The Outfit By Donald Westlake's 'The Outfit'

856 Words2 Pages

Introduction
When a novel is adapted into a graphic novel, a spectrum of possible interpretations allows for new meanings. Due to the intermedial character of the graphic novel, the translation from text into a graphic novel differs from an adaptation from text to text. Graphic novels have a medium-specific language that consists of a combination of words and images, both following their own rules and conventions. These two channels of the graphic novel, the visual and the textual, enable the author of the adaptation to express her- or himself not only through words but also through images and make them decide what is expressed in images, what is left in words, and what is left out altogether. This direct conversion from text into text and …show more content…

To begin with, I will discuss the distinction between 'graphic narrative' and 'graphic novel', followed by a definition of the latter. As a next step, the relationship between words and images is elaborated on, attempting to investigate the differences and correlations between words and images in order to have a better understanding how graphic novels operate. Then, a definition of 'intermediality', 'adaptation' and 'noir fiction' will be …show more content…

The intermedial quality of his work requires Darwyn Cooke, both the author and the artist of The Outfit, to take decisions on which parts of the novel are suitable to be interpreted into images and which ones he leaves as text. Not only does he have a wide range of choices when it comes to the style he draws the graphic novel in but also does he sometimes need to modify text, for instance, shorten it or change the choice of words in order for text and images to be balanced and make sense as a

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