Week Nine: A Wide World of Comics

In class we discussed Eurocomics and some important people who created early comics in Europe. Rodolphe Topper, was one of the most influential people in european comics, making albums and pass them around. Marie Duval was one of the first french cartoonist and contributed to a journal her husband was apart of. Caran d'Ache was a Russian who also made caricatures in the early 19th century and these were the beginnings of comics and the creations. We talked about the multiple influencers who were also in our reading for this week.

Nikopol Trilogy seems to be in a dystopian France taking place in 2023 that faced a lot of nuclear wars and also has alien inhabitants. It begins talking about a particular governor who is wants to trade all of his oil in return of immortality. He ends up not being successful. While this is going on we meet a character that falls from the sky and his name is Nikopol. He loses a leg in this process, and ends up waking up in a metro station bleeding to death. This is when we meet Horus who ends up building him another leg, and subsequently possessing him. They seem to agree on a common goal, Nikopol's goal being political and humanitarian and Horus' personal revenge of a divine by seizing control of the oil. Some personal thoughts is I like the fact they have press clippings talking about the politics and even can include some author's notes. This is kind to show the progressing of what they are doing and how it's effecting Paris. Afterwords we follow a character named Jill. The story from there progresses strangely, and she becomes almost like another main character. It's interesting that we see this theme of nuclear war and dystopian Paris living alongside aliens, this makes for a very interesting set illustrations. I think it keeps this theme of french sci-fi with Egyptian gods and the political power between them because it's so strange.

Week Eight: Stereotype and the Ethics of Representation

Comics and Graphic Narratives can sometimes represent both males and females bodies and personalities in ways that people would deem as perfect or in some way interesting because of a trope that they usually follow. This week we are talking about how we see representation in these. Superhero comics are the most popular comics and have characters and that can be influenced to toxic masculinity, or tropes that follow very unhealthy and abusive ideals. Like how male protagonists are shown to have emotional detachment, aggression, hyper competitiveness, and violence. These are seen to be positive aspects of a character however I think it is harmful to have ideals or representation that people need to be a certain way. Just like how females in media are sexually objectified and have expectations that aren't real or healthy.

Stereotypes like these are there for people to feel okay for the prejudice they carry with them. You don't have to make racist characters because of stereotypes.

Week Seven: The Legitimation of the Comics

Maus is one of the first comics to be considered to be an epic, and to this day is considered giving significance to comic narratives by introducing mature concepts. Maus uses imagery that I feel helps the reader understand and acknowledge the images graphically rather than their imagination. The Holocaust is usually not perceived in this way, from what I remember most depictions are usually through literature and images, but Maus uses detailed drawings that contains the emotion.

We also see, usually animals that talk and are upright are "funny" Maus breaks that mold and instead uses it as representation. Using mouse maybe just another way to maybe not put a identity and awareness into the comic and we can use it to go into another world. I think this adds to it, as it now focusing more on the narrative of the story rather than what the character looks like. This gives it more of an experience rather than just simply reading a story about it. Unlike other mediums like art or film, comics stay the way they are and the story does not progress unless the reader or audience continues to read and process the images.

Barefoot Gen is a short movie we watched in class based on the World War II bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It follows a boy, Gen Nakaoka who lives on the outskirts of Hiroshima. He lives with his pregnant mother, dad, sister and little brother. Life is hard for all of them, both because of malnutrition because they cannot afford food, and from the constant bomb threats from overhead American planes that fly past. The parents are very obviously upset by this but keep their hopes high for themselves, there soon to be born child, and there kids.

