evolve out of what was once supposed to be a utopia (or have aspects that are seemingly utopian but obscure the marginalized or government influence). Uglies by Scott Westerfield is a world where everything is provided for the citizens of the city and they are entrenched in a system where they happily anticipate a day of heavy cosmetic surgery – of course, once you reject this system, the dystopian reality sets in. The Minority Report by Philip K Dick is a utopia where all crime is preventable through precognitive predictions but then, when our main character is predicted to commit a crime, the corruption of this ‘utopian’ system starts to come to light.
It’s a pattern that I really love, looking at ways to fix massive issues within society and then exposing how these fixes are abused and corrupted by the people in power taking advantage of it.

A really informative article I had expected to be a discussion simply comparing subbing and dubbing practices but actually taught me a bit about the globalization of anime. Fascinating, rocky history.

I’m definitely not picky when it comes to sub or dub, though when I ran an anime club at my high school, I’d have to really consider whether I wanted to show an anime that was only subbed because of some complex cultural jokes wherein the explanation of it took up half the screen. I’m not sure if they’ve been dubbed (or can be) but it happened with three animes I can remember: Barakamon (to a lesser degree), The Eccentric Family, and Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. They all shared in common that I had really enjoyed them on my own, but there were so many moments in each that I had to pause in order to absorb the full context of the humour in an onscreen translator’s note that I had no clue how well showing any of them would do in the club where I can’t pause. I ended up showing the Eccentric Family because it seemed like the best call and I wanted to know how it would go, but there was definitely too much cultural infodump throughout for any of the juniors in the club to enjoy. By the third episode, a lot of them had zoned out.

Still, on my own, I loved those animes and reading about the cultural influences and jokes that couldn’t translate easily was a delight. But half a screen filled with text isn’t practical is certain settings, no matter how much the majority enjoy subbed translations. Regardless, I’ll always laugh when 4kids’ pokemon insists that a riceball is a donut.