Throughout the comic, there are three instances of a timeline being drawn out in images. One is in the introduction/instructions, one is right after Jimmy meets his father, and the last one is right after Jimmy’s taxi ride to the train station. One thing all of these have in common is a lack of words and a rather scrambled path through time. I will focus on the placement of the two that are actually part of the story.
The first timeline is about Jimmy and it pretty much summarizes what we know of his life growing up and just a hint of his grandparents. Beyond showing what his life was like, we see how his father leaving affected his life. The image of the torn photograph is tells us that his father was never talked about. That photograph was refinished so that it only showed Jimmy and his mother. The timeline and photograph show that Jimmy’s father left when Jimmy was young. As a result, there was no father or father figure in Jimmy’s life when he was growing up. From the depiction of the lives of Jimmy and his parents, it looks like it was never a very happy family.
The other timeline is of Amy’s life and heritage. Her story, it includes a family tree going back four generations. Since Amy’s introduction is much shorter, the timeline is more important to understanding who she is. Amy is not James’ biological daughter so he had more of a choice if he wanted to be a father or not. This clearly affected their relationship because he actually tried to make everything work with Amy where he failed with Jimmy.
Amy’s timeline is much busier and more colorful than Jimmy’s. Both of their timelines reflect their individual relationship with James. James’ is sparser and rather dull in the color palate while Amy’s is more packed and colorful. The colors, business and placement serve to summarize both their individual lives and relationship with James Corrigan.
3 comments:
I considered writing about the timelines but then changed my mind because I thought I wouldn’t interpret them right or I just wouldn’t have much to talk about. The first thing I notice about your blog is that it’s kind of short. I’d suggest adding a little to it, possibly about the timelines in general because it looks to me like you did a pretty in depth analysis of each timeline specifically. I think that is a major strong point of your blog because I couldn’t really make a whole lot of sense of the timelines. I think that you hit a major point in the last sentence of your third paragraph because I think that is the main point of the whole book. Jimmy’s dad trying to patch things up with him and just when he starts to get to know his dad he is taken away from him by an accident that couldn’t have been more tragic in timing. I think that this also could be drawn as a parallel to the struggle that Ware himself had to finish this book so he could give it to his father but before he got the chance his father died of a heart attack.
A possible topic about the timelines in general could be that they are very cryptic looking because they are written from right to left and the pictures aren’t arranged according to the timeline. They come out of it with diagonal arrows which make it look very complex and intimidating at first glance.
Another possible topic could be about why Ware chose such an odd format to tell that part of the story. Although maybe it’s not that odd, I don’t really know that much about comics. Maybe you could also talk about the style of comic Ware uses with his sort of “flashback” and how the timelines are used in to explain the story.
Throughout the comic, there are three instances of a timeline being drawn out in images. One is in the introduction/instructions, one is right after Jimmy meets his father, and the last one is right after Jimmy’s taxi ride to the train station. One thing all of these have in common is a lack of words and a rather scrambled path through time. I will focus on the placement of the two that are actually part of the story.
The first timeline is about Jimmy and it pretty much summarizes what we know of his life growing up and just a hint of his grandparents. Beyond showing what his life was like, we see how his father leaving affected his life. The image of the torn photograph is tells us that his father was never talked about. That photograph was refinished so that it only showed Jimmy and his mother. The photograph also symbolizes how James was torn out of Jimmy’s life twice; once when Jimmy was young and again with James’ death. The timeline and photograph show that Jimmy’s father left when Jimmy was young. As a result, there was no father or father figure in Jimmy’s life when he was growing up. James tries to reconnect with Jimmy only to be torn away again. From the depiction of the lives of Jimmy and his parents, it looks like it was never a very happy family.
The other timeline is of Amy’s life and heritage. Her story, it includes a family tree going back four generations. Since Amy’s introduction is much shorter, the timeline is more important to understanding who she is. Amy is not James’ biological daughter so he had more of a choice if he wanted to be a father or not. This clearly affected their relationship because he actually tried to make everything work with Amy where he failed with Jimmy.
A major difference between the two timelines is how the illustrations are laid out. Amy’s timeline is more organized and easier to follow. It is pretty much arranged in chronological order that flows from generation to generation with the differences in time easy to understand. Jimmy’s timeline is more of a jumbled patchwork of illustrations that span decades. Even though the illustrations span a large amount of time, they are placed more haphazardly and you have to work to make sense of them. The illustrations showing of Jimmy as a child are attached to and blend with illustrations of the current adult Jimmy. The patchwork nature of Jimmy’s timeline also gives a good depiction of his relationship with his father.
Amy’s timeline is also much busier and more colorful than Jimmy’s. Both of their timelines reflect their individual relationship with James. Jimmy’s is rather dull in the color palate while Amy’s is more packed and colorful. The organization, colors, business and placement serve to summarize both their individual lives and relationship with James Corrigan.
There's some really good material here. I would have been even happier if you'd focused more on the relationship between the two timelines, particularly by expanding the conclusion; the work you start to do on the color palettes of the two, for instance, is quite good. This ends abruptly, but good work nonetheless.
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