The Impact of Graphic Novels - Essay Example

The Impact of Graphic Novels Affiliate The Impact of Graphic Novels Graphic novels are novels written in a different format from the rest such that they cannot be classified as an independent genre. These books come in a variety where they can be non-fiction, fantasy and history. Additionally they are same as comic books as they employ sequential art to tell of the story. However, graphic novels differ from comic books in that they are generally unconnected stories with plots that are very complex. Therefore, in light of that consideration, a number of short stories previously published as a single comic book are also taken to be graphic novels. In the recent past, there have been a growing interest and demand of graphic novels for academic reasons. These versions of novels have turned out to be very effective especially in presenting historical events in simpler and easier ways to understand and recall for students. This volume aims to discuss the historical factors, cultural inclination, and the impact of adaptation of graphic novels in academic institutions to students’ performance. Actually, historical graphic novels hold a vital portion of the literacy market for both young adults and teenagers. Although they may hold close resemblance to comic books, keen observers will note that historical graphical novels employ the use of complex story lines to address controversial issues that reflect past or current societal issues. These novels make use of the life experiences of characters who lived in actual sense and reinforce them with graphical representation to relay a given theme or address their audience. The authors make use of well-developed skills of combining visual art with cinematic techniques and literacy. Consequently, the resultant literal piece comes along with the associated plots, allegory, close-ups and streams of consciousness among others. This blend of literal styles works best for learners where they improve the power to recall historical experiences of people of whom lives experiences were presented in such a manner. Furthermore, this novels work against students reluctance that would come otherwise if the content of study was less interesting. The adjacent positioning of words and pictures can be traced back to ancient times. This if for instance the stone carvings of the Egyptians and the word imprints (hieroglyphs) against their walls. Nevertheless, the recent version of this art commenced with the introduction of the comic strip. This was later popularized through the mass media of the day that was Newspaper and the trend continued through the 20th century. The comic strip particularly paved way to the vital concepts of comic language such as the representation of thoughts and dialogue in balloons. However, comic books traditions vary with their respective countries and regions of gradual development and improvement. For instance, those of America took root in the 1930 with the invention of a superhero character superman and his successors. Additionally, this form of literal art provided cheap entertainment for teenagers during the final stages of the World War II. Comic stories speedy gained popularity and eventually assumed an integral part of the culture of entertainment. This field Advanced to incorporate genres of crime, war and adventure among others that later came to refine it to become what it presently is, historical graphical novels. It was only until the late sixties that the most alike historical graphical novels to those of today were introduced. These novels came from self-publishing underground Cosmists who disregarded the then conventional restrictions by the code regulating the practice. These revolutionary Comix delivered without fear on a variety of issues, some of which are still relevant to this date. Such topics included sex, race, war and drugs among others. Among these brave and revolutionary men were, R Crumb, Art Spiegelman and Gilbert Shelton among others. This was the turning point and the beginning of modern graphic novels. This creative freedom was achieved through careful strategies in change of distribution protocols that allowed distribution and acquisition of materials without approval of Comics Code seal. Additionally, worth to be given its popularity by the short story collection of Will Eisner’s book. This book was special as it was only aimed to reach adult readers. Ever since more and more books were printed and branded graphic novels until to date. Graphic novels in school curricula Recently there have come critics who have spoken about graphic novels with the lowest regard. According to critics, chief among the reasons they speak of graphical novels in academic implementation is that they corrupt the youth amongst other things that do not result to good performance. Additionally, these books have faced accusation that they serve to promote violence, misrepresenting and under representing minorities and reinforcing stereotypical gender roles and ideologies. However, when careful consideration is employed a number of positive impacts are realized with graphical novels and constant engagement with learners. Over the past years, authors progressively have positively shifted the focus of graphical novels so that the new versions are packed with a variety of relevant and important themes to the society. For instance, newly printed novels come along with vital themes and issues such as domestic violence, environmental destruction, and political injustices among others. Against that background, graphical novels have vital concepts that are very relevant to the learners in all levels of academic specialization and more so history. However, recent research articles have further affirmed that graphical novels motivate positive reading culture. With the introduction of graphic novels or their increase came with a record of more readers and increase in frequency in terms of the number of visits readers made to the library. Such a show can only be explained by the nature of human understanding. This is where the human brain has continually shown higher capacity of interest and understanding of information presented in visual or pictorial form rather than that presented in textual form. Such a concept explains why there have been a high increase and increase in popularity of graphical novels and reduced interests in textural novels of the very