On this blog we have written a number of posts about techniques and ideas for analyzing the story, art, and other elements of Jinty and similar comics. This page brings them together for easy reference.
‘A Jinty Sampler’: series of posts investigating the format and structure of Jinty issues, taking every 25th issue as a sample. Part I; part II; part III.
The ‘WTFometer’: initially two linked posts (part I; part II) explaining a concept for measuring the bonkersness of girls’ comics stories. Part III, written some time later, looks at some more stories to further explore this analytical concept. See also the wtfometer tag. Mistyfan has extended this by looking at a few themed stories together for comparison: in WTFometer IV she looks at three key stories about bullying, and in WTFometer V she looks at three historical stories. WTFometer VI analyses a few Group Slave Stories together, and WTFometer VII considers the Cinderella story.
‘What sort of stories did Jinty not cover?’: a post about omissions, with some speculations as to why.
What Makes a Story Work? Thoughts on how we can know a story worked at the time (Part I), and on what makes it work, whether that is decisions made by the writer, the artist, the editor, or a mixture of the whole team (Parts II and III).
A post on one-off stories, series, and regular characters – a way of looking at story structure.
A post about OuBaPo and other experimental comics games.
A post about the typical lengths of stories throughout the life of Jinty.
Another analytic tool: the ‘Rounded Representation’ test, beyond the Bechdel Test. Part I introduces the concept, Part II applies it to current media targetted at the girl market. Part III looks at male characters in comics aimed at girls, and Part IV at male characters in boys’ comics. Part V reviews some thoughts on why diversity and representation is important for readers of all kinds.
A trial of a computer program (JGAAP) which may potentially help to suggest authorship of stories. Can a computer program help us identify unknown writers? Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV.
A Resource on Jinty: Artists, Writers, Stories 