Week 14 The Future of Comics

I read Ducks by Kate Beaton. Its a B&W sketch comics in 5 parts. It's about her time living in a mining camp. Its a strange look at who mining does to the environment including wildlife. A bunch of ducks gets suck in crude oil and it becomes an environmental story. It's cool how the internet gives a way for anyone to publish a comic. However, I think this one would be easier to read if it was more finished

Week 13 Reconsidering the Superhero

I read The Killing Joke by Alan Moore. This is the origin story of the Joker. It was very sad because he was just an ordinary guy who became a supervillain by things he couldn't control. Losing this wife and the unborn baby would drive anyone insane. The fact that he was forced to help rob the chemical plant which is even sadder because he wasn't even the criminal. Batman wants to help the Joker but the Joker thinks he's already too far gone.

In superhero stories, it doesn't seem possible to have to villain have a change of heart otherwise we wouldn't have the good vs. evil stories. The end is confusing not just for me but also for everyone else because no one knows what really happened? He is an unreliable narrator so we are not sure if we can believe any of the story

Week 12 Women's Comics

I read Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. This comic reminded me of My Favorite Thing is Monsters. The main character in both stories is a girl struggling to grow up in a difficult family situation. Both girls are also dealing with the idea that they're gay. In Fun Home, life with her father is very difficult. We find out that a big part of the problem is that he is also gay but refuses to do anything about it. They both love reading and art but never able to build a strong bond. When she finally works up the courage to come out, her father is not supportive. She and her mother wonder if this news and his unwillingness to be honest with himself are what cause him to commit suicide by getting hit by a truck. This complicated relationship is the main focus of the story but her openness about her sexuality and the struggles of her being different are also the main focus. I think that a graphic novel with issues like this will open up to a large audience that feels the same way as she does.

Week 11 Comics As Contemporary Literature

My favorite thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris is the graphic novel I read for Comics As Contemporary Literature. I can see why thing book is considered literature because the narrative has many layers and is told by multiple points of view. The Primary point of view is from Karen a 10 year old girl who seems to be based on the author. It's a story within a story because its a story about a little girl who draws her life as a comic. She is a fan of monsters so it's no surprise that she draws herself as a little werewolf. Possibly she draws herself as a werewolf because she might have something to hide about herself just like werewolves do when they are humans. I think the mystery element helps the novel seem more like literature. The author uses Karen's process of being a detective to reveal things about the other characters. I wasn't too satisfied by the end because the mystery was not solved.

Week 10

I read Buddha Volume 1 by Osamu Tezuka. That Japanese comic was written by the manga artist who is considered a master. It's kind of interesting because it is about another master - Buddha. This is an interesting and sometimes funny look at one of the oldest stories in the world. It's interesting because I didn't know anything about the class structure in India.

His illustrations of India in black and white are beautiful and show the details of Indian art and culture. Thus seems very different from the style of illustration used in the characters/animals. They are very cartoony which makes the story more interesting. However, the story itself is hard to follow. The most interesting character is the little boy who was the thief. The expressions on his face with his big manga eyes make him look very cute and like he's always getting in trouble. The best scene is when he and his friends are peeing on the boy he stole from. I assume that this is the lowest class and I wonder if the people who are in this class in India are naked all the time.

I find action words interesting. It doesn't seem like this sort of comic would have BAM, POW, OWW. Another interesting part is when the boy can turn into animals. You feel sorry for the boy because his mother had been sold as a slave. So the little trouble maker decides to help him.

Week 9 Wide World of Comics

I read The Black Incal by Moebius and Jodorowsky. This comic is set in the future and the main character's name is John Difool. His job is a private investigator and he is sort of like the anti-hero in main of the old Noir films. He is kind of rough looking, hasn't shaved in a whole, his clothes and all messed up, and he's got bandaids where he has been hit. Like the detectives from Noir, his motives are not totally pure and he hangs out with robot hookers and people from the more shady side of life. He finds the incal but doesn't exactly understand it or its power.

