How can comics be defined?  Why do we identify with abstracted images of the human figure so easily? What makes some comic artists more naturally successful than others?  Scott McCloud answers all these questions and more in his amazing piece, Understanding Comics.  One point McCloud discusses is what exactly makes certain comics stick and resonate with their readers over others, taking into account six steps of the comic-making process: Idea/Purpose, Form, Idiom, Structure, Craft, and Surface.  A comic creator may become caught up in one or more of these steps and unintentionally ignore the others, producing a comic which, for example, might look very aesthetically appealing but lack substance in the story.  Artists need to not only be able to draw well, but also know what they have to say to the world and how they can best express it. Without this introspection, a comic artist risks creating something they don't truly believe in, thus giving readers the disadvantage of entering a world with no heart. 

Max Ernst: A Week of Kindness or The Seven Deadly Elements

A Bad Translation by Emily Murphy

Page One: The woman featured in this illustration is casting a love potion using the rooster and the pearl its sitting on to create an inhuman lover, because the man lying in the doorway isn't treating her very well.

Page Two: The bedridden woman's demigod bird-lover has come to visit her in her final moments. She probably has a bad fever or something but its ye olden times so that won't end well.

Page Three: The woman has died and the demigod and his friend are laying her to rest, while her spirit rises upward from her coffin and rejoices in its newfound freedom and nakedness.

Page Four: The two demigods discuss how badly the body smells, whilst the woman's spirit hangs around for a bit clinging to her lover's shoe in hopes that he doesn't forget her.

Page Five: They didn't hide the body very well.

Page Six: The woman's human friends and/or family block the demigod from entering their room as he tries to apologize, believing that he had done this to their loved one. He's sad.

     Many have shucked aside the graphic novel as a legitimate method of storytelling simply because
the graphic novel can easily be included in the comic genre of literature.  Comics can  be considered
juvenile and immature despite their complexity, thus condemning graphic novels with the same
reputation.  Those who are skeptical about the impact a graphic novel can have on a reader of any age
should pick up The Arrival by Shaun Tan.  Even without including text, The Arrival provides its
readers with a powerful glimpse into the experience of an Ellis Island immigrant.  It is always better
to show rather than tell information, and this novel illustrates this perfectly.  When looking through
the protagonist’s eyes as he enters a new country without his family, we slowly begin to understand
his unique point of view.  Tan makes it clear that the man is an immigrant participating in foreign
activities by drawing everything he comes across as something from an alien world that even the
readers wouldn't recognize. This visual analogy crept up on me slowly, but as the light went on in my
head, I started to think about what it must have been like for my Nana when she immigrated to the
U.S. from the Philippines as a young woman.  Everything she came across must have been strange
and intimidating at first, just as it was to the man as he found new machinery, animals, and food. The
end of the novel especially struck me as I saw the man and his family assimilate themselves into the
culture of their new home while keeping bits of their own culture for themselves. My family, now
second and third-generation Filipinos, cannot speak my Nana’s languages or truly understand her
culture as she worked so hard to assimilate, but we still make her family’s recipes and remember
where we came from.  In closing, The Arrival makes a powerful impact because it draws from very
human emotions without voicing them through text: fear, loneliness, a desire to fit in, and a longing
for that which we know in an unfamiliar place.