Images and words in graphic novel

Recently, my design 1 class had the privilege of meeting Brian Fies, an accomplished graphic novelist. Author of Mom's Cancer and Whatever Happened To The World of Tomorrow. Brian Fies was a fascinating speaker. He was surprisingly humble and self-depricating. He also seemed genuinely interested in offering us whatever advice he could to further our careers. Fies was kind enough to show us several pages from his novels and discuss

As McCloud describes in Understanding Comics, there are several ways of dealing with the interaction of words and images in the comic or graphic novel setting. Fries showed us a variety of methods he implemented in his graphic novels.

page from Mom's Cancer by Brian Fies

Although the main character of the novel appears to be Fies's mother, Mom's Cancer often reads like an autobiography. Therefore, much of the text is an internal monologue, that may not relate directly to what is pictured, but nonetheless enhances the story. Fies's narrative also adds a personal emotional element to the story that introduces another dimension to the story. McCloud defines this as additive combination of words and images, where words amplify or elaborate on an image or vice versa.

page from Mom's Cancer by Brian Fies

One page from Brian Fies's lecture particularly stood out to me: the page depicting his mother deep in a drug-induced sleep, while going through the hours of chemotherapy. Many medical items as well as personal articles surrounded her chair. As an image alone, the reader sees his mother in the chair and is able to grasp the basic situation. The reader sees this image as a unified whole—or gestalt—not as individual parts. However, with the addition of words, each object in the image is identified. This serves to add a personal, emotional level to the compostion: the reader is no longer looking at an ill woman, but a woman who adventured through Alaska, likes to play slot machine games, and has a partiality to strawberry milkshakes. The reader is reminded, that this woman is neither nameless or faceless, but the author's mother.