Current situation in Iraq

The current situation in Iraq seems better than before. The amount of war and fights has decreased, but are still immense. George W. Bush agreed that all American troops remove from Iraq cities by June 2009 and from the entire country by 2011. The new president, Barack Obama did not disagree to this new agreement; although he is considering, a slightly slower pace of removing troops from the country. But until then, the Iraq government will have much more control in combat operations, detentions of prisoners and even prosecutions of American soldiers for grave crimes. Overall, this proves that slowly the Americans want to make their way back out of the country, and leave the Iraqi alone.

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/news/international/countriesandterritories/iraq/index.html

Graphic Novel/Comic Terms and Concepts

· Layout:

o Panel:

· This panel consists of four frames showing the American clearing away of the lions. The first and last frames are rectangles stretching horizontally across the page sandwiching and the two frames in the middle are stretching rectangular as well, but in the vertical way perpendicular to the first and last frame.

o Frame:

· The first frame shows three soldiers and two of them are talking next to each other. They talk about what they have just done and if they feel alright about it.

· In the second frame, we can see the soldier, who killed the lion, putting his hand on him and seeing if he is still alive.

· In the third frame, we can see four soldiers and two dead lions. The soldiers are discussing where the lions came from, and if they are wild walking around. They come to the conclusion they don’t walk around wild.

· In the last frame on the panel, you can see a bird flying and a voice saying, they're free, relating to the lions not being wild, but free.

o Gutter:

· The gutters between all of the frames are identical.

· They are white and show that the frames are in relationship to each other.

o Bleed:

· No images bleed in this panel.

· No images extend to and or/or beyond the page.

o In-depth frame's analysis:

· Overall:

§ Fore-,mid-,back-ground

· None of the frames are in front or behind others.

§ Graphic

· The frames aren't contrasting each other in color or anything like that. All of the pictures are drawn with more or less the same colors.

· First frame:

§ Fore-, mid-, back-ground:

· In the foreground, there are two soldiers with their weapons talking about how they feel after what had just happened.

· In the midground, we can see another soldier with his weapon.

· In the background, there is the view of the burning city.

§ Graphic weight:

· The contrast in this picture isn't too special. It is isn't very high and makes the eye fall into a sad mood.

· The only pattern repeated here, are the soldiers with their weapons, and their uniforms, they are more or less identically next to each other three times.

· The dark colors here are matching each other very well, which can persuade one mood, sadness very well.

· Second frame:

§ Fore-, mid-, back-ground:

· In the foreground, we can see the dead lion.

· The midground is featured by the soldier, and his hands on the lion.

· The background consists of the sky.

§ Graphic weight:

· As well as in picture frame one, the color contrasts aren't too big. But, his clothe are up next to the lion.

· This still doesn’t increase the contrast a lot, because the lion's fur has nearly the same color as the hands of the soldier, which doesn’t provide any difference.

· The only pattern repeated is the texture of the clothes, as well as the hair on the arms, and the lion’s fur.

· The only color more deep on the page is the weapon of the soldier which we can only partially see. It is much darker and kind of stands out.

· Third frame:

§ Fore-, mid-, back-ground:

· The foreground in this picture consists of a black bird sitting on an antenna. He is watching the soldiers and the dead lions.

· The midground is occupied by the soldiers and their equipment.

· The lions make up the background, as they lie deeper than the soldiers stand. They aren't really in the background, but are the objects/shapes/elements that are the furthest back in this frame.

§ Graphic weight:

· The black bird creates a big contrast to the lions, their blood, and the floor. It is black vs. a beige-ish color tone of the floor and the lions.

· The color pattern repeated here is once again the one of the soldier’s uniforms. They look similar, and in this case are even four uniforms are close to each other.

· No elements stand out bright, but the bird and the antenna he is standing on, are obvious to see because of their darkness. They are much darker than the rest of the picture.

· Fourth frame:

§ Fore-, mid-, back-ground:

· In the foreground, we can see the black antenna.

· The midground is filled by the black bird which was already present in the picture before.

· The background is the sky, which is fading from dark brown to orange, which shows its dark and the sun is just setting.

§ Graphic weight:

· There are not too many contrasts, similarities, not color repetitions in this frame, as not too much is going on.

· Figures:

o Faces:

· The faces in all of the frames are drawn.

§ The soldiers are either shown from behind or from the side; not with their face to the viewer.

· With the exception of the first frame, the faces don’t look dramatic because they don’t have a detailed backdrop.

§ The first frame shows the background with burning houses and in front the face of a soldier, which really does look dramatic because of the backdrop.

o Hands/feet:

· The hands of all soldiers, in all of the frames, except the second, are on the gun, which shows a protective positioning of the body. The soldiers aren't very comfortable with the situation and don’t really care about it either.

· Their feet are positioned wide apart to show they are ready to fight, if someone would attack.

· The exception is the second frame. The soldier has his hands off the weapon, and on the lion to show how sorry he is for what he has done. He didn’t really want to kill him, it was a natural reaction he had.

· Text:

o Captions:

· There are no captions in this plane.

o Speech balloons:

· There are a bunch of external as well as internal dialogues on the plane. External dialogues are in each frame, and internal dialogues are in every frame except the last one.

o Special-effects lettering:

· There are two special-effects letterings on this plane.

§ The first one is in the third frame and emphasizes the word wild. One of the soldiers asked if the lions are wild, and there was a big emphasizes on the word, because in his opinion they shouldn’t be wild, because they are dangerous.

§ In the last frame, the word free is emphasized. It is related to the lions that aren't wild, but free!

Pride of Baghdad OPTIC

O - This scene takes place on one of the last pages in the book. After the lions had escaped, and saw what the world outside of the zoo is; they got into the unpleasant situation of "meeting" U.S. soldiers. One of these, killed the lions and said that he didn’t have a choice. His colleges understood. After this frame, the story is basically done; only a few pages of pictures and statistics follow.

P - In this frame, there is a U.S. soldier putting his hand on the Lion. He wants to see what he had just killed. He also felt if the lion is still alive or not. The only text in this frame: "You didn’t have a choice. I know."

T- The quote is being said after the soldier had just killed a bunch of lions and his officer tells him it wasn’t his fault because he didn’t have a choice and he understands. This shows that although he felt sorry, his colleges told him to not do so because they were danger for their group of soldiers.

I - The image and the text work very well together. The soldier seems sorry for what he has done to the lion, but his officer tells him to not worry because he didn’t have a choice. It presents a very good picture of the human relationship to the lion. The humans are sorry for hurting them, but at the same time are scared and think the only way to not get hurt by the lions, is protecting themselves, by killing them. This is represented in the text. The picture and the text could also stand independent and would be interpreted the same way because of how they are written and illustrated and the context they are in.

C - This frame clearly illustrates the differences of Lions and Humans; the conflicts they have and how different people think about things that happen (such as shooting Lions).