WP2: Cursory Analysis

The comic strip that I chose is from the “A Softer World” archive. This comic strip is a three-panel comic strip that, instead of having three different pictures for each panel, has one picture cut into three panels. This is very interesting in that with each panel, the audience in introduced to more detail and more emotion. When looking at each panel separately, without influence from the next one, you can build on thoughts and ideas of what the comic strip is trying to express.

The first panel reads “I’d like to read a story in the newspaper that ends with…” and only has a dark greenish brown background and a small triangle of black in the lower right corner. When looking at this panel alone, you cannot see that this panel is actually the grass of the overall panel. The second panel reads “but she was just having a bad dream,” This panel introduces a subject, “she” and gives more detail to the picture, we now see black and white in the lower portions of the panels, but it is still not evident to what this might be. The final panel reads “really she’s okay.” I would say that this panel is the one that really brings understanding to the strip. You can now see that the figure of color is a car and there are bodies introduced. These bodies are hugging very tightly, showing an obvious connection.

While looking at this comic strip emotions were definitely invoked. The text argues that the author wishes “she” was okay and that this happening that the author refers to was “just a dream”. The author does not express what the happening is, but as an audience we can develop our ideas of what it may be. I have a personal experience with a cousin of mine passing away after being hit by a drunk driver. Seeing the car in the lower panels of this comic strip and the context of the text made me think of a car accident, that the audience wishes the car accident was just a dream. You can also infer from this comic strip that “she”, the subject that the author mentions, was either hurt very badly or passed away from this happening. Similarly to the analysis of photographs, I felt a strong sense of pathos from this comic strip. There is the pathos of what the words, forming a story, are telling us and the obvious pathos from the two bodies hugging dearly.

I would say that the way this comic strip was presented is very effective. The typewriting in the comic strip is like the “thoughts” that are going through the authors mind and the picture almost a “dream” of what she wishes she could do: hug her friend/loved one tightly and have everything be ok.