There are so many ways of coloring in graphic novels. Black and white, monochromatic, the whole color spectrum, and everything in between show up on the pages of our favorite graphic novels. I am very interested in the whys and hows that artists/colorists choose their palettes. The idea I am most interested in is the use of a largely monochromatic palette with seemingly random spots of color thrown in. What those colors are, where they appear, and what they are defining mean quite a bit when you are dealing with a primarily visual medium. I am going to be taking a look at "Pride of Baghdad" by Brian K. Vaughan with artist Niko Henrichon. This is a graphic novel inspired by true events during the Iraq war."Pride of Baghdad" illustrates the uses of color perfectly. Throughout the novel the artist uses a palette of golds, yellows, and greens which underscore the ideas of the sun, life, growth, and heat. There are only three major moments in the story where this differs.
The first is a flashback in the beginning of the novel wherein Safa revisits the time in which she lost her eye in a battle that also took part of her pride. The colors here are blues and purples tinged with blood red to highlight the flashback, the helplessness that Safa felt in that moment, and the pain of loss. The second moment comes in the middle of the novel when the lions reach an abandoned palace. As they enter further into the building, the sun cannot fully reach them and the lions end up in a dappled darkness colored, again, in the blues peppered by blood red. The darkest blue and the blood red paint the visage of a massive bear that belonged to the former owner. The lions are nearly helpless against the animal's strength and it is here that Safa loses her other eye. The fight is all but lost until Zill manages to move the battle outside in the sun where the pages regain their brighter palette. It is in this moment that I realized that the artist takes us in to darker spaces when the lions feel threatened and helpless. The spots of red at this time symbolize pain and loss, but not death which red is sometimes used to illustrate.
The third and final moment where there is a change in the color palette comes towards the end of the novel. Here the lions are on the top of a building from which they view the great, blood red horizon. The horizon is a foreign thing to the younger lions who heard about the concept as a thing to behold. It is something that Safa is not able to physically see now because she is completely blind but thanks to Zill's vivid descriptions, she can see it in her mind. The animals are transfixed by the horizon until they are gunned down by U.S. forces who claimed that the animals were charging them. The men describe the animals in death as being "free." Here the blood red color symbolizes a complete death, a finality, and to the soldiers that killed the lions, a sense of freedom. That is not to say that I fully agree with the idea of death=freedom, especially not in this context. I would also like to point out that there is a panel of a close up on the American flag that further complicates the issue. Of course the colors in thispanel are blue and blood red. Does that echo the idea of freedom since America is the home of the free or does that echo the idea of death/finality because the American men are taking lives/are having their lives taken? Or...does it convey a sense of helplessness and fear on the part of the soldiers who are in a situation that they have questionable control over?
And please remember: this is not a post on my views or opinions on the war in Iraq nor is it a place for that discussion; this is a post on the use of color in a graphic novels that happens to take place in that moment.
For further reading on this graphic novel in the vein of what the novel might have conveyed about such positions, I would direct you to a wonderfully rich blog post at dorkgasm.com.
