Aligning Text and Image in Nate Powell’s Swallow Me Whole Dr. Gwen Athene Tarbox, Western Michigan University, Department of English

Photo: Ben Krain Comics Terminology

• Comics is the medium. • A text such as Swallow Me Whole is called a long-form comic by visual theorists, but the terms graphic narrave and graphic novel are commonly used by publishers, crics, and English studies scholars. Comics as Child’s Play? Powell’s Career

• Nate Powell’s novel Swallow Me Whole (2008) won the top award in comics, the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Novel, in 2009. • A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in NYC, Powell has worked as a caregiver for individuals with disabilies, has run his own Punk rock label, and has been a prolific author and arst for numerous comics. Reading Comics

• Powell oen defies convenonal comics structure, making his work parcularly fascinang…but it helps to understand the convenons in the first place in order to appreciate Powell’s arstry. Comics Resources

• I have provided you with a handout of some of the best comics studies guides, but for today’s talk, I want to focus on the most popular and sll the most frequently cited text, Sco McCloud’s Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (1993).

BUBBLE PANEL

GUTTER

TEXTBOX Comics Grammar

• The Panel. The basic unit of a comic. • The Bubble. Spoken or thought text within or across panels. • The Guer. The space between two conguous panels. • The Text box. Narraon placed in the guers or in the panels. • The Page. A single page of panels. • The Spread. Two pages of panels that are joined in the middle with binding. • The Breakdown. The manner in which the panels are set out in terms of size, shape, and relaonship on a page. And within an enre comics text, the way that the enre comic is set out. Powell’s Choices in Swallow Me Whole

• Text bubbles are wrien in different types of font and sizes. Powell’s Choices in Swallow Me Whole

• The guers between panels are oen indisnct or erased; as a result, movement between panels becomes difficult to follow in various places. Powell’s Choices in Swallow Me Whole

• The narrave flow is interrupted by complicated visuals or by a string of panels that defy easy understanding. Content and Style Fuse

• Swallow Me Whole is a coming of age story, but for the protagonists, growing up also means coming to terms with mental illness, finding coping devices, and aempng to make sense of the world. • Powell breaks comics convenons in order to provide the reader with the visceral experience of his protagonists, Ruth and Perry, who both experience schizophrenic symptomology.

Time, Space, and Self

• As the person feels increasingly unable to maintain a coherent sense of self, s/he will oen engage in repeve behaviors that order me and space. Thus, many individuals will turn to dance, music, or other rhythmic pursuits that are grounded in me as coping devices. • Other symptoms can involve auditory or visual hallucinaons, as the individual struggles to maintain a cohesive sense of his or her surroundings.

Time, Space, and Self

• In Swallow Me Whole, Ruth’s carefully ordered coping devices collapse, and her dissoluon is depicted as she sinks into a deeper and deeper state of disorientaon. Fusing Text and Image

• When an arst/author creates a complicated series of images, the reader has to work very hard to fill in the gaps. • It is helpful to read the script first and then go back to develop an understanding how the sequence of panels interacts with the text to create meaning. Ruth’s Descripon of Her Inner Life

• “At mes, arranging and reordering was all I could do to handle the day. Didn’t know they had a name for it and everything else. Early on, I thought I found a way way to exercise just a lile control over my world. Unl I felt my size through it. Felt the world shi into place. Felt myself dissolve into it. In line with everything else, if just for a me. I was frightened. Every me. Even when it freed me.” A Return to the Convenonal

• While Powell hopes to create empathy for his characters, he is also interested in showing the way that societal norms oen marginalize individuals who experience mental illness. • The incident upon which everything shis in the novel is depicted in tradional comics form, with none of the shading or the complexity that arises in the secon of the novel that are focused on Ruth’s inner life. A Comment on “Normalcy”

• Ruth’s willingness to point out hypocrisy results in the teacher telling Ruth that she needs to “act civilized.” • Ignoring the substance of Ruth’s crique, the principal suspends Ruth and suggests that only a disturbed individual would act out as she did. • In this way, Powell demonstrates how prevailing narraves regarding “normalcy” act in repressive ways, and he draws the conflict in a tradional manner so that the emphasis falls on the world surrounding Ruth – a world in which racism can be overlooked, and standing up for injusce can be deemed an “uncivilized” act. Nate Powell’s Creave Work

• Many of the themes in Swallow Me Whole are echoed throughout Powell’s texts. • In 2013, Powell’s collaboraon with Representave John Lewis and comics script writer Alvin Aydin, March, will be released. March chronicles the career of John Lewis, from the Civil Rights Movement to his elecon to and service in the US Congress.

Major Projects by Nate Powell

• Sounds of Your Name, 2006 • Please Release, 2006 • Swallow Me Whole, 2008 • Any Empire, 2011 • March (with Alvin Aydin), 2013 Interdisciplinary Nature of Powell’s Work • Powell’s work has resonance for many fields beyond comics studies, fine arts, and English studies. Faculty and students in psychology, social work, and health sciences could consider Swallow Me Whole as a resource. • Powell is pictured here with his Eisner Award.