Find a graphic novel that appeals to you, both in terms of aesthetics and in terms of content: Skim your chosen book and look for interesting examples of closure and time frames, based on your understanding of Scott McCloud’s Chapters 3-4. Find examples and write a paragraph about: One interesting example of closure and one interesting example of time frames that asks for serious viewer participation or interpretation.

Octavia E. Butler, Kindred, page 14.

I chose to read Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred, a graphic novel that focuses on a woman of color who frequently travels back in time to the deep south during the time of slavery. This first scene is one of the first times that the main character time travels, an example of scene-to-scene closure, as the subject stays the same but the scene changes. The main character comes from a scene in which she is going to be shot for being around a white, slave owner’s son. In the present, the colors are muted to tones of browns and tans, while the past is generally colorful and more “intense.” This is a form of scene-too-scene closure, as the reader must interpret what happened between the two scenes, particularly what the main character experiences/sees while time traveling. Through skimming the pages, there is no real visual interpretation of what time travel looks like, meaning the reader must fill in the gap and decide what exactly it looks like based off our own experiences/views of it (for instance, how Dr. Who depicts it versus how Marvel’s Endgame depicts it).

Octavia E. Butler, Kindred, page 15.

This scene is an example of a time frame. It is one panel, however, it takes up a large portion of the page. This scene depicts the time passing from the main character jumping into a lake, to doing CPR, to then thinking on it after she has already been transported back to the present. This is a good example of a time frame, as there is obvious time passing even though the main character is depicted three times in the scene. The reader must realize that these are three different scenes even though they’re superimposed on top of one another.