There are distinct advantages and disadvantages of any storytelling medium, and the graphic novel/story is no exception to this. One of the most compelling features of a graphic story is its ability to follow the golden rule of “show, don’t tell.” This is especially true when it comes to fantastical metaphors that can sometimes feel almost forced in standard literature. To illustrate this, I would like to point to what I found the most powerful scene in Safdar Ahmed’s “Villawood: Notes From an Immigration Detention Centre.” Towards the end of the work, when explaining that “there are hundreds of stories like this,” we see an illustration of a small ball. In the subsequent panels, we see the ball grow larger and is described as “a mass of depression and mental illness.” Finally, we get close enough to this “mass” to see that it is made up of all of the contorted faces that the system has failed. This powerful and emotional visual metaphor would not have had nearly the same impact had it been merely described in words. The power came in us, the reader, seeing the ball get larger while curiously wondering what it, Even when the faces do appear, it takes us a moment to understand what we are looking at. These visual metaphors allow the artist the unique ability to show emotions, rather than telling them.
Hi Daniel,
I just realized we wrote about the same illustration and its meaning at the same it. I guess that goes to show how powerful this specific image was to us as the reader. You did shine a new light on that I never thought of by saying there is a disadvantage. What would you say would be a ‘disadvantage’ if an author used a visual medium?
Hey! Thanks for then question. One of the potential downsides of graphic works are that they are often less abstract. When reading a regular novel, the reader uses the descriptions of the author to paint their own pictures of what the world and characters look like. In the graphic medium, the reader’s perception of events can’t be as flexible as the illustrator is often showing the scene in exactly the way he imagined it. Now, in a way, this is also one of its positive attributes as well but it can certainly make the process less creative for the reader.