Analyzing Graphic Novels
This is part of the path I want you to take in route to finding their research question and then thesis statement.
This is in fact a step we began, or I had them begin, when dealing with McCloud’s Ch. 7 and his Six Steps. McCloud discusses the Six Steps as part of a fluid and layered creative process, I want to emphasize it in its reverse for you: as analysis of the creative process.
My focus is to push you to approach their graphic novels and go deeper, to start at McCloud’s Step 6: Surface, and then dig beneath the surface to get closer the elements within the story and form of the graphic novel itself:
Next, let’s move out of the abstract by actually applying these layers/steps and questions to a specific example (graphic novel). Let’s go with one no one in the class selected –
Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
As I ponder and reflect, I want to think about this: Is there something here that provokes me to find out more about, to ask more questions, to want to make a case for in an argument?
If there is, great, I may be able to adapt this into a research question.
If there is not, it’s not a failure because I have learned and gone into depth with my graphic novel in ways that might benefit my research as I move forward. What I have found I may write more about in my Research Journals as well. Or perhaps what I have found will lend itself to helping me see the Graphic Novel I am reading differently in a way that might lead me to another research question, who knows.
COMPOSITION 2 