Text / Image

I could tell you all about how I've lived in houses with loads of housemates who write passive aggressive notes and my fruitless searches online for a place to rent, but I won't, instead I'd like to talk about the massive amounts of text and dialogue that filled so many of the frames in "Lucky." Somehow Belle managed to include an entire conversation between two people in one frame. For instance, the last frame on page 10 had a back and forth conversation between the main character and her future tenant. The top quarter of the frame consists of situational text that tells the reader what is happening in this frame and then the conversations snakes from the main character to the future tenant and back to her. Although there is a great deal of text in this frame, it fits comfortably with the images allowing both equal space. Many of the frames in "Lucky" are split evenly between the text and the image. Four of the six frames on page 11 are full of text on the top half and the image fills the bottom half of the frame. The fourth panel breaks up this pattern because the main character stands among the text talking on the phone. As a graphic novel the choice Belle made to use so much text is a fascinating one. She still communicates a great deal with the images, such as body language, dress, cropping, and positioning them within the frames. The black and white drawings with little line variation crated a monotone throughout the book. For instance, her crying moments not only seemed the same to one another, but they mirrored the other moments in the book. She is crying on pages 9 and 15, shown sitting in the same position with her head in her hand in both frames. Plus, the camera seems to be zoomed in the same amount in both crying frames. If Belle wanted to show emphasis on one crying moment over another, or any difference at all, she could have zoomed in on the main character’s facial expression, added a light source or perspective to add tension and emotion, or at least positioned her in a different way. But she didn't, which tells the reader these moments of great emotion were similar for the main character. To push this point further the main character is the same size in other frames on page 15 as she is when she is crying, which could imply these states of mind are all the same for this character. Belle does offer a different lens or perspective on the top of 15 when she shows us the back of the main character's head. The "novelist who read from her (?) pornographic novel," was drawn in greater detail than most of the other characters. Here, on page 24, we see her haircut, eyeglasses, arm warmers, fingernails, and rings. I found this interesting because we don't even get that much detail of her boyfriend, or herself. However, I felt this was a true rendition of how we see each other; the ones we know the best disappear until we no longer see their physical beings, while the people we don't know are foreign and brimming withe details. ~Margaret Seelie~