same topics. Additionally, due to the high flexibility nature of graphical art, there are very many ways through which Graphic novels can represents different academic concepts. This comes along with the associated artistic effects that as earlier discussed have motivation influences on the interest to learn and the ability to understand and recall. On the other hand, the origin of the content of graphical novels is adopted from relevant curricula subjects, documents, and represented in a more interesting way to the learners. Therefore, it can be seen that this books do not introduce any more or foreign this but not only represents the original concepts and ideas but also injects a number of stylistic measures to improve the learners learning experience. In light of the rationale used by authors to make educational concepts interesting, its only logic to expect the consequent result of students doing very well in their now simplified subjects. In simpler terms, the graphical novels play a vital role of making a gate pass to reluctant readers. Graphical novels are written by professional authors, before they write their novels and provide relevant graphical visualizations in their books they understand the concepts they present fully. It therefore, can be argued that they represent the graphical imagery in the simplest comprehendible form so that the end user of their final products gets the concepts in its simplest form. For instance, historical graphic novels may be used to present an event along with a basis of discussion regarding a controversial political event. A good example is a book by Art Spiegelman “Maus” that has been on a large scale been used to discuss the experiences around Holocaust. In the graphical novel, the story is told through cats and mice, where the cats are Nazi soldiers and the latter the Jewish. Another example is the story “Fax from Sarajavo”, this record tells of a family battle to exile from Yugoslavia where adjacent to the story lines the pictures of the protagonist are placed. With immediate visual illustration as seen in graphical novels, they are very promising in delivering understanding to learners on controversial concepts (Chen, 2014). Against that background, graphical novels prove to be a reliable tool through which learners can simplify their learning experience. This is form of approach could guarantee broaching of difficult concepts where at the same time maintaining their significance. Moreover, when concepts are placed in such a representation they become more accessible to the learners. These learners may have earlier come along the same concepts but gave up, as they looked very difficult in their initial representation. Since our world is mostly characterized by non-textual experiences, it is very likely that any student that tries to use graphical novels as a way to improve their study habits will reflect positive performance. As it can be expected, graphic expression is an art done by all races. This might be in simple forms of non-permanents artifacts followed by word imprints going upwards to the modern sophisticated expression of graphical fiction. Graphical representation of literacy is a multicultural activity where different cultures present their most basic surrounding and issues relevant to them. This is perhaps why it is very unlikely to find a graphical novel from Africa telling the story of a dangerous whale as the story will lack relevance. On the other hand some societies may restrict a form of artistic expression in a graphical novel for reasons associated with their respective cultural believes and norms. Therefore, depending on the social setting in discussion the graphical representation in the novels may vary. The best example is when necessity arose to regulate the graphical images made by artists; there was formation of a regulatory body to control the content being made and mostly to uphold dignity. Therefore, the meaning of expressions found within graphical fiction may vary depending on the insights of the culture in question (Kopf, 2012). In light of the above-discussed factors, it is likely that graphical novels will continue to gain more popularity and regard even among critics. Additionally, the world’s we live in now have become a visual world where most of the information we get is presented in visual forms of pictures we can see and analyze. This system of information sharing have grown so strong that the present day newspaper is almost full packed with pictures of models, graphs and statistical representations. In the current world due to advancement of technology, the cost of delivering information as real as it happened is not as expensive as earlier on. It is therefore most likely that more policy makers will agree with the potential of graphical novels to not only clearly deliver information but also store it in a way it can be easily recalled. Against that background, there is likely going to be a shift in the academic programs where the curricula with treat graphical novels with very serious consideration as modern tools of learning. Therefore, reactions and critics to graphical novels vary with cultural factors (Yildirim, 2013). In conclusion, graphical novels as seen herein have both positive and negative implications to their audience. However, in light to academic consideration of being used as tools of learning they have the best ground of making students understand and better recall. Moreover, they add interest to the learning experience of student and thus help motivate reluctant learners read. On the other hand, as we have seen graphical novels are a literal work of art undertaken by different cultures that have different standards of regulating the content with respect to their moral standards. Additionally the trend of publishing graphical books is dependent of the engaging society where the graphical representations reflect their environments, beliefs and other factors that are dictated by relevance. References Kopf, J., & Lischinski, D. (2012). Digital reconstruction of halftoned color comics. ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), 31(6), 140. Chen, S. Y., & Fang, S. P. (2014). Taiwanese College Students Reading Practices and Profiles in Both Print-and Internet-Based Formats. Reading Improvement, 51(3), 319-331. Yildirim, A. H. (2013). Using graphic novels in the classroom. Dil ve Edebiyat Egitimi Dergisi, 2(8), 118. Read More