ABSTRACT
Autographics present a “life narrative fabricated in and through drawing and design using various technologies, modes, and materials” (Whitlock and Poletti 2008). Miriam Katin’s Letting It Go (2013) demonstrates many of the inventive visual techniques that a comics creator can use in autobiographical stories, including various drawing styles, lettering changes, coloring, page layouts, time shifts, images in sequence, and so on. In addition, Katin foregrounds the choices an artist makes in telling her story by showing herself at work on the comic we are reading. So, in many ways, Letting It Go is about how to make and read an autobiographical comic. This chapter applies the techniques of analyzing visual media to graphic life narratives, including artistic style, visual perspective, focalization, image/text relationships, and sequential art to examine how comics creators can exploit the art form in powerful and effective ways, especially in the depiction of trauma.