During the night, they go into the bomb shelters nearby while the American planes pass by, although they are struggling, they continue to fight for each other in hopes that the war will end soon and life will improve. Soon, however, the atomic bombs drop when least expected and horrible imagery and themes of death, despair and destruction ensue. The colors shift and distort, time stops and everything around Gen is impacted in that instant. Gen is lucky enough to have been behind a concrete wall however, the girl standing besides him was not, and is shown melting on screen to the horror of the bomb going off.  We follow Gen as he awakes among the carnage wrought by these bombs, as he wanders through a now destroyed Hiroshima, shambling men, women and children walk by like corpses, practically melting as they groan in agony. There bodies withered, and fusing together in unnatural ways. This movie shows us the horror of this war and what these people went through because of the government. This is only the beginning as it follows him after the initial calamity, and for much later. The fight for food only becomes more dire, the mothers newborn daughter requires constant supervision and care. the military is unsure of how to help, and dead bodies and destruction still surround them.

Week Six: Underground Comics

Drawing for comics is about picture writing, and getting ideas across through this process. We can see that the same experience we get from literature, seeing the story and imagery and world through the person eyes. For the Underground Comics, I can see a lot of the content in them has more mature themes that would disturb some and also at the same time make others laugh. It's the freedom of expression of the artist and their ideas. There are no fundamental rules for comics like film or like novels. We have been using this type of imagery for a long time, like political cartoons. Just like video games it created a panic of it influencing people to be bad, or stupid. It can be used as another tool to help. A lot of people in the Underground were taking risks, and because now the decades of trying to be legitimized we can see this eventually created the term "Graphic Novel" now seen as a art form and as a piece of literature. It's a media that will keep being revolutionized the same way. I can already see graphic novels developing into having mini animations.

Week Five: Eisner and Thompson

This week we are analyzing Eisner and Thompson similarities as storytellers. In Will Eisner approach he tries to implement his personal memories and experiences in Contract with God. In Eisner's Blankets, he also is telling highly personal stories relating to their real life. They use real people and real emotions to develop their stories that they tell. I think this is why both are so successful. Both styles are very similar and different, we can see that both explore and use lots of black lines and depressing tones. The figures are more simplified in Blankets, Whereas Contract with God had more detailed figures. These comics are depressing stories about victims that jump back and forth between stories. I also like how both have seasons they both particularly favor like snow in Blankets and rain in Contract with God. Both comics are questioning god and religion. They ask the question: If I'm a good person then why am I punished? They ask these question whenever something unfortunate and out of their control happens. They both at points discuss racism even, with hateful remarks.  Will Eisner believes that this medium is a new literary form that is just told with drawings. It's interesting that a there is so much stigma against graphic novels and comics. Of course, Thompson's comic seems to take place more towards modern day, that graphic novels still have some stigma but are more accepted. Reading both thoroughly, I think Blankets felt more natural. Probably because the length is longer and the interesting visuals.I feel and can relate to a lot of the imagery and story elements that are brought up, as someone who has similar situations happen, or at least feeling. In Blankets, I can understand what it's like to be an artist, and to care about others. The thoughts of childhood and growing up to be an adult through experiences.

Week Four: The Comic Book

I decided to start by reading Carl Barks and The Art of the Comic Book by Michael Barrier before I read the other comics to kind of get more information about Carl. The most interesting part of reading Michael Barrier’s interpretation is that he doesn’t see really feel nostalgic or the memories of childhood. He talks about looking back at Carl Barks comics is that the feelings were relatable and magnified emotionally even the negative ones. Reading over his bibliography, he seemed to have a very hard-working and difficult life. Doing a lot of labor jobs like working on cars or farms and a lot of times he had only a bit of money to his name moving around the country. 

Even the comedy of the comics is based in some amount of seriousness. Common themes of the comics are self-pity and taking a closer look at them its about doing our best or die trying. He starts to talk about Carl Barks being quite unique as an artist and I’m inclined to agree. Especially in more of a world and characters that are supposed to be funny, like Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. While reading, I found out that he became a full-time cartoonist around the Depression and is probably what influenced the type of story-telling he does. Rather than Donald was being developed and changed by Carl its said that Donald was the one the influenced Carl. Donald started to become a more interesting and funny character for this reason and being more fleshed out. Carl Barks seemed to be more interested in getting more interpretation out of one drawing rather than a sequence of them trying to tell a whole story. I think the most interesting part about Carl Barks is that he was an artist that seemed to be able to relate to his characters and their experiences and they don't seem two dimensional for this reason. He wanted to have characters that people could relate too also, the gags are well thought out because he really thought about what he was drawing and trying to get the audience to perceive. I also added this image of Carl Barks reference sheet because its the most popular and reference for Donald Duck. I think this adds to another layer of being able to understand a character deeply.

