A Graphic Novel First

I’m taking a class this semester (my last semester!) entitled Graphic Novel. I’ve never actually read a graphic novel but am excited to begin reading them and eventually write one myself! It won’t be the best one in the world but hopefully I’ll have a little bit of beginner’s luck. To start off this new class, students were to read two graphic novels from past students and comment on them; a good way for me to be introduced to graphic novels! I decided to read “Home Alone” by Brie Gamble and “The Renfrew Sisters” by Sam Phillips. I read more than just these two but these two were my favorites.

I like mystery stories and movies with surprise endings so Brie’s graphic novel was a fun read! Brie was very creative with her photos which I see as her strength; I liked how she used her camera to take the same shots in different angles. Something as simple as tilting her camera to the left made a huge impact on the photos that were used. The weakness that I noticed what that some of the phrases didn’t make sense to me; it could have just been the way I read them or a few spelling errors that altered the meaning of words.

The other story that I read, and really enjoyed was Sam’s graphic novel. I could tell that Sam put a lot of time and thought into this graphic novel just by reading the dialogue; that was definitely her strength. Her weakness, which was hard to find, was the purple coloring on the photos. It was cool at first but in some of the pictures, the purple accent made it hard to tell what the picture was really about or what the expression on the person’s face was.

After reading both of the novels, I was able to take some notes on things that I want to keep an eye out for with my graphic novel. The major thing I noticed was that pictures were re-used and the only thing that changed was the dialogue that went with them. I didn’t really like seeing the same old pictures page after page so I will definitely be looking out for that!