Quincey Epley Week 1 Journal 1/3/23 I like the encompassing definition of comics as sequential art. Before reading more about the process and history of comics, my idea of them were more of superhero comic books, manga, and I kind of saw graphic novels in a grey area without really any reason or justification as to why. Sequential art, to me, is visual storytelling. It gives life and movement to the subjects and helps the reader connect with the story in a different way than just textual reading. The image and language in graphic narratives are intertwined to create the story. Where traditional, all text novels rely on descriptive language to create the image and scene in the reader’s mind, the graphic narrative transforms those descriptions into actual images. This reminds me of the “show, don’t tell” concept I was taught in elementary school when learning about descriptive writing, but comics bring that concept to a whole other level and require a high level of skill and creativity to accomplish it. What makes the creation of sequential art difficult is the collaboration between writer and artist. The process requires give and take from both sides, which may make either person feel like their work isn’t good enough and cause tension. I also can see this collaboration as an advantage. Having another perspective on a piece of work can make it stronger, and the writer and artist can push each other to better their work, ending with a piece of art they can both be proud of. Another difficult aspect of the creation of comics is the limits of space. Not only are they limited by the area of the page, but also how everything fits onto the page to be aesthetically pleasing but to also have purpose. I feel like sequential art is becoming a more popular medium for people to read and create especially young people. I’ve noticed more and more graphic novels on bookshelves, and more students drawing stylized illustrations in their notebook margins, and I think it is a different and unique way for people to tell their stories. 1/4/2 The main goal of the Nazis was racial ‘purification.’ They believed that white Germans were inherently superior to other races because they were able to conquer the “lesser” peoples. The Nazis also framed their ideas with moving forward as the strongest people, and eliminating “burdens” on society, like disabled people, gay people, and the Sinti and Roma peoples. They also believed that intermarriage and procreation was hurting the human race by diluting the “pure” German blood, weakening it. They also saw Jews as a subpopulation “infiltrating” other races and secretly pushing their agenda. The genocide of the Jews started small, like taking away their education and restricting what they could and couldn’t do, then they started sterilizing them, deporting them to undesirable living areas and limiting their food, sending them to work camps, or executing them on the spot. In order to do these things, Germany had to become a police state and push their propaganda to all constantly. Hitler used long-held antisemitic beliefs to frame Jews as a scapegoat for everything wrong in the world, and genocide was his solution. Lebensraum, meaning “living space,” was Hitler’s idea for the future of Germany. He envisioned a “purified” Europe where Germans could thrive without adversity and “burden” on the public, and then hoped to extend that purification to the whole globe. To accomplish this, the Nazis would have to either take and control territory or partner with other governments to achieve their goals of genocide. Each time the Nazis took control over a new territory, their “burden of purification” became heavier due to the new conquered populations needing to be cleansed. I think it is really easy to say that this could never happen today, but I bet people living back then thought that too. Leaders have a lot of sway over public opinion, especially when they are confirming the prejudices people already hold. 1/5/23Art Spiegelman created the first, well-known graphic narrative of the Holocaust, showing that the medium could be effective at telling personal histories of holocaust survivors. This opened up the world of comics to serious topics and gave a sense of legitimacy and respect to the graphic narrative medium to the public. Maus remains on many banned book lists around the United States, because people saw the depiction of such tragedy and loss in the graphic medium as inappropriate and disrespectful to the people affected by and lost in the holocaust. Most people’s view of comics was that they were juvenile, crude, and purely for comedic entertainment and satire. Comic artists were seen not as real artists, but as cartoonists. People thought that telling these histories in that form would make readers perceive the events as fictional and as a joke, and that it lacked the reverence that discussing the holocaust deserves. Closure in comics is seeing the parts and interpreting the whole. I see this happen in two different ways: spatially and narratively. Spatially, there are spaces in between the individual panels in a comic where a reader has to fill in what happening between the individual frames. I think of it like my brain using the snippets as context and then adding movement and fluidity to the story. Narratively, I think closure can apply to the story being a part of a whole history. Telling a personal narrative of the holocaust doesn’t represent everybody’s experience of the holocaust, but it gives the reader an insight into a single person’s story and helps personalize and relate the whole of the holocaust by showing us an individual’s part. The form of a graphic narrative offers a new perspective on historical storytelling that we haven’t seen much of before. It helps preserve a whole visual memory, rather than just what can be described linguistically. I think it also makes the content more relatable and exciting for younger readers who get tired of reading and interpreting text for all of their classes. I also think it gets the message across easier for students who may not be reading the assigned content at all. If they skimmed a text book, they might get some value from it, but by skimming a graphic narrative, just visually they can understand the bare bones of the book, and more easily interact with the content. 1/6/23 In history, we try to figure out what happened, why it happened, and how it affected later people and events leading to today. When trying to be objective, really only verified primary documents are the only basis to go on, but we also need to add in the context of what was happening, and the motives and biases behind the author of those primary sources, which are inherently subjective and need interpretation to understand and explain. Historians often think removing the personal in their work makes it objective, but I think it just gives that illusion. I don’t think any one historical perspective is any more valuable than a personal account, because they are both interpretations and biased in some way or another, but with personal narratives, their experience lends legitimacy and empathy to the text. People are worried about misrepresenting the holocaust through narratives because it doesn’t show the whole picture, but shows one person’s experience. When witnessing through memory, it is extremely hard to not look with any hindsight, but especially with memoirs of child survivors, it is hard to not consider new knowledge and context as you look back, changing the perspective. I had never heard the term “historiography” before the fall 2022 semester, but as I dove into it, I started understanding how the history is written and told affects public opinion, and shapes how future historians characterize a period in time. This was one of the main topics we talked about in my Nebraska History class, and we talked about western history of Fredrick Jackson Turner and his frontier thesis, and the revisionist new western history which looks through different lenses of this period, putting it into context and identifying Turner’s biases. I think this is important work to be doing because in the present, we can’t step back and see context, effect, and our cultural and personal biases. I think personal accounts and narratives help us take that step back and see the events through multiple perspectives and unique experiences, while still applying what we know factually.
