Graphic Novels: How They Work and What They’re For
Graphic novels—sequential art, comics in the last ten years, extended works combining words and pictures have exploded in popularity and reach. In this course we will examine what the graphic novel can do that other media cannot. Using Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and Will Eisner’s Comics and Sequential Arts as critical foundations, we will explore a variety of graphic texts, discovering the underlying grammar and structure of the form, and surveying the uses to which the form has been and can be put, from the disclosure of the intensely personal to the chronicling of major world events. 3 hrs. sem.