I'm an artist writing and drawing a graphic novel that takes place during the Second World War. On this blog I will display the sketches I do in researching and preparing for the book.
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WWII GIs 
I like this, have you ever thought about maybe doing a war comic book in this style? I read a graphic novel called Alan’s War a little while ago about the second world war which you might enjoy if you haven’t already read it. I really enjoyed it.
Yeah, I was even thinking of doing my graphic novel in ballpoint pen at one time; being able to draw digitally opens up almost too many possibilities. And thank you for the recommendation! A friend had told me about that graphic novel three years back so I’d bought and read and loved it, and now that you’ve mentioned it again, well, I just pulled it off the shelf and am rereading it. Yes, it’s a great one. And I have been working on writing a war comic, just get caught up editing it before I hardly get any of it down on paper.
Haha, I just noticed that you’ve written that you’re drawing a graphic novel in the side bar. Well, great minds think alike (and slightly less great minds don’t read the side bar before commenting.) I’ll look forward to reading it. I thought that Alan’s War worked really well, and the illustrations were fairly simplistic but perfectly captured what memories look like, better than if it had been depicted in film in my opinion. There are some stories that are best told in the graphic novel form.
Ha! I agree with you about the graphic novel form, it certainly bridges the gap between novels and films, both of which are legitimate forms of course but so are graphic novels. Did you ever read the graphic novel version of Road to Perdition? When the film came out and I learned that it was an adaptation of a graphic novel, I was intrigued and read it. The one besides Alan’s War though that couldn’t be as well captured in film – and which has to do with memories too come to think about it – is Maus.
I’ve seen the movie Road to Perdition, but I didn’t know that it was based on a graphic novel. It was an okay film in my opinion, but it would be interesting to read. I have read Maus however, and I agree with you, it would be difficult to capture its feel as a movie. There’s something about these two books especially that seem to work, maybe because of the fact that they’re a mixture of frozen comic images and honest autobiographical accounts of events. Details can be drawn for only the parts that the narrator can remember, and the rest can be left as a hazy fog, as is our memories, or our imaginations if someone is telling us a story. It also allows for the focus to stay with the subject’s mind as it wanders. For example if we meet a character on a train and they only feature for a page, and as the narrator recounts how he later heard that the guy was killed in a plane crash, we can now see that. Where as in a movie the plane crash would be too expensive and time consuming to shoot just to resolve that tiny character’s story. It also leaves certain cemented images as more intriguing, such as when we see Alan’s photo featuring Alan (?) shaking the hand of General Patton, did he meet him or didn’t he? We get to decide. You could do that in a word book maybe, but in a movie it’s difficult to tell the difference between what’s been simulated for the cameras and what’s a genuine photo, so it lacks impact. Also, just the nature of a graphic novel like Alan’s War is not particularly movie-like. He didn’t escape from Colditz, or carry out some top secret mission to assassinate a Nazi general, and in fact he saw hardly any action at all, but it’s just a very personal account of one guy’s experiences.
Anyway, I enjoyed them a lot, and it seems that they were well received around the world, so hopefully there are others out there like them to be discovered.
Well put!