After an unfortunate search in the WSU library, the graphic novel that appealed to me was from Neil Public Library called American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. That is mostly the entire reason why this blog post is late, but I will take consequences because I wanted to find a book I actually liked and book I will able to use for the rest of this semester.
There were a number of great comic books to choose at the Neil Library, probably because of the number of students all randomly in search to find a comic book in the WSU library.
However, in the sleeve of the book, it talked about how Jin Wang, the only Chinese-Amerian student in his school, wants to fit in. On the cover, it also talked about how the book won a ton of awards so I assumed that meant that it has to be good. This book stood out to me in terms of aesthetics and in terms of content, and I wanted to set myself up for success later on in the semester so I could give my best effort forward.
One interesting example of closure:
- Action-to-action: In this example, it shows transitions of the subject, the monkey,
processing through a specific movement. The monkey is clearly moving through the three frames declaring it be an action-to-action example of closure. -
Example of action-to-action: American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang page 154
McCloud says that each of the six types of panel-to-panel transitions requires diffent closure for the reader, and I think this scene does just that with the people on the bike.
One interesting example of time frames
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- In chapter 4, McCloud says each panel of a comic shows a single moment in time, and “between those frozen moments–between the panels–our minds fill in the intervening moments, creating the illusion of time and motion” (McCloud).
- In this example, the lady in the scence is waiting for something and time is ticking. Yang even illustrates the scene with a clock at the bottom to create even more of the illusion of time and motion for the reader. This is an excellent example of McCloud’s definition of time frames because time can be perceived and changed in this case.
Example of Time Frames in American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang page 100-101