I have an idea for a graphic novel that raises the question of whether college athletes should be paid. There are different positions on this in society, but I am of the opinion that financial aid should be given to students engaged in sport. This topic is familiar to me firsthand, as I am a college American football player myself. Sports are an essential part of the American educational system. Every institution of higher education in the United States provides its students not only intellectual but also physical development opportunities. Students have access to fully-equipped gyms, stadiums, tennis courts, golf courses, swimming pools, and other athletic facilities. Higher education in the U.S. costs a lot of money, and not everyone has the opportunity to pay for it. That is why the name, image and likeliness system (NIL) that will cover all or part of the cost of attendance is a great way to attract high school athletes who have distinguished themselves in sports.
I think I have enough skills to become the author of this graphic novel on my own. I played football for many years and know the importance of financial compensation. I also have a history of interacting with other athletes who decided to give up their athletic careers because they could not get money out of it. I still keep in touch with them; that is why I could use interviews with them as the basis for the plot of my novel. I think my career as a football player and my many encounters with other athletes is what gives me the right to write on this subject.
The target audience is both the athletes themselves and the policy-makers who are responsible for passing initiatives in the country. In addition, this novel will also be aimed at college administrators and the sponsors of football development in the United States. Their active action will determine how this sport will change, which is why I would like them to read my novel. Besides, this book will also be aimed at parents whose kids participate in sports. I think they will be struck by how much the support from the place where they study means to their children.
The purpose of the book, or the reason why it will be written, will be my desire to change people’s current ideas about whether college athletes need a financial compensation based on their NIL or not. In creating my novel, I will be guided by the many comic books and richly illustrated publications about football (Figure 1). The novel will include interviews with college athletes and will be based on real events. I think three stories will be enough to tell how the NIL initiative can turn the lives of athletes around. One of the narratives will focus on an athlete who was able to forget about money worries. He was a famous college football player but could not make any money from his popularity before the NIL project. However, after athletes were allowed to be, so to speak, entrepreneurs, he soon achieved a dramatic improvement in his standard of living. The other two stories will focus on two brothers whose careers ended, due to the fact that when they were actively involved in football, the NIL endorsement was banned.
The main rhetorical device used by Art Spiegelman in his novel Maus is an allegory, which is a distinctive feature of the comic strip. The Jews are represented as mice, the Nazis as cats, the Poles as pigs, the French as frogs (Figure 2). Such an approach gave the artist the opportunity to demonstrate the absurdity and unacceptability of the racial division of people. Some of the visual metaphors are also amusing — for example, in an effort to hide from the Nazis, the characters disguise themselves as Poles and wear pig masks. The use of anthropomorphic characters was innovative and shocking, but it also made this Holocaust narrative unique. I do not think this technique would be appropriate in my graphic novel, but for example, some images from my novel can indeed be metaphorical.
The Maus style, known for straightforwardness and clarity, is reminiscent of newspaper headlines. This is characterized not only by the same panel size but also by uniformity in the characters’ depiction (Figure 3). The individual expressiveness of the characters is expressed through gestures and linguistic constructions. By using this crude way of drawing, Spiegelman tries to bridge the gap between text and image, keeping readers from paying too much attention to one or the other. The simple portrayal of the characters and their lack of personality increases the power of the captions to convey information.
Still, at the same time, the reader does not receive only the figures attached to the text. Spiegelman presents graphic depictions of Vladek’s accounts using the conventions of the comic book form, which do not direct the reader’s imagination to a particular point but stimulate it. In my graphic novel, I think that I could also neglect the excessive attention to detail of the main characters and the space around them. Based on the chosen theme of my book, it would be a good idea to strike a balance between the visual and the textual components.
Works Cited
Obst, Peter. “A Commentary on Maus by Art Spiegelma.” Polish Culture, n.d., Web.
Spiegelman, Art. “Tennessee School Board Defends Ban of Holocaust Novel Maus.” BBC, 2022, Web.