Tyler Cowen Earlier this month at the mid-Atlantic TEDx in Baltimore, blogging economist Tyler Cowen gave a 16-minute talk about the dangers of narrative. He spoke about the oft-discussed universal stories we … Read more
[Part 1 of this series looked at the turn toward individuals telling true stories via comics, while Part 2 illustrated how comics began to use a subjective vantage point to record history.]
[caption id="attachment_1098" align="alignleft" width="239" caption="Le Photographe, Tome 3/Dupuis"][/caption]
Emmanuel Guibert’s and Didier Lefèvre’s Le Photographe moves the field of nonfiction comics toward narrative journalism by revealing the documentary potential of graphic storytelling. Guibert recounts the journey of a photographer (Lefèvre) who records the work of a Medecins Sans Frontières mission in northeastern Afghanistan in 1986. Released in France between 2003 and 2006, the three volumes span 260 pages and follow Lefèvre from Pakistan to Afghanistan and back.
Though its achievements are similar to those of Joe Sacco’s Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde (discussed in Part 2 of this series), Le Photographe unfolds in radically different form. The series’ most striking aspect is the unusual combination of documentary photography (Lefèvre's original work) and highly stylized drawings.
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Atlanta Magazine reporter Thomas Lake recently hosted an unusual narrative conference at his family’s homeplace in rural Ludowici, Georgia. The Auburn Chautauqua—named for the educational movement that brought cultural and entertainment programs to rural America—drew a dozen or so reporters … Read more
Part 2 of a look at graphic narrative journalism
[Part 1 discussed how “comics journalism” rose from the underground and independent comics scene to combine conventions of the traditional comic book with telling personal, true stories.]
The 1990s “indie” comics scene saw two trends. One reflected an almost neurotic drive to get away from the power fantasies of superhero stories. Using a careless graphic style that emphasized the pathologically normal, authors told stories from the point of view of a “defeatist,” in the words of comics artist Joe Sacco.
On the other hand, this was the era in which American non-superhero comics also started engaging with topics bigger than the middle-class suburbs of their creators. Inspiration came from the sudden acceptance of comics in the wake of Art Spiegelman's 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Maus, which also built a bridge between the artistic language of the European bande dessinée and its comparatively low-brow American cousin.
Bringing these two trends together, the first issue of Joe Sacco's Palestine came out in 1993, followed by nine original single comic book issues. Trained as a journalist, Sacco tells the story of the two months he spent in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip between 1991 and 1992.
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Print journalism and comic books share a history. Without the former the latter would never have come to be. Journalists have also had their own struggle—the phrases “New Journalism” and “literary journalism” attempt to distinguish what’s used to wrap fish … Read more
[First in a series looking at storyboarding projects.] You’re almost done with your six-month narrative project, and you realize you have no multimedia elements. Or worse, you’re coming upon the end of your story, and there’s… no end. If you’re interested … Read more
Talking about narrative journalism, The St. Petersburg Times’ Lane DeGregory once told me
“One of the stupidest stories I ever did had the biggest response. It was an 'up all night' piece about what happens between midnight and 6:00 am. I had all these old ladies calling me up and saying, ‘I’m never up that late, and I didn’t know about any of this.’ It was so gratifying to take readers someplace.”
Taking readers someplace they are unlikely or unable to go is a prime service narrative can provide. Witness these two nicely done but very different stories:
[caption id="attachment_972" align="alignleft" width="101" caption="Abhinav Ramnarayan"][/caption]
Supermarket, superstores—why not a supertemple? “The Many Gods of Ilford,” a Guardian trend essay on multi-god Hindu temples in former recreation centers, touches on religion and tolerance while revealing that cockroaches can evoke nostalgia. A few useful posted comments about disability, caste, and monotheism add to Abhinav Ramnarayan’s original piece.
Over at The Daily Beast, Tim Mohr’s “Did Punk Rock Tear Down the Wall?” looks at the East German '80s punk scene and recounts the career of Die Anderen (“the Others”), a band that straddled the East-West divide.
What other keyhole views into history or a community have generated memorable narratives? We’d like to hear from you. Read more
Excerpts from a November interview with Gary Smith about his story “The Power of One,” which appeared in Sports Illustrated in September: Q: When did you first hear about Bonnie Richardson? How long did you work on … Read more
When high school athlete Bonnie Richardson won the Texas Class 1A track team championship all by herself, it was a big deal. Then she did it again the next year. In the September 28 issue of Sports Illustrated, Gary Smith … Read more
In WIRED’s recent take on Somali piracy, “Cutthroat Capitalism”, Scott Carney leads what might have been a meaty narrative straight into a piranha-infested stream. What he pulls out on the other side is a story picked clean of … Read more
