Literature of Comics

Maus , by Arthur Spiegelman, is a intense retelling of his father’s life being a Jewish man during the Natzi occupation. The story stays true to the way Spiegelman’s father recounts it, which is the whole story. The story goes back and forth from the story of  Spiegelman father’s youth and him many years later telling his son. The thing that separates Maus from other graphic novels is the art style. For the author of this non fiction story to approach the narrative in such way that he did, truly intensifies the impact of the storytelling. There is so much symbolism in the character choices that the writer makes, the mouse characters are all Jews and implying that they are the lowest in the food chain, becoming obvious prey to the other characters. Also the audience is presented with the cat figures, which represents the people of the Natzi party, the predators of the mice. Dogs in the story, represents the United States, the dumb and friendly higher predator on the food chain, ...

When I was younger I played Super Princess Peach and religiously watched the Indiana Jones movies. Idolizing their fantastical journeys to foreign lands. Never questioning Indiana’s unwanted and aggressive advances towards Willie or how he undermines all of his female companions. I thought that was just how things worked in the 80s, that’s just how Indiana rolls, never realizing how toxic he is as a male figure. As I got older I realized the problems in movies like Indiana Jones and just blamed its problems on the age it was made. But now after watching these videos I find these things kind of unsettling in these very famous and influential movies because once you put your stereotype searching goggles they are very VERY evident, only there to manipulate the plot. Writers shouldn’t rely on stereotypes to save their poor script and try to write something substantial and good. I don’t enjoy stereotypes that drive a storyline but if it’s for something that isn’t overtly offensive ...

For week six of our literary comic venture, we focused on the underground comic circuit of the 1960’s. Contrary to comics prior the underground comics movement, post 1950s era,  they included subjects that we usually associate comics with, superheroes, detectives, and such. But containing a fuzzy overarching goal of educating the minds of the prominently youth readership. Comics during these days were created to entertain and to entertain, only. The comics of the time were never made to make a statement on politics or have any other strong opinions about things, while the comics created in the underground circuit were made to talk about the things that the world wasn’t talking about at the time, like drug culture and being LGBTQ, in a time that talking about sexuality wasn’t as a common as it is today. They featured many gay themes in the comic, Gay Comix . Here I read an anthology of various gay tales, some of topics dealing with same sex family life to the gay dating scene...

Eisner’s approach in telling his graphic novel, last day in Vietnam , is very straightforward in comparison to Thompson. Last Day in Vietnam is a story that’s told in first person, so the audience gets to experience the story like they were in it. The reader plays a  big time war reporter come to get the inside scoop and get the details on how to the Vietnam war is really going. The reader is guided through their journey through the foreign land of vietnam by a major on his last day in Vietnam, hence the title, or so it seems. The major is the reader’s only source of information when it comes to learning more about the environment, which he happily obliges in because he’s oh so chatty and in high spirits on his last day of work. The interesting thing about this story is that the reader knows just as much as the war reporter, which is an interesting element of reader involvement. Tragically things turn sour and the perimeter of the camp gets bombed by the Vietnamese, which stop...