Analysis of a Graphic Novel

Part 1

Here is where we want to start:

1. On the Top Menu, locate and highlight “Graphic Novels”
2. Hover your mouse over “Understanding Comics”
3. Click on the selection that reads “Module 2 – Understanding Comics”
4. Read over information here.

At the bottom you will find a series of questions both General and Research/Analysis Questions that you might approach and answer both as part of your actual research paper surrounding your graphic novel but also when writing your SUMMARY and ANALYSIS parts of your Report 2.

Part 2

Analyzing Graphic Novels

At the end of Module 2 I put to my students (you) some questions to help them start analyzing and exploring their graphic novels (basically where Report 1 asks them to begin after they are finished with it). 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:

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. 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.