Comic+Creation



__Narrative:__
 * After School Special**

The comic I created is entitled, "After School Special." I gave it this title simply because I see its target audience to be any high-school, college, and/or university students as each comic will address simple and mundane occurrences that students may find themselves able to relate to, and with a humorous twist of course. However, anyone would be able to read and understand the comic because it is highly simplistic in both word and picture. "After School Special" is a short narrative about two [unnamed] guy friends who visit a convenience store after class. One boy catches a glimpse of a jar filled with cookies that look absolutely delicious while his friend notices him staring in the direction of the attractive cashier lady and assumes he's is grovelling over her. The friend who is craving the cookies declares to the other that he is really after the cookies and immediately makes his way to the cashier buy to some. On their walk home, the satisfied boy takes a few bites of his cookies while the other is still upset that his friend passed up a good chance to grab the clerk's phone number. Suddenly, the boy who ate the cookies feels his stomach begin to churn as he realizes that the cookies are not sitting well in his stomach; his friends notices his facial expression of uneasiness and discomfort and is concerned. Finally, the last panel shows the clerk placing a label back onto the cookie jar that apparently keeps falling off; the label reads, "Dog Biscuits." Unfortunately, the boy who was craving the "cookies," caught the jar at a bad time… when the label was off.

__Analysis:__

Scott McCloud's comic-analysis theories in "Understanding Media" will be a guide in picking apart the various aspects of my short comic. "After School Special" draws on the random occurrences and conversations of the teenage-life and those who read it will be able to get a kick out of its light humorous twist. Scott McCloud talks about the essential element of //closure// that inevitably exists in all comics, and how the craft of closure renders the illusion of time and motion in a comic (67). I was careful in determining how I wanted to render closure through my short comic in order to unravel the story properly. //After School Special// consists of six panels in total, with two different "panel-to-panel transitions," (McCloud, 70). The transitions from the first, to the second, and then to the third panel are all action-to-action transitions; the first three panels all remain in the same scene with only slight movements or a few words from the characters. The transition from the first panel to the second simply shows the cashier shifting slightly as she recognizes the boys staring in her direction. The second to third panel shows the hungry boy who immediately approaches the counter to purchase two cookies. The three remaining panels show both action-to-action and subject-to-subject transitions. The mix of the two transitions help to create that necessary "balance between too much and too little," (McCloud, 85). With the subject-to-subject transitions, "there is a fair amount of closure necessary to render these transitions meaningful," (McCloud, 71), and we see this transition as the third panel moves into a completely different scene in the fourth panel: the boys are now walking home from the store; one boy is joyous as he takes a few bites of the cookies he was craving, while the other is upset because of the opportunity his friend passed up. In between the third and fourth panels, it is up to the reader to assume that the lady gave him the cookies, he paid for them, they exited the store, and they begin their walk home. The transition from the fourth to the fifth panel shows a close-up on the boy who ate the cookies (still in the same scene), and he is feeling unwell after having taken only a few bites. The close-up allows readers to truly capture the boy's expression. Even though it is far from a realistic image of a boy, the correct elements of line and colour accurately portray how he is feeling. Scott McCloud talks about how lines have an "expressionistic potential," and in the case of my comic, my use of line, for his mouth especially, helped me accurately express the boy's feelings of queasiness and discomfort. Finally, the last panel shows a glimpse of the cashier back at the store placing the "Dog Biscuits" label back onto the jar, where it belongs. My comic relies on interdependent word/picture combination as I believe that both the illustrations and words go hand-in-hand (McCloud, 157). I believe that Scott McCloud would consider my illustrations to be far from realistic and more towards the abstract as I only included the main attributes of the human body for each character, such as the head, body, nose, eyes and mouth. The simplicity of the drawings works well with the very brief pieces of speech from the characters, which maintains that balance and interdependency between the pictures and words. I believe that my comic is highly-relatable, not only to those who have made the rare mistake of eating a dog biscuit, but for all those who have experienced the feeling of being "at the wrong place, at the wrong time." If only the boy arrived at the store when the cashier re-placed the label onto the jar, or if the boy visited the store on a day that the label did not fall off at all, he would not have experienced such an unfortunate outcome. I simply added a humorous twist on a common experience many encounter in their day-to-day lives.

__Works Cited:__

Mccloud, Scott. Understanding Comics The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1993. Print.