As far as the layout of the comic goes, it uses 4 basic colors in vibrant tones and with variations of it. The figures are realistic with all the usual body parts, but there are lots of nonhumans type monsters. The layout is usually 5-6 panels per page that are easy to follow but the speech bubbles are all over the place and very confusing. It's fun that they use the old fashioned word art for the sound effects such as KPOW!

Parts of the story are like ironic fairy tales. For example, he meets a princess that looks so pure, she is drawn with a halo. She pays him to take her to a place seek pleasure for kinky desire but if he doesn't get her back by midnight he doesn't get paid. She has sex with a freaky dog man and when Difool tries to get her to go home, she turns the dog man on him. The ironic part is that while they fight it turns midnight and she turns into a saggy old lady. I don't really don't see a difference with this comic compared to the ones in the U.S.

Week 8 Stereotypes in Comics

Of course various racist have been stereotyped in comics. For example, Asian Americans are either the brilliant scientist or the Kung fo master. African Americans are dark superheroes like Black Panther or Spiderman's alter ego. In some of the older comics, African Americans are pictured as less intelligent and of the poor working class. However, things have improved in these groups in recent comics. But one group is still objectified are women, whether its Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Supergirl, they are all illustrated to be sexy symbols. Even in the Archie comics, which are supposed to be typical high school girls, they wear tight sweaters, have big boobs, and are not always very bright. One more recent example is Aeon Flux. She had an amazing body and wear tight clothes but she is a total badass. She can kick any man's butt. So if women are going to be objectified, a least now they can kick butt.

Week 7 Maus

Maus by Art Spiegelman is set in the 1950s after WWII and is the author's retelling of his father's story in Auschwitz. The cats are the Nazi and the mice are the Jews. It's all black and white, which is appropriate for this story because its a dark subject. It is considered to be the first graphic novel because this book is not recommended for children. This started a whole new genre, and I'm glad because I enjoy this type of style of "comics". I do think this story gives cats a bad name because I see cats as nice and cuddly and in this story that is considered the bad guys,

One image that does a good job of making this novel reflect the horror of this time is the title art for Chapter 4. A group of mice is being hanged. Some have their heads down and some have their mouths open crying for help. I think it's strange that someone would make a comic about the holocaust, I'm sure the people of the 1950s thought the same thing.

It does get a little confusing sometimes when the story goes back and forth between the 1950s and the war. Unlike graphic novels today, they don't show a lot of blood and gore when someone was being beaten. We find out that the artist's mother commits suicide in the end because she can't live with what has happened. 

Week 6 Underground Comics

For underground comics, I read Dirty Duck that was published in the Mickey Mouse Airpirates funnies. It didn't say what year it was published but they talked about being on acid and talking about the war, I would say this was from the late 1960s to the early1970s. The illustrations are poorly executed and the graphic/text is very hard to read. However, that is the point. The Dirty Dick's name fixes well for this story because he is pretty raunchy and his behavior is very crude. The artist has included a lot of penis symbols that were not very settled. The storylines are very weak and don't really make a whole lot of sense, but he does make some references to events of that time. For example, he says his friend might get taken by the CIA. Nudity is there but not dominant. The duck always wants to have sex with the female characters even though he's older. I like the part was the music student hits the duck with a boxing glove for being a creep but that really doesn't stop him. He eventually wants to kill himself because he was rejected by the girl but he changes his mind in the end. I don't exactly understand why people liked or wanted to read these comics because the illustrations are bad and the writing/story is terrible. Many people like them because they are underground.

Week 5 Contract with God

Contract with God by Will Eisner is about a man named Frimme Hersh who lives in a tenement at No.55 Dropsie Ave. in the Bronx. To be honest, I never knew really anything about Jewish culture, but I can relate the Hersh. He made a contract with God and lived his whole life being good but then has daughter died. I know its not a strong comparison but I can compare it to when you come to work every day and never late, you do everything you're supposed to do and you're up for a promotion and the person that is always late and never gets anything done on time get the promotion and you don't. It seems like the contract you made with your boss is broken, kinda like the contract that Hersh made with God was broken. I'm the kind of person that does what I've been told to do and sometimes you can see how it would be easy to react the way Hersh did.

