Literature of Comics

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...