What can comic books achieve that no other storytelling medium can?

In this episode, I’m joined by comic book artist and writer, Sam Hart, and Oxford English undergraduate, Anvita Kopparthi (the most avid reader of comics I know!), to unpick the intricacies that underpin graphic novels. Sam is based in London and has worked on a broad range of comics, varying from Joan of Arc to The Coldest City, which was turned into the movie, Atomic Blonde. He is currently working on the series, 10 Lost Days and you can find him on Instagram: @samrahart.

Drawing on over 30 years of experience, Sam shares his perspectives on the particular affordances of comic books: their ability to play with time, evoke emotion through colour and create meaning from the interplay between words and images. We consider how narrative coherence emerges from the interaction between negative and positive spaces, between what is said and what remains unsaid. We examine the political and social undercurrents that shape the narratives we often find in the pages of a graphic novel. The question of what makes a graphic novel distinct from a painting leads us to consider the creation of pace and motion within the pages of a comic. The seemingly modernist approach to piecing together fragments of time and emotion segues into a conversation about experiments within comic books such as Nightwing.

Grounded in our personal experiences of reading comics, we dive into the complexities of a genre (whether comics are a genre is a debate in itself…) that is often understudied despite being one of the most dynamic modes of storytelling today.

Welcome to Interwoven, a podcast where we follow the winding threads of literature, as they weave together stories and voices across time and cultures. In this episode, I share the inspiration that led to the creation of Interwoven. I talk about the vision and purpose that lie at the very heart of every conversation to come.

Music credits go to Isobel (Issi) Marklew.