Storytelling Through Words and Images: Brian Fies' Story

On Tuesday, November 2nd, our class had the privilege of hearing from guest speaker Brian Fies.  Illustrator and author of Mom's Cancer and Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow, Fies talked to us about the process of creating the comics, the origins of the comics, and influences of certain pages within the books themselves.  One of the topics he discussed was the ongoing process of finding the best cover for his first, award winning comic.  After hundreds of possibilities for designs, the end result was this:


Credit to Brian Fies
The simplicity of the cover, after seeing the different possibilities, is striking in its structure.  The broken frames show that it's a graphic novel, but the gradient night backdrop seems to indicate that she had come to the night of her life.
Knowing that this was his outlet and his way of coping was a great thing to behold.  Not only were we getting an inside scoop on his thought process in his illustrations: we were also getting to know him.  In getting to know him, we saw that Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow was also something very dear to him.  In fact, it encompassed what he said to be a huge part of who he was.  It didn't hurt to see that the cover for that graphic novel was cool looking.


Credit to Brian Fies
So why is it that Fies decided to use words and images to describe his mother's illness instead of a book?  In a graphic novel, Fies is able to describe his mother's cancer with words while also showing a pain that a thousand words can describe while only one picture can show.  The magic of both media together is that he can show what he saw (and what he envisioned in his mind) through his visuals, but his words were also powerful in providing the audience with his actual thoughts.  Through both of these, he was able to show the story of his mother in a way that only words and images can provide.  They work together in a way that is efficient for those who seek visuals as well as those we want to read deeper than what's provided in images.  I  wish him the best of luck in his future projects and am incredibly thankful he shared his stories and his experiences with us.