Hey Y’all, Max here.
I consider myself someone who is interested about historical events of interest, and I was very glad to hear that we were doing a project about World War I. That project was A War to end all Wars: Graphically told, and I’ll be talking about it today.
Last year in scimatics 8, i made a graphic novel about diseases. You can find my blog post on that here.
Before I begin, I’ll say I much prefer reading or writing about World War II, which in my opinion is the more interesting war, from a political, sociological, and technological standpoint. Nevertheless, I went into this project without many expectations, and left fully impressed by how much I didn’t know, and how interested I became in aspects of World War I.
Building Knowledge
Anyways, the project began in an interesting way. We started learning about not just WWI, who was involved, and what notable events happened when, but we also began to learn about graphic novels, how to read them, dialogue, and a bunch of other information related to comics and graphic novels. I was really invested in learning about those involved in WWI ( the “Belligerents” ), and historical events during World War I. I experienced comics throughout my entire childhood and I still read Manga now, so I didn’t need to learn much about how to understand graphic novels.
The next and most important part of this project is the reading of the World War 1 graphic novel. It was the best example of what we would eventually be doing ourselves, as well as an entertaining and accurate recollection of World War 1.
Right after reading and reviewing the graphic novel, I filled out a 5 W’s chart ( Who, What, When, Where, Why ) about a battle I chose to do some light research on, this wouldn’t be the battle I would be making a graphic novel about, just so I would know how to research a battle.
Another part of the graphic novel review segment was the written piece about a long-term and short-term effect of World War 1. I chose to write my short-term effect about Germanys incurred debt after the war, which wasn’t entirely short-term, but I don’t feel like explaining it because it is a very long story. The long-term effect I wrote about was the armoured vehicle known as the tank. the tank really changed warfare as a whole, and was continuously improved throughout the years, and is now so advanced, it’s hard to believe it started out so small, clumsy, and failure-prone. Anyways, the legacy of WW1 was a big part of this project, and it was interesting to learn about how much things have changed since, in both war and modern society.
First 5 W’s chart:
Second 5 W’s chart:
Cause and Consequence
I should probably get to the final product now, which was a graphic novel about a
Canadian-related battle of World War 1 We decided to research. the battle I chose was the battle of Lens and hill 70, an important allied victory, and an important Canadian victory. It took place in the French town of Lens, and pitted around 15,000 Canadian soldiers against a slightly larger German force. It was meant to be a simple distraction from nearby Passchendaele, and another headache for the Germans. It proved to be much more, and under the leadership of Arthur Currie, it was a sweeping Canadian victory.
the process of making the comic was a lot more hellish than I would have expected. The app we were putting everything together in was Comic Life which was fine, it was just I did not expect to have so many panels. I ultimately had 8 pages, and 25 panels, with probably 6 hours of work put into it. If making 25 panels took this much work, I would hate to make comics for a living. You can check out my complete graphic novel below.
ComicLife Comic:
The Battle of Lens and Hill 70
The driving question fro this project was “How can we use graphic novels to understand Canada’s involvement in World War 1?” This is a string of words I’m sure hasn’t been said very many times. Although a graphic novel about WW1 would be very cool, It would also be hard to make one that doesn’t sacrifice historical accuracy for action. That’s what I thought before I read the WW1 graphic novel I was assigned to read. I thought it was very interesting how the author of the book used fictional car terms in real battles, and still made an interesting and exiting graphic novel. So that’s my answer to this driving question.
Ultimately, I think this was a very good project. A solid 7.5/10. It would be higher if it hadn’t required so much effort to make the actual graphic novel, but I think most of that was my fault for putting in so much effort, just like with my scimatics project last year. I suppose the lesson learned with this project is to not put in too much effort to the point of exhaustion, and not to lose the balance between mental health and quality.