Comics without the use of text explaining the narrative such as Shaun Tan's The Arrival are successful due to their compositions, size, and pacing of the panels. His story has strong readability because of his staging and sequencing process. A lot of Shaun Tan's chapters start with a few key shots to show you the environment around. Once there is something that catches our attention with the character we are given close up shots that lead into a series of sequentials. With these sequentials, depending on the movements and actions we are able to tell what the character goes through. After explaining it enough with short and quick sequential frames he hits us with one big key-shot depicting a lot more information and to slow us down. We speed through the sequential frames as if we are doing the action itself and once we see the bigger picture we slow down to take in all the details he has left for us.
Language is not always required to get a point across to an audience. If we look back in our human history, before language was even formed. Cave men grunted at each other but still had an understanding. This understanding comes purely from body language. They made their own paintings on rocks and caverns out of their experiences in the wild. Many of their depictions can be understood by looking at the gesture of their animals or humans. This is why gesture is so important and always will be. If the gesture of your character does not have the same movement and life as the object you are replicating from real life, you will find yourself struggling with a stiff character.
People that have seen Shaun Tan's comic probably think it is pretty good for a black and white comic. A lot of people probably don't notice it but there is still a use of color. His color pallet is very simple, limited, and neutral; however, it gives a strong punch to the narrative in his uses of warm greys and cool greys. Temperature gives our characters warmth and life or can show how cold and dark something is.
