The Call of the Wild Comic Strip/Essay

To see my comic click here.

The Call of the Wild is a story about a dog called Buck that gets dognapped and is taken to the Yukon. The comic strip shows Buck as he is being shipped away and when he learns his first lesson. The choices I made in creating my comic strip have reasons behind them. The scene, relations to the themes of the book, the way it was drawn, and the dialogue are all supported by the book.

First of all, the scene is quite important. It was full of many firsts for Buck. on page 4 in the book, London writes, "Never in all his life had he been so viley treated, and never in all his life had he been so angry." Those are two firsts the he would have to get used to. He would have to handle some abuse later in the book. On page 9 he also wrote, "He had learned a lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it." Through out the book, buck thought back to when he learned that he couldn't beat a man with a club.

Secondly, it relates to the themes of the book. One of the themes was going from a domestic life to a primitive one. Jack London wrote, "It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law..." Buck expanded this knowledge until he became a pack leader.

Lastly, the way it was drawn and the dialogue are as close to the text as I could make it. Not many of the dogs on pixton fit Buck's description, "...strong of muscle and with warm, long hair..."(1). Therefore, I had to use the next best thing, the biggest dog. Unfortunately, the dogs weren't very big. Moving on, there weren't many descriptions of Manuel or the first one that bought Buck so I chose the characters and colors that I thought best suited the characters and the time. The only descriptions of the man in the red sweater were that he had a red sweater and was stout. There weren't any male characters that had a sweater and were stout so I had to choose the chubbiest one and make his shirt red. I chose the first background because the book said that it was night time when it happened ("...memeral night of Manuel's treachery,"(3). The building in the second square was the closest object I could find that looked like a flag station ("...arrive at the flag station..."(3). The third background was purple because it was a relatively calm when Buck was still unconscious. Also, the other squares had a lot of red since Buck was very angry at that point.

Therefore, the choices I made while making the comic strip were reasonable. I used quotes and the moods to determine the best choices. The options on pixton were not the best fit for the descriptions in the book, but I managed to make the best of it.