Literature of Comics

This is the last entry, team! Oh, what a time its been. This last entry will focus on the comics medium of the modern age, webcomics. I am a accustomed to webcomics and I do read them on the weekly, on the app Line Webtoon . This app is for comic creators of all skill levels to share their stories for a very receptive and hungry readership. The creator on the Webtoon platform vary in artistic experience and writing ability, the majority of the content is “reader bait”, in my opinion. The average user of the app is between the age of 13 to 23 and female, a way to grab the majority of the community’s attention is to give the slightest inkling of a love triangle and the webcomic will become overwhelmingly popular, and will be excruciatingly spread out for 90+ chapters, regardless of the quality of the writing and art. I do I have MANY problems with Webtoons comics community, but regardless on how I feel you’ll find a diamond in the piles and piles of terrible terrible content, of c...

Here we are, the second to last entry into this blog. I hope I have showed some sort of progress in my analyzation of the comic medium and all the things I’ve read that fall under that umbrella, but ‘shrug’ who knows. This week we read contemporary comic books all about the modern adaptations of superheroes, like batman, or redefining the what we know about superheros, in Watchmen . I read Batman “The Killing Joke”, famed and mostly revered by fans who’ve encountered it, compared to any other episode in the whole Batman comic universe. Here we have a not so typical Batman comic, Batman doesn’t ensue vigilante justice in the ungodly hours of the night. We see Batman attempting to have a dialogue with the Joker, trying to reach a common understanding with him. He does not the get the closure he’s searching for,he is taken into one of Joker’s sadistic and conniving schemes. Also the audience gets to see Joker’s tragic origin in this universe, the reader gets some explanation on why he...

Week eleven of our history and literature of comics romp, we set our fazers to comics as contemporary literature. Contrary to the comics that we have focused on the prior weeks these comics especially have strategically complicated narratives and themes, that are essential to the effectiveness of the story-telling. This week I read Daytripper, by Gabriel Bas and Fabio Moon. The story follows Bras, a Brazilian obituary writer, on his thirty-second birthday, who’s researching for a new obituary assignment for a very famous well-loved man. Bras is wrestling with his career, troubled by the fact that he writes only about death, but dreams about writing about life. We find out eventually that Bras is one of the sons of the famous and influential man he’s writing the obituary about. Bras visits a few of the places that his father use to frequent for research, he takes a detour for a pack of smokes and inadvertently gets himself into a unfortunate predicament. The story is nonlinea...

1. What is the reaction to the text you just read? Well I have a basic knowledge of the Batman universe, but I haven't read or heard about this one. I always enjoy an origin story, even though everything about this episode is so heavy handed and dark that it puts a bad taste in your mouth, but I still like it. I do enjoy seeing the contrast of the Joker's former self, sniveling, weak, wannabe comedian and his transformation is astounding and utterly painful to see the things that made the Joker, the Joker. Which makes all his conniving actions in the future so hurtful and contrasting from the glimpse we see of  him the past,  we see the poor man who he was before and the creature he has developed into. I think the concept of the story is really interesting, in the fact Batman wants to dialogue with the Joker. Maybe to understand him or just to see some common ground, in the fact they will be each others end it must be acknowledged. 2. What connections did you make with t...

For week ten in our history of comics journey we’re talking about manga and the Japanese comic tradition. Here we learned about the king of the Japanese comic industry, Tezuka. The man launched his comics all throughout Japan creating unimaginable success, thus launching comics into new renaissance. Inspiring a wave of new comic creators in the 90s like Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Inuyasha and Ranma ½ .  Takahashi was my introduction into Japanese media, when Inuyasha was broadcasted in the US. Once I got a taste of that I went onto the other works of Takahashi, so I was already familiar with Ranma ½ before this last class. So for the assignment I decided to revisit my youth, reread Ranma ½. It’s been a good six to seven years since I read it last and reading it now gave me so much nostalgia it was astounding. Ranma is a story that’s quite different than the stories that were written at the time, Takahashi has a knack for writing unique plot lines usually having some ...

