During Brian Fies’ presentation in last Thursday’s class, the concept of word and image came up plenty of times. Separately, word and image are different kinds of forms that relay a certain message. If combined together in a cohesive and unified way, that message becomes stronger and supported. In the book Mom’s Cancer, Brian Fies was able to tell the story of his family’s tough journey battling cancer through a comic. The serious and emotional theme of the book was carried strongly by the combination of word and image in most of the panels of the comic. For example, the part where his mother was unable to keep up with the medical terminology of everything, Fies illustrates his mother “drowning” in the terminology by having his mother on the foreground, floating above a background with plenty of small bold faced medical terminology repeating over and over. In another scene, Brian Fies said that his mother’s therapy was like walking on a tightrope, a dangerous balancing act. He reinforces those words by illustrating his mother on a balancing on a tightrope, showing that each different therapy was like balancing an elephant on one side of the pole, showing the delicate and risky predicament that his mother was going through. The combination of both word and image was able to create a deeper impact to the readers, solidifying the message that the author was trying to convey.
