30 in 30: Micrographica by Renee French

#2: MICROGRAPHICA
Storytellers: RENEE FRENCH
Publisher: TOP SHELF
Year Of Publication: 2007
Page Count (can be approximate or in # of issues format): 208 pages

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT WRITING / STORYTELLING:

This is a story of naked mole rats going about their daily life – with this day revolving around a “crapball” one of them has discovered.  French injects them with very human characteristics through her dialogue, and in this way makes the story very relatable.  The emotional infusion she achieves through the very real conversations and arguments – and the distinct personalities and “little cruelties” that are exhibited in the narrative – had me engaged right from the start. 

 
WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT ART / STORYTELLING:

Since this is a collection of French’s online strip, within which she restricted the size of her drawings to only 1cm square (less than the size of a postage stamp), each page is only a single panel, which made it feel more like a comic strip rather than a traditional comic.  But even within these strictures, she managed to utilize the vocabulary of the comic panel to inject emotion within the narrative.  One instance of this is when two of the naked mole rats are arguing over who found the crapball – and, thus, who it belongs to – and French deftly conveys the anger of one mole rat by drawing an extreme close-up of its face (only one eye, the crown of its head and the upper bridge of its nose).  I felt that this worked extremely well, especially since almost all of the previous panels had shown the naked mole rats in full-body images.

 
RECOMMENDATION: B