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...

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...