WP2: Rough Draft

Aaron Johnson, has made himself well known through his ongoing series of daily comics featuring a main cartoon named W.T. Duck, a photographer. His comics are published daily in many newspapers as well as several websites including the yahoo news section which is where I first saw it. Johnson's personal website, whattheduck.net, contains fan commentary as well as every wt duck comic he has ever published.

The comic above is the one I am choosing to analyze for for this second project. It is part of Aaron Johnsons WT Duck series and was published a few days before Halloween of this year. The scene has the photographer, wt duck, telling five monsters that he charges extra for Ugly. Frankenstien responds by yelling "That's Discrimination," followed by the next three monsters swearing. Lastly the invisible man says, "sweet." The reason this comic stood out to me was because I found the dialogue really funny. One thing that is important to notice about this comic though is that Johnson chooses to act against several standard mechanics that one would find in a standard comic strip. Rhetorically, these mechanics contradict the subject matter within the comic strip and argue that discrimination is never toward just one group and often has an effect on evrybody, regaurdless of the target.
If one looks at the WT Duck comic and then the comic above, they first appear very similar in style. They both include three frames, illustrated cartoons and dialougue bubbles. The key to the argument of Johnsons comic though is where he chosses to diferentiate his style from that of a more traditional comic. The first difference I noticed was Johnsons use of frames. In a traditional comic, you will see each frame present either a different scene of timeframe. On the other hand, Johnsons three frames all apear to be responding to the same event at the same moment in time, and even appear to be located sequentially. For example the whiches broom crosses over from one frame to the next and the grey foreground is persistant throughout. I beieve this choice was made largely due to Johnsons desire to remain consistant in terms of ethos almost all of his other comics are structured with the three frame style. However it is also important to look at why then he choose to only portrey one scene to represent this situation. The comic can be divided into two elements. The photographer(duck), and the monsters all responding to him. They appear to be in a line waiting for his service and it is suggested that all but the invisible man will be charged extra. The effect the three frames has on me is it devides the second element, the monsters, apart from each other who I would otherwise have in my mind grouped together as just all monsters. So, it is possible that Johnsons strategy was to use the frames to create a division in the charactors that the audience otherwise would not have picked up on, yet still keep the scene together as one whole. Nextly, Johnson furthur divides these three frames by making the backgrounds distinctly different colors. In a traditional comic, like the one above, you will normally only see one consistant background color. These colors not only make the divison in frames more visible, but also act to set a mood, distinct to each frame. For example, in the first frame, Orange is used, which is a bright, intense color, and could be assosiated with the intense reaction from the Frankenstien monster to the duck. The second frame is white which could suggest indifference and the last frame is purple and could represent sadness. These different moods are important because although all of the monsters appear to be reacting the same, it is possible that the backgrounds reflect their true emotions on the situation. This become particularly important with the invisible man in the back because although it appears he is getting what he wants, the fact that he is at the back of the line and in the purple depressing background could suggest that he is unhappy. If we go back to the topic of dicrimination and the re-examine this scenario, this comic now appears to be showing that the only one who does not get discriminated against are the ones who stand in the back and do not stand out and that these people are the ones who are truely not happy.

Next I would like to focus on Johnsons choice of positioning for his quotation bubbles. It you look at the second comic I posted, you can see that traditionally, quotations are read from top to bottom, left to right, and never cover the characters face. If you examine Johnsons comic, first you will see that the sequence of quotes starts at the bottom left instead of the top left. This naturally causes the audience to see the quote, "Thats Discrimination!" before the first quote in the conversation. This automaticly sets the topic of discussion and mindset of the audience to discrimination before they even know whats going on in the rest of the situation. This could serve several puposes. For example, Johnson could be trying to make a point that this is how people act in society today, that people jump to conclusions before analyzing situations. Johnson could have also chosen to do this to bring the topic of discimination to the mindset of the audience first, before the comedy in the rest of the strip was able to take over. The second interesting choice Johnson makes in terms of the quotation positioning is that several of the quotes actually cover the faces of the charactors. This directly takes away from the charactor's identity and deflects attention towards what they are saying. There are a variety of possible puposes for this, but I feel that the efect it has on this situation in particular is that it shows a lack of effect of the particular charactor's response. For example, when a charactor says something, but you cant see their face, it conveys a feeling that they are being ignored or not listened to. This could be referring to the duck and how he may not care what the monsters think. In terms of the rhetorical argument, I feel this adds to the discrimination scenario being created as people who are being discriminated against often feel like they dont have a voice.

A third major difference between this WT Duck comic and most other comics is that there is an apparent difference in level of detail illustrated between charactors. This goes back to the two elements I discribed earlier. First we have the duck, who in reality dosnt really resemble a duck at all, and only includes details such as a bill and dots for eyes. The second element, the monsters in contrast poses a relatively high level of detail all the way down to creases in clothing and skin. The effect this creates is a widened separation between the photographer, and discriminator from the monsters. The high level of detail in the monsters make them seem much more "real" in the eyes of the audience than the simplified duck, even though in reality ducks exist and monsters dont. Johnsons strategy was likely to make the monsters be the element in the comic in which the audience related, causing them, in a way, to feel the same "discrimination" which the monsters are going through. This apeals to the overall Pathos of the comic, bringing out an emotional response from the audience with respect to the argument.