Guest blogger: Catherine Anyango on the subliminal in 'Heart of Darkness'

Hello, I'm Catherine Anyango. I recently created the graphic novel adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for SelfMadeHero. I'll be writing a series of blog posts about illustrating the book.

This first post goes through some of the graphic devices that I used in Heart of Darkness, which helped the pages reflect the narrative through both design and illustration, and kept my interest up over 130 pages and a cold winter.

I used 'match cuts' at keys places through the adaptation. A match cut is a film edit where the transition from one piece of film to the next has some continuity, whether visual, musical, ideological, etc.  I tried to match page elements at certain times, for various reasons. A key part of the novel is the 'story within a story' format; we have one story, but two timeframes, and two Marlows, one reminiscing from a boat on the Thames, one living the journey down the Congo river. To connect the old Marlow with the new and to give a clue that we are slipping back and forth in time and place, each transition is marked by a subtle match cut...

...implying a connection between two events separated by distance or time. It can also link unrelated elements, placing them on the same platform and suggesting a relationship:

Here we see Marlow seeing clearly what the odd balls on posts outside Kurtz's hut really are. At this point his appreciation of the 'subtle horror' that separates 'pure, uncomplicated savagery' from the darker effects of colonial rule makes him understand that his position in the Congo may be on the wrong side of good and evil. In this moment, he and the head are not so unlike - he has also reached the end of something, he is also is doomed, and damned. They have been brought to this point by the same forces and he recognises himself in this thing. The match cut bring them together and we can sympathise and feel horror at both.

and here, those 'subtle horrors' are made clear. I tried to emphasise and criticise the relationship between Kurtz's ivory and the reality of how it has been amassed by the match cut between the ivory, the cartridges and the tribe.

Marlow's journey down the river also represents his increasingly troubled mental state, and the advance towards the almost insane Kurtz. I tried to make the page design and the drawings reflect this. All the drawings in Chapter 1 are drawn close to actual size, but when we begin the journey towards Kurtz in Chapter 2, I began to draw the backgrounds much smaller, so that when I blew them up they would disintegrate, like Marlow's deteriorating mood. Below is an example of a spread and the drawing actual size. Even with some of the pages being tiny, thats what all my pencils looked like by the end.

The "overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence" never welcomes nor accepts Marlow and Kurtz. It confounds Marlow and it provides an alibi, setting and excuse for the "awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts" in Kurtz. When Marlow and Kurtz face each other down in the forest something passes between the two men and Marlow barely manages to keep himself sane, while realising that Kurtz is beyond help - 'But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad."

I wanted to use the panels to illustrate the difference between the two men - Kurtz has 'kicked himself loose of the earth' and exists outside the panels, while Marlow is still bounded by them. On the next page, both men are fragmented by panels, but Kurtz is bisected more more grotesquely.

Of course, none of the above is meant to be in your face stuff, but hopefully it subliminally moves the book along. 
___
You can see Catherine's other work at catherine-anyango.com.
Heart of Darkness is published by SelfMadeHero and is available to buy from book and comic shops nationwide from 2nd September. It can also be purchased online from our store for £9.09.