Wednesday, February 15, 2017

History Illustrated: TV Vietnam



History Illustrated: TV Vietnam
By: Ricardo SerranoPage 1

Panel 1: Front-shot of an old, 1960s television. We’re inside an average white American living room. Television was a privilege back then. The TV is displaying a group of American soldiers rushing a Vietnamese village.

Caption: It was the Sixties. Kennedy had died and having a television was a thing of privilege. Something to be proud of.

Panel 2: We see a soldier with a flamethrower spraying the village with fire. There’s chaos in background. We’re still looking at these images from the TV set, in the living room.

Caption: But it was a privilege that came with a price. It made the horrors of the world an inescapable reality, and they came in a variety of channels.

Panel 3: Still a front-shot of the TV from the living room, the TV showing a burning hut in the village. We see a burning body next to it.

Caption: The Vietnam War was one such horror. This was a war America would lose.

Panel 4: Same scenario, TV in the living room, but now with a reporter interviewing a soldier as the village’s destruction plays on in the background.

Caption: The myth of the country’s innocence would shatter. America's soldiers became the bad guys, both in the countries they fought for and against.

Soldier being interviewed: ---should be proud. We’ve got a bunch of nasty killers fighting for freedom here.

Panel 5: Shot of the television being shut off, the image basically turning into a thin line of static.

Caption: It would not be last war to be televised.

Monday, February 13, 2017

History Illustrated: 9/11


History Illustrated: 9/11

By: Ricardo Serrano Denis


Page 1

Panel 1: Shot of the Twin Towers standing tall on the 11th of September, 2001. It’s a bright sunny day, and the towers are shinning.

Caption: The Twin Towers fell on a bright day. A perfect day to go outside and look up.

Panel 2: Same shot but with a small flock of birds flying before the Towers. It’s as if they’re crossing the space the Towers occupied.

Caption: Earlier that day, just as America was waking up, a group of terrorists hijacked four planes.

Panel 3: Same shot but with one of the planes flying towards the first tower, not hitting it as of yet.

Caption: Two of them hit the Towers, one for each.

Panel 4: Shot of one of the Towers up in smoke, but collapsed yet.

Caption: They would fall, America would lose its confidence entering the new millennium, and war would once again become the status quo.

Panel 5: Shot of the Towers, one smoking, the other still standing as the second plane approaches in the background.

Caption: 2,996 people died that day. Almost immediately, the twenty first century started to look a lot like the twentieth, a century people desperately wanted to forget.