This research examines the application of Scott McCloud's theory of the Infinite canvas, specifically the horizontal example outlined in Reinventing Comics (McCloud, 2000). It focuses on the useability and effectiveness of the Infinite canvas theory when applied as a practical example of a comic outcome for the Internet. This practical application of McCloud's horizontal Infinite canvas model has been achieved by creating a digital comic entitled Sad Reflections; a continuous horizontal narrative that is 20cm in height and 828cm in length and was designed to be viewed in a digital environment. This comic incorporates traditional comic techniques of gutters, time frames, line, with combining words and pictures, as outlined by McCloud (1993) in his first theoretical text Understanding Comics. These techniques are used to ensure that the project fulfilled the technical criteria used by the comic book industry to create comics. The project also incorporates McCloud's personally devised Infinite canvas techniques of trails, distance pacing, narrative subdivision, sustained rhythm and gradualism as outlined on his website. These new techniques are applied to assess their effectiveness in the creation of the horizontal Infinite canvas and ability to be integrated with traditional comic techniques. The focus of this project is to examine the strengths and weaknesses of McCloud's Infinite canvas theory when applied to the practical comic outcome of the Sad Reflections. Three key questions are used to guide this research. These questions are: 1. Does the application of traditional comic techniques affect the effectiveness of the Infinite canvas when implemented to a horizontal format? 2. Are the new Infinite canvas techniques as outlined by McCloud able to be applied to a horizontal format and what impact do these techniques have on the process? 3. Is the application of a horizontal Infinite canvas of benefit to future developers of web comics? Based on the outcomes of the above questions, this paper nominates strategies, considerations and suitable production processes for future developers of web comics.

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In a narrative the narrator tells the story, and the focalizer is a character through whose eyes the story is seen. The narrator is thus the one who speaks, whilst the focalizer is silent. The identification of these two narratological features is made with the help of verbal cues such as personal pronouns for instance. Determining the narrator and the focalizer can sometimes be challenging due to ambiguous cues in the analyzed text, as well as narratological aspects which at times can be difficult to distinguish from each other. Determining the narrator and the focalizer in graphic narratives (comics) with no narrative voice, or which completely lack words, must be done with the help of pictorial cues instead. In this thesis, Shaun Tan’s wordless graphic narrative The Arrival is used in order to show how the narrator and the focalizer can be determined by combining pictorial cues with the reader’s general knowledge of storytelling as well as his or her experiences from real life scenarios. To analyze narratological features in The Arrival, I employ terminology from comics studies, literary and film narratology. My analysis shows that determining the narrator and the focalizer in narratives lacking explicit narrative voice is possible by using only pictorial cues.

This thesis examines the potential of the graphic novel as a site for rethinking identity from a postcolonial perspective. I begin with an in-depth analysis of comic theory and breakdown the elements that distinguish the graphic novel from other literary genres. In addition, I highlight the importance of narration in the graphic novel, thus setting a framework for how to analyze the interplay between text and image as it relates to the narrative and vice versa. I use this framework to investigate how notions of masculinity, memory, and historical references are employed in the Brazilian graphic novel, Dois Irmãos, and the French graphic novel, l’Arabe du Futur, thus highlighting postcolonial concepts of identity formation illuminated in the narratives of young Arab boys narratives of their fathers.

Kobayashi Takiji's (1903-1933) Kanikōsen (The Crab Cannery Ship, 1929), the outstanding work from the proletarian literary movement, experienced an influx of new adaptations into various mediums during the years that preceded and followed the "Kanikōsen boom" of 2008. This thesis focuses on two manga adaptations that provide readers with starkly different takes on the original story. Using theories by Scott McCloud and Azuma Hiroki, I first attempt to draw parallels between the form of manga and that of the novel. Then, I examine the manner in which the most explicitly political content of the novel is adapted into the manga versions. Through this examination of form and content, it becomes apparent that, despite their differences, both adaptations reinforce a vague, individualist-humanist ideology that undermines the notions of class consciousness and class struggle that are central to the narrative of Kanikōsen. This diminishing of the explicitly "Red" aspects of the original reflects the Japanese public's general aversion to politics that has persisted since the early 1970's until this day.

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