Week 1: The Arrival

This week I read The Arrival by Shaun Tan. I found it incredibly interesting to read a comic comprised solely of images, with no text. I have seen short wordless comics, however, I've never read a wordless comic of this length.

That being said, I have mixed feelings about this narrative, and the way in which it is told. I enjoyed the artistic quality, each frame is like a masterpiece of its own. The way that the artist uses the medium (graphic or charcoal) is exquisite, and this is the first time I've seen comics drawn in this amount of detail. Comics usually seem simplified, but this take is rather different.

That being said, the lack of words, mixed with the weird and unusual creatures and happenings, makes the story incredibly confusing at times. The reader is left attempting to piece the story together in their minds. Perhaps this is a tactic and delivery method that the author intended. This technique makes the reader think, and although I somewhat enjoyed it, things weren't 100% clear for me until we discussed the reading as a class. I think that I might've enjoyed the reading more, and gotten more out of it if the story was stripped of its "fantasy" and presented in a more straightforward way. In this form, I think that the wordless-ness would've been more effective.

In the end I feel as if this comic read more as a work of art, then a comic.