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October 16, 2005
Comic Analysis
Nancy is an interesting comic, because it has to do with a young girl and her interesting thoughts. The specific comic strip that I chose written by Guy and Brad Gilchrist has to do with Nancy in her bed attempting to fall asleep, but having trouble in doing so since she thinks that she has forgotten to do something. Nancy decides to count sheep to help her fall asleep easier, but it only reminds her of what she forgot to do which was her geometry homework.
The syntactic and semantic levels of this comic concern the lines arranged in circular shapes that make up Nancy’s hair, her bow, her shoulders, her eyes, her eyebrows, her mouth, and her teddy bear. These lines show continuity in the drawings in each panel, outlining where the parts of Nancy’s body begin and end. There are also various straight lines that are drawn on Nancy’s face to indicate the presence of a small chin and a small nose. Lines and dots also indicate the design of her bedspread, and her pajamas. There are tiny lines to show that Nancy’s hair has a texture, because the lines are arranged in a finite manner. The composition of a circle and straight lines on Nancy’s hair make up a bow, which means that Nancy is a young girl. All of these lines make up the figure of a young girl that the reader is able to recognize. The lines that make up the sheep in the third panel each represent the shapes of a circle, a square and a triangle. Also the colors black and white distinguish Nancy as a separate object than her pillow and the background of her room, so that the reader isn’t confused about which object is which.
The words in this comic are very important for its meaning. In the first panel Nancy says “I can’t sleep” and then pauses. The pause is shown by the “--- “ in the sentence. Also all of the letters in each of the four panels of the comic are in capital letters to place emphasis on each word that Nancy is saying. The third panel has an absence of words, but the picture of geometrically shaped sheep jumping over a fence within semicircular lines means that Nancy is dreaming about geometry while she’s trying to count sheep. The final panel has the words “I forgot to do my geometry homework” all bolded and in capital letters to show that Nancy is yelling. The appearance of the words gives the reader the impression that Nancy is yelling without having to see an exclamation mark at the end of the phrase.
This is an interdependent comic, because it depends on both pictures and words contain a meaning for the reader. The words explain that Nancy is thinking about something that she may have forgotten to do, and the pictures show what she is thinking about. Without the words the reader could tell that Nancy is worried about something, because of the drawing of her mouth in a semicircle, and that she is frantic in the last panel since there are frantic white lines drawn against a black background, and her teddy bear’s arms are drawn backwards so it looks like she’s shaking it. The actual subject of the comic, however, would be unclear with the absence of words.
This comic only consists of four separate panels that are all in black and white. The first two panels show a subject to subject transition in which Nancy is lying in her bead thinking about what she has forgotten to do, and then makes the decision to count sheep. The last two panels show an action to action panel transition in which Nancy is dreaming about sheep shaped as geometric figures, and then she wakes up abruptly realizing that she has forgotten to do her homework.
The comic is able to have the affect that it does, because it consists of both words and pictures that convey a meaning. The drawing of the lines and circles is also more simplified in this comic. This is shown by Nancy’s eyes and mouth which are nothing more than black circular blobs. This further stresses the childlike quality of the comic. All of these aspects coordinate to give the overall effect of the comic.
--Yasmin
Posted by lcisperez at October 16, 2005 08:14 PM
Comments
Wow, it seems like you really picked this comic apart! Before I even began reading your post to find out what "Nancy" was about, I already had a mental image of a girl just due to the title. The titles of comics give us so much information about them...I was able to visualize a girl by that one word, and then your description of the lines and different colors in the comic verified my thought. Another conclusion I jumped to, after reading the first paragraph in your blog, about your comic was that there were bubbly lines to represent the girl having a dream...and sure enough you described these dream clouds in a later paragraph. This shows how certain lines have become such widely recognized and accepted symbols in our worlds. Good work!
Posted by: Brenna S. at October 17, 2005 07:30 PM