Eisner's illustrations are powerful even though their black and white. For example, when he is coming home in the rain, I can feel the weight of his loss hanging over him and he seems to be beaten down with each raindrop. Also, the illustration of him sitting on the floor after he has put his daughter's picture away is fully of pain because he is so distraught.

I liked that they included the backstory of what happened. Anyone would be angry at God if their child died but he had a special form of hatred. The backstory really helped explain this. I can relate to what happened in a way. For example, during high school all my art teacher really like my work and would say how proud they were of the work I've done, then I get to Ringling and I realized that it didn't matter how good everyone thought I was because reality was a lot harsher.

Week 4 The Comic Book

I read Superman, Batman, and Captain America. All 3 are heroes who wear costumes and fight evil. however, Batman trained himself instead of having superpowers. All 3 use a similar format. Narration is in the yellow boxes to help connect the story. Both are filled with action but the bad guy in Batman and Captain America seem scarier than in Superman. Also, Captain America is more patriotic with lots of solders and Nazis. Superman seems to fight ordinary criminals but Batman's bad guys seem evil like the Joker. The color in Batman was the most vibrant and the images really showed action. They all showed the very first use of BLAM and WHAM. One of the funniest thing in all of them who be the ads. For example, in Superman you can order a costume just like his

Week 3 Little Nemo

Winsor McCay illustrated the series Little Nemo in Slumberland and Charles Schultz created Peanuts. These 2 comics were both about children but that's where the similarities stop. Since the story of Nemo takes place in his dreams, I love the whimsical aspect of the format. One double-page spread might be 3 columns on each page that extent for the top to the bottom. For example, he dreamed about riding an elephant and this long skinny format made the animals seem huge to little Nemo. Other pages might just have one giant image across the double spread. One image I liked was looking down at the multi-level staircase and his use of perspective gave a real sense of depth. On the other hand, Schultz's Peanuts doesn't have whimsy and is in a consistent format of 4 or 6 frames of the same size. Also, the content is completely different. Nemo is in a dream world and Peanuts is everyday life. The characters in Peanuts are like little adults and don't have the imagination as Nemo.

Week 2 Understanding Comics

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud was fun to read because it was written like a comic. However, it was difficult for someone like me to pick out the most important. As a graphic design major, the part I most enjoyed was his examples of layout. he broke it down into 6 different types. The one I found that was most interesting was scene to scene because it can take the reader through time and space. Another interesting design element is his use of B&W throughout most of the book, but when he starts talking about the use of color he injects the 3 primary colors. I must be honest, the design of the book was NOT reader-friendly. It was fun that he used a lot of different fonts and he played with kerning and leading and he loved jumping the gutter. Since it is a book about comics, it was great that he used a bunch of different artistic styles from ancient Egypt, early 1900, to today.

Week 1, The Arrival

My first impressions of the graphic novel The Arrival by Shaun Tan was that I liked the fact that there weren't words such as speech bubble or paragraphs so I could interact with the illustrations more and let them tell the story. The illustrations were outstanding and they tell the story very well. They keep on track of what they are telling and I don't get lost, plus I like the fact that the illustrations are realistic and not too cartoony or have that comic book feel to it. The artist's style is to imitate old photographs that had that brown-ish hue. I like the arrangement of the panels. For example, some pages have 1 big image, but other pages have up to 12 smaller images. I like the detail in the smaller images such as the hands holding the paper crane. But my favorite is the double-page spread with the crowd of more modern-day looking people looking out at the city skyline. However, he inserts two giant ancient figures who look like they come from a folk tale.

What really carries this story well and actually has it make scenes is the way the illustrator is conveying the emotions and the body language. For example, the despair on the man's face in the first part of the story is heartbreaking even though no words are being told what's happening, you can see it in his face. But later on, he meets a new family and his emotion starts to change for the better. The best part of all is that he makes enough money to bring his family to him. The author gives a satisfying ending when the daughter gives help to another new immigrant