Valerian: New Future Trilogy is a  fantasy adventure story following Valerian and his lady companion, Laureline, fighting interplanetary foes and exploring new lands. A major style identifier of Mezieres and Christin is the bold black outlines, the black shadows that remain consistent with the designs of characters and objects in their universe. Another artistic element I enjoyed was the overall color palette. Mezieres and Christin stuck with a limited color palette consisting of muted primary and secondary colors, creating a strong nostalgic retro mood all throughout the narrative, the coloring resembles watercolor in that sense. Another artistic device that I really enjoyed seeing the graphic novel was the atmospheric shots, that the artist did when the reader was brought to a new setting. These shots are essential to this genre of storytelling because of the unexplored fantasmagorical environment that is space. To be introduced to these unfamiliar worlds in such a way is e...

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...

Here are the notes I took while I was reading House of Haunts ! -Scrooge mcduck goes in his money bin -R-day? Moves his money in prep -moves his money elaborately into catacombs -r day comes -robbers day -beagle boys study in jail -the beagle boys leave school and prepare the heist of scrooges money bin - they use their smarts to try to break into the bin they find that there is no money -scrooge laughs at their lausey attempts -the wallow in their failures when one boy decides that they should follow scrooge -they follow scrooge thru his day - proceeds thru multiple days - scrooge wants to his money and tries to leave but gets locked in a closet - the beagle boys feed a saw into the closet window. -scrooge escapes - the chemistry major sprays a glowing serum on scrooge as he darts past to see his money - scrooge leads them right to his money -they smack him and scrooge forgets what happens and finds himself in a different location - the bo...

What I observed from the Peanuts comics, cerca 1952, was that the characters that we know and love today are drastically different from the way they were originally in the 1950’s. In the 50’s the Peanuts gang were toddlers, instead of elementary school kids, playing with blocks and practically never leaving their home. Also visually the character designs are different. The characters have much larger heads than anticipated, probably to make them look more like toddlers, and their pupils increased in size as well. Another defining element that makes the Peanuts , the Peanuts is the first panel, which shows the title in the middle of the scene, but the characters interact like nothing is there and continue their action. Tarzan is a comic that is one of a  kind, a comic that continued the previous storyline with the next issue, keeping the story consistent, for that time a consistent story each week was not as frequent as we see today. The stories do lack substance because he doe...

Let’s talk about Scott McCloud shall we. Scott McCloud was a modern comic visionary in his day, of the late nineties through the early two-thousands. He made it his goal to make comics understandable to all who use the medium, to utilize the art of the comic to the best to a person’s extent. One key element that he brings to light and emphasizes is the important use of iconography, using images to explain an ideas, which is essential to basic comic storytelling. McCloud argues the idea that the more simplistic an image the easier it is to be taken out of one's life and to be transported into the comic. When the image is so simplistic the image in question could have many meanings, its fluid. While the more realistic an image is the reader focuses on the features and details rather than being involved in the story. There’s also an argument that more a simplistic an image and the more fantastical the plot is the more the audience believes in the situation. He also explains the c...

page 1-A woman dances around a hen to thank the bird for its fruitfulness, in these dark times. page 2-A bird spirit and it's companion oversee Veronica to make sure she actually, truly dead, because she has pulled these tricks before. page 3-The bird spirits watch Veronica as she is put in her time out spot. page 4-The bird spirit man  and other spirit companion converse on the happenings of their day in their hangout in the local catacombs. page 5-The bird spirit man rejoices in a scream as he sees Veronica's cold dead body on the ground. If only his rooster brethren told him earlier.... page 6-The bird spirit man watches as Brad breaks down the newest dance moves for Louise. page 7- The bird spirit man spins his yarns with the ladies of the brothel, the women don't seem to enjoy it's stories as much as it thought. page 8 -The bird spirit man struts down the hallway searching for Rachel, Maureen, and Sr. Lionel Gooseman in a riveting game of hide and see...

Shaun Tan's, The Arrival Shaun Tan’s tale, The Arrival , though wordless, packs all the punch it needs through the story’s visual imagery. Tan’s decision to make the story without dialogue was a large risk in itself, but he lets his illustrations shine and tells the story for him. The most important thing in his situation is to make sure the audience understands what’s happening to the character without knowing what they’re saying, so for the audience to understand a character’s feelings or motivation Tan exaggerates the character’s body language and overall expression. Tan spends multiple frames focusing only on the main character’s changing expressions, such as when the main character is talking to one of the immigration authorities. The scene focuses on the main man explaining to immigration officer why he is immigrating to a different country, the man pulls out a picture of his family and follows the explanation with hand gestures, though the action has no dialogue the...