The Station Eleven Project: Graphic Fiction Option
Read the directions carefully. There are several steps; be sure you don’t miss anything.
This assignment is worth up to 210 points per student. It is the major assignment of the semester. You cannot pass the class if you do not complete this project. Start early; work smartly and steadily.
If This is a DC Comic, It’s Certainly a Vertigo Comic!
How frustrating.
Over 300 pages, and we are never shown the comic book from which Mandel’s novel takes its title. Oh, we have a few moments: “Arthur opened the first issue at random to a two-page spread, ocean and islands linked by bridges, twilight, Dr. Eleven standing on a rock with his Pomeranian by his side. Text: I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth” (Mandel 214). We get a little more of the story, the conflict, the locations, but we don’t get much.
Your job, if you choose this project, is to give us that book (optionally, you could produce Issue 2, or a never-published Issue 3 of Station Eleven).
NOTE: do take note of all quotations from and descriptions of the comic in the novel; you don’t want to change those; you are adding to them.
What You Will Turn In (And How)
This is a two-part project:
- Part 1: A research paper. This comic book may not actually exist (yet), but comics and the graphic novel have a long and very interesting history. One part of this project will be to do research on the history of the graphic novel. Imagine that you are writing this history in the future, and that that history will contain a graphic-novel version of Station Eleven. A page or more of your research paper will explore how Station Eleven (based on the comic book that is created for this project) contributed (yes, past tense; you are pretending to be in the future) impacted the history of the graphic novel. The research paper should be at least four pages long and use at least three secondary sources (nothing like Wikipedia, please) and examples from the issue of Station Eleven produced for this project (create a dummy Works Cited entry for your comic book). The last (fifth) page of the research paper will be an MLA-format Works Cited page. The paper should be in MLA format.
- Part 2: Write and illustrate one comic issue of Station Eleven. Now, if you manage the entire comic, that will be amazing. But that is a lot of panels to write and illustrate. IT WOULD BE FINE if you created at least eight pages and then summarized the rest of the comic book (as you envision it).
Your illustration need not be professional quality, but stick figures and kiddie-like crayon drawings will not earn a lot of points. This option was put here for those students who love to express themselves visually.
There is a specific format for comic book script, which can be found at the following link:
How To Format A Comic ScriptIt is possible to turn this in by putting it in a PowerPoint or on a website (might be fun in the research section to include images or text from the comic as you refer to it), but that isn’t required.
The Graphic Fiction Project Proposal
Before you spend a great deal of time on the research, the invention, the writing, you will need to get a Project Proposal approved by me.
THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: I will not accept your final project if you have not had the Project Proposal approved. Then things roll down hill in a very unfortunate way–you will not get a score for this 200-point paper; you will not pass the class.
The proposal itself is not hard, but it does require you to have considered your options, to have thoroughly read and understood the project choices.
Your proposal must include the following:
- A project title (it can certainly change)
- A brief summary of your initial research on the history of the graphic novel.
- An initial Works Cited page (in MLA format) showing some sources which are available for the research portion of your project.
- A brief overview of what you plan to do in the comic portion.
Simple enough.
A sample Graphic Novel Proposal can be found in the Resources section on ETUDES. Be sure to look at this before you turn in your own proposal.
Sample Projects for this option can be found in the Resources section on Etudes.