Comic Book & Graphic Novels by W.Kuskin

These latest months I've been also doing online courses on MOOC platforms such as Coursera. By this time, the most interesting one has been "Comic Book and Graphic Novels", by prof. William Kuskin, University of Colorado Boulder. It covered both the graphic and the script evolution throughout the analysis of some representative examples. The grading project consisted on a four-pages story which should be originally written and designed by ourselves. I've been retouching and compiling it, and finally, today, I'm proud of sharing with all of you my first comic book. Well, it's not perfect (actually, on ISSUU's long distance view, my front page looks distorted), but I encourage you to give it a chance, and look out for closer details.

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Note: In a world invaded by images, this comic it's intended to be a reflection about the external appearance in opposition to the self ideal image and the real self. On the one hand, there is a suggested story of life changes being revealed while a tiny everyday modification is happening. Precisely while the external image is being overlayed to the real one, that time for disguising ourselves -as if we were superheroes- before facing the external world. On the other hand, I also tried to apply the different types of grids towards a progressively "timeless" pacing. 

According to these premises, on the first page (the blue one: the real self) I've chosen traditional pace, in order to create a narrative rhythm which I could break after. Then, middle pages are planned with the purpose of  beginning to dissolve time boundaries and appeal to the past experiences. They represent different momentums giving shape to the external image that the others have about someone, and the changes made to become more likeable. Consequently, they are chaotic with all these cut-off grids within grids -which we all have in our houses under the form of pictures- and the main panels are arranged profiting and reinforcing the perspective for linking two different homes and times (represented by distinctive styles of decoration and colours). So as we gain distance with the current home bathroom, we can see a past home staircase. Finally, as if time had been completely split out, grids are nearly gone and panels appear as isolated pictures without a background on the ideal self-image page (a female homage to Alan's Moore Dr.Manhattan).

I know: all of this it's too heavy-going for only four pages, that's why I felt like I have to explain my intentions... On my next comic, I'll try to develop the ideas on a less condensed way :P.