Frame Compare/Contrast, Essex County Book 2: Ghost Stories and Blankets

Today's scoop:

Craig Thompson's
full page characterization frame
for the character of Craig.

In our Graphic Novel class, we were asked to read three graphic novels in addition to Jeff Lemire's Essex County as part of the required reading. For my first novel, I chose Blankets by Craig Thompson.

For those familiar with the world of comics and graphic novels, you will know the significance of frame usage and design in these kinds of publications. Frames, as we have been taught, are more than simple containers that hold the text and pictures on the page, they themselves are part of the storytelling and help subconsciously relay information to audience just as much as words or photos do.

Jeff Lemire's full page
characterization frame
for the character of Lou.

 In Essex County Book 2: Ghost Stories, Lemire uses frames very similarly to Craig Thompson in Blankets. Both include framing panels that are mostly rectangular and provide action-to-action based transitions through the story. I also noticed that both contain high-impact large frames sometime enveloping the whole or most of the page to provide emphasis, usually for personal character reflection, especially in characterizing the main characters of each story.

Frames as
hockey arena

  In these frames, each author symbolizes the main desires of their characters. For Lou, it is the desire and remembrance of memory, and catharsis and rebirth for Craig. I also noticed for both Lemire and Thompson that they both abstained from using color within the frames of their novels, but rather used shadows and shading to give depth to both frames and photos.

Frames as
 a scrapbook

In Essex County: Book Two, the frames become something else entirely. They become not only a way to tell the story, but they are integrated into the story. The frames become a scrapbook on which we are able to see into the past and learn about Lou and his brother Vince through their mother's clippings, or a hockey area where we see Lou and Vince obtain their hockey prestige.

Snow metaphor  

 In Blankets, however frame usage does not put us in a physical place,  rather Thompson taps more into our emotional and conceptual reactions to things. The frames become metaphors for themes throughout the story. We see the patterns of Raina and Craig's quilt actually weave itself through the pages, so that it is always lingering in our thoughts and emphasizing the emotions and the time and effort and dedication that Raina and Craig used to have for each other. But then we also get frames of white and snow, that is the metaphor for Craig's quest for purity and peace.

Blanket metaphor