Thought 37: The Great War 🔫

How might we use graphic novels to understand Canada’s involvement in WWI?

World War 1. The Great War. The predecessor to the “not so great, but still alright” World War 2. This project is all about the First World War. 

We began this project with an introduction to a graphic novel. This comic book had the totally not confusing title of World War One 1914-1918: A Graphic Novel. We spent about 2 weeks reading this comic book, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The drawings are really good and I learned lots of interesting facts. Afterwards, we spent some more time learning about WWI, specifically, Canadian involvement, the preexisting factors, the consequences and the technologies of the first world war.

We learned that there were several causes and consequences of the war. Some causes were the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, increased military technology, and growing nationalism in the Balkans. Some consequences include the collapse of European empires, the United States becoming a major superpower, and the revolutionary new style of warfare. Eventually, we compared the World War 1 Graphic Novel to the film 1917. I really liked the film 👍.

Eventually came the time to create our own comic books. We were given a list of topics to choose from, and I chose the War Measures Act. The War Measures Act was a law put into place by the Canadian government to give them the power to censor media, deploy military onto the streets, arrest “enemy aliens” and other dissenters and send them to internment camps. I decided to make the main event of my story the 1918 Easter Day Riots. The Easter Day Riots were an uprising in Quebec City to protest against the unpopular conscription laws. The government deployed the military to stop the protest, which ended up with 4 deaths and dozens of arrests. 

I created the comic using keynote to make the images and I arranged it in Comic Life. We were told to trace real images for our drawings, which was good for me because I am not a very good artist. Overall, I am really proud of my comic. I used a great balance of history and fiction to create a compelling story. 

To answer the driving question, we can use graphic novels to tell a story of historical fiction. One that contains a balance of true history and entertainment that can give us an idea of the events of world war one.