Graphic Novels: Maus and Naruto

I read some manga earlier this year (Full Moon) so I was already acclimated to the idea of graphic novels as well as the left-to-right reading. I the first time I tried reading left to right, it was a little bit difficult, but as I got more into it I liked how it sort of twisted my brain processes around.

I find myself paying attention to the words first, reading a whole page of the words, then going back and examining all of the pictures on the page. I thought that in both the graphic novel I read (Maus) and in the manga (Naruto) the pictures greatly added to the story. It was a very different experience from that of reading an all-word novel, but I liked it. I don't think I would ever switch to only reading graphic novels, but I get a different sort of aesthetic pleasure from them than I do a word-novel.

I think graphics often do a good job of expressing dreams or daydreams. This may be because these things (at least in my experience) are visual images in our own minds; they aren't necessarily expressed as words. An example of this is page 84 of Maus when Vladek sees the four jews hanged in town for dealing goods without coupons and is then haunted by the image of the men. The way Spiegelman draws this panel is very frightening, with Vladek and Anja as small shadows in the forefront watching their son playing on the floor while the gruesome images of the hanged men looms above them. In one panel of black and white drawing, the reader sees the emotion Vladek is experiencing without more than a few words of explanation. The simplicity of this is powerful.