Week Three: The Comic Strip

For this week, I read the collection of Little Nemo comics, Krazy Kat and The Rarebit Fiend. The specific story I thought was interesting the The Dream of the Rarebit Fiend comic strips. These newspaper comic strips began on September 10, 1904 and ran until 1925. They were released under the publisher, New York Herald and were immensely popular for their time. They were drawn and written by American Cartoonist, Winsor McCay.

All of these comics follow a different set of characters, all having the same dilemma. They all embark on a strange and often unfortunate dream, with extreme cases of luckiness or misfortune. They involve shrinking to unhuman sizes, taking medicine to grow taller for the women of your dreams, licking too many postage stamps and repeatedly sitting, laying, leaning and stepping in multiple slabs of sticky bug paper.  The idea is meant to be fantastical, as none of this could really happy, minus the sticky paper.

There meant to represent dreams and how far fetched they can be, and how they can leave a lasting impression on you after you wake up. The comics themselves follow a very common layout. Starting at the top left, and ending at the bottom right. They do not ever break this layout and part of that is obviously because of there limitations.

These comics were printed on the tiny corners of newspapers back when they could only print in black ink and with very think edges. meaning a lot of the clean crisp lines or comics would be lost. The art here is shaded with dots and etching, and line work is very minimalist and readable from far away, usually relying on silhouettes and readable caricatures. Comics like this would be the inspiration for many American comic artists of the early 1900's and the beginning of the comic book franchise.

Week Two: Understanding Comics

When talking about Understanding comics, an interesting topic brought up by Scott McCloud in his Visual Magic of Comics TED talk is the idea of viewing a monitor of a computer as not a page but as a window. He discusses that we can take advantage of the digital medium for comics by creating an infinite canvas along any axis that we'd like, and that creating our comics with this infinite space in mind can lend to the viewers experience. His examples include having circular narratives that are actually circular, having a infinite comics on the X axis, or Y axis, having turns and bends in our panels and breaking narratives that literally break into two separate story lines.

This method was used by other artists and is used by many online E-comic pages today, one example is Lezhin Comics, a webtoon portal based in Korea offering artwork and comics in English, Korea and Japanese. This website takes advantage of one of Scott's ideas, that of an infinite scrolling Y axis. This way the comics, instead of going from left to right and constantly changing pages, goes from top to bottom and always continues scrolling down from the beginning of the comics to the end. Many comics that I have enjoyed on this site take this feature of the site to their advantage, having cuts and long fades from black to white and using minimalist style to help emphasize a scene to the audience.

Scott McCloud states that the idea that he's looking for is a Durable Mutation. Something that can change how we view comics and enhance it without losing what makes them so unique. Comic books and the genre as a whole are an expansive genre and not all of it fits into the same narrative arch and panel structure. Some artists will stick true to a basic panel layout while others will do everything in their power to deviate and try to change how
the viewer takes in their work by changing the panels and the structure.
This is no different and I believe it is the next big step to
changing comics for the digital post print generations.

Week One: Understanding Comics

The Arrival is supposed to be read almost like we are seeing a storyboard of a movie or animated film. It doesn't have any words or anything written but we can still know whats going on within the visuals. It seems very dreamlike with mystical creatures, instruments, and places. It seems to take place with a realistic style but yet it seems to be very high fantasy. We get very interesting visuals and every action is told with at least a panel or two. The main character seems to be in a world that he doesn't really understand and I feel as the viewer I feel similar to the main character. We are kind of in this strange world with text and imagery that I don't think anyone can really understand. The new places the main character are visiting he seems lost and not sure where he is going. I think it's really successful in being able to tell the story simply and with a perspective that is unique.