The Arrival: Stranger in a Strange Land (3 Points)

Reading "The Arrival" by Shaun Tan is a rather unique experience for me in more ways than one. Everything from its lack of legible text, be it transcribed character dialogue or written word within the story, to its extremely detailed and surreal imagery, to its heavy reliance on moment to moment action and expression to tell a story, it is certainly not your typical comic book. 

I would like to talk about its extremely strong visual based worldbuilding. Without an ounce of text to explain the workings of this unusual almost alien world that our assumedly human cast lives in, the locals manage to feel tangible, real even. I think this is because of the feelings that the places give off are rather universal and relatable, rather than their appearance. The “food shop” family’s story of escaping these enormous, featureless men with unstoppable vacuums that deposit their victims directly into their flaming backpacks is not only a fearsome and awe inspiring image, but it is also relatable in a way. It evokes thoughts of the destruction of the holocaust. The fear feels tangible in that it is easy to picture someone with far more power than yourself rampaging and, powerless to stop them, doing all you can to escape your fate.

The place that the food shop family escapes to, alongside the woman on the public transit, the man in the factory and many others; is also very tangible despite is exotic creatures, language and architecture. It gives the viewer a mental image of 1920s New York City. Its melting pot of cultures, industry, immigration process, and iconic skyline all feel familiar to that era of American immigration and thus nostalgic in a way that most fantasy locations are. 

Conveying all this information through the imagery of the environments and the expressions of the residents in the story is an impressive feat and goes to show how versatile the medium of comics can be in the right hands.