Week 2 Sara

Compare the relationship between images and words in Herge (1933) and Spiegelman's (2004) works.

I really enjoy comparing Herge's Tintin, and Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers, as they are two entirely different comic works, belonging to two very different times for culture and art. It's amazing that they both belong under the umbrella of comic works, as they are so very different. Herge's works have an air of the armchair traveler about them; providing escapism and teaching readers about foreign cultures for those who couldn't afford the experience themselves. By contrast, Spiegelman's comic series references a very world-weary disposition, addressing readers in a world that increasingly gets smaller.

This is revealed particularly in the unconventional nature of the use of pictures and words in Spiegelman's comic, In the Shadow of No Towers. In contrast to Herge's (1933) The Blue Lotus, In the Shadow of No Towers plays with the traditional convention of sequential panels in comics, by overlapping panels-which are both horizontal, and vertical, in nature-and with frequent use of pictures and text escaping the boundaries of the panels. Compared to Herge's (1933) The Blue Lotus, In the Shadow of No Towers also changes up the use of fonts in its series, using fonts to inflect different things in the text. The conventional rules The Blue Lotus follows is what Spiegelman challenges, and experiments with.

References
Hergé. (2005; 1935). The Adventures of Tintin: The Blue Lotus. London: Methuen.
Spiegelman,A. (2004). The Sky is Falling. In In the Shadow of No Towers (pp. ii-iii). New York: Pantheon.