Week 9 | Wide World of Comics

10:03 PM

Moebius

So. I read some Jean Giraud, better known as Moebius, comics and I think before I say anything about his work, I just need to let something out real quick.

[inhales]

JEAN GIRAUD'S ART IS SO WONDERFULLY GOOD.

Caption: A picture of me thinking about Giraud's art because words at this point cannot convey how much I feel towards that art.

Now that that's done, I'll come back to talking about his art later, so let's focus on the actual content of his comics. I read samples of his work from Heavy Metal, a science fiction and fantasy comics magazine created by Giraud himself. He has a really interesting storytelling style that I don't really experience very often. He tells things very matter of factly. If a character dies, they die. If they kill Cthulhu, they kill Cthulhu. The endings are abrupt. Either it ends a few panels after the climax or right on the climax, and then he gives a little text box saying, "Anyways, this is what happened afterwards!" There isn't much preface to his stories or world building in the beginning either though. It's simply a leap of faith on part of the reader to delve straight into the narrative. It takes a while to get used to what's going on, especially when the majority of his fantasy works can't be grounded into the logic of our reality. But I think that's what makes his sci-fi and fantasy comics so fascinating! 

Giraud's work is wacky and zany, perhaps mystical is a better word. The settings he manages to create are HUGE. They look like they could go off into the distance forever, it makes you wonder what kind of adventures are out there that it makes you want to explore it yourself. His stories manage to evoke so much wonder because of his imaginative landscapes that ooze with style.



Everything about Giraud's work is dripping in style. His linework is incredibly detailed and his use of color perfectly matches his crazy worlds. I had never read any of his work before this, and after reading it, I see how he has impacted many artists today. While I was reading, his worked felt familiar, and I thought to myself, "Wow, this reminds me of this other artist." I realize now that they were probably influence by Giraud and that I should probably flip my statement to, "Wow, this artist reminds me of Giraud."


Linnea Sterte

Victor Mosquera

It's really amazing to see how influential Giraud's work is, and I'm surprised I never heard about him before. I was schocked too to find out how close he was with Hayao Miyazaki, especially since Giraud ended up naming his daugther Nausicaä after Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of  the Wind. 

Week 7 | Legitimation of Comics

12:19 AM

Maus by Art Spiegelman


I remember first stumbling upon Maus sometime back in middle school, puzzled by this unknown title and its strange cover. I never opened it up and simply put it back on its shelf in the library where I had found it. Periodically, I would somehow manage to stumble back upon the graphic novel here and there, but still never quite picking it up to read. From the cover, I had different ideas of what the story was. I though maybe it was a piece of fiction judging by the mice. Perhaps more historical fiction featuring cat Hitler. Maybe an action piece? A tale of drama, politics and spies? Maus gradually became like that cousin that you vaguely recognize at dinner parties but don't really interact with, minding your own business in your own corner. So finally, after all this time getting the chance to pick it up and read it has been quite the surprise for my expectations.

Maus is a biographical tale of Vladek Spiegelman and his experiences as a Holocaust survivor, which is all told by his son, Art. It's a tale told bluntly, which is probably because it's based off of Vladek's retelling of his story. And he is a helluva blunt man. There's no sugarcoating to the events, because it's the truth of the matter, that's what actually happened. The things that happen can get hard to read, but yet I wanted to keep reading, to understand that these aren't fictional events. 



The most notable aspect of Maus is how Art depicts different races and nationalities as different animals. Art plays off of the use of stereotypes by using one animal type for an entire group of people. The Jewish were mice, Germans the cats, Polish the pigs, Americans the dogs, etc. By doing so, it makes you think maybe all the mice are the same since you can hardly tell who's who when they all look the same, and that's the point. Art is playing into the stereotype mentality. You think everyone is the same since they look the same. But he flips it on its head when the story reveals that despite looking the same, each character has a distinct personality to them and act much differently from each other. There are pigs that are kind, pigs that are vicious. Mice that are friendly, mice that are selfish. The animals don't act as a universal indicator, much like how stereotypes don't.

I think it's interesting that I am reading this novel now rather than earlier. I feel like if I read it when I was younger, I wouldn't get the whole animal allegory or would miss the subtlety in the narrative that flips between present day and flashback. It's a powerful work and I'm glad I finally took the time to read through it all.

Week 6 | Underground Comix

11:49 PM

Whoo. Underground comics are a real crazy ride alright. Disturbing, political, and oh-so damn horny, we talking underground comics for sure.

I read Mr. Natural first, which started off pretty normal and became so absurd so quickly. The racist depictions of black people, an overgrown baby sucking off Mr. Natural, suffice to say, I was pretty uncomfortable after I was done reading it. I guess that means it did its job as an underground comic.

In class, I read Corn Fed, which featured wacky, outlandish short stories that were usually resolved by sex in the end. My favorite line from it was, "You look like a million bucks (and a million fucks)," which genuinely made me laugh to myself. Again though, it kind of felt similar to Mr.Natural where it just relies on shock value to make sex some kind of punchline.

The third comic I read was The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers: The Idiot Abroad, which I enjoyed the most out of them all. I was actually surprised by how much story played a role and how well done the art was. This is definitely an underground comic that focuses on the political aspect rather than the sexual aspect, which was nice that I got to experience two different types of work. Compared to the other two comics I read, the art was much more sophisticated. What struck me the most was how detailed and rendered the backgrounds were, becoming illustrative.

I was pretty surprised by the variety of content in underground comics. There's definitely a lot to explore, but personally, underground comics are definitely not my cup of tea. Though I can politely see how they fit into the comic history timeline as an important influence on modern day comics.

Week 5 | Graphic Novels

11:22 PM


Today's read of the week is brought to you by Blankets by Craig Thompson.

Blankets is an autobiographical graphic novel published in 2003 that recounts Thompson's childhood and adolescent years. Thematically, it focuses on Thompson's struggle with his religious identity in a devout Christian household and his experience with first love. The narrative is deeply personal and it shows in the way Thompson is able to describe events with such detail, as if he were experiencing these moments all over again for the first time. In a very romanticized way at least, but I'm a sucker for that sentimental, cheesy, overly-personal mush. The story's got a lot of heart to it, and that's what I love in a story. Even though Blankets' story is rather mundane, I think that's okay because real life can be mundane.



What's not mundane is the art, which is flipping amazing, hecking fantastic, holy hot frying fritters gosh darn beautiful. I think you know something's good when you just can't find the right words to put together to convey all the things you want to say. So instead you just come to the point where you end up frantically gesturing towards the whole thing and saying, "Look!" It's dynamic. It's expressive. It looks exactly like how it should feel.



I was reminded a lot of This One Summer, another coming-of-age type graphic novel that sits in my bookshelf back home, by Jillian and Mariko Tamiko. Both of them deal themes of adolescence and growing into sexuality. Plus, the art is also fantastic in the way it manages to capture those everyday-life moments, much like Thompson's art. Curious, I looked into it, and it turns out Craig Thompson's Blankets played an influential role in several of Jillian's and Mariko's works. It was really nice to then read Craig Thompson's review on This One Summer and how much he loved it.

In the end, I'm sad I pushed off reading Blankets, but so glad I finally got the chance to curl up in bed and read it in one go.

Week 4 | The Comic Book

6:52 PM


I never really got a good chance to get into comic books. There's just so much out there, I have no idea where to start! I tried to experiment in picking up comic books in my last two years of high school, but I still found it hard to scale the tall mountain that is the comic book world.

This week, I dipped my toe back into comic books again by reading TinTin in Tibet by Hergé, published in 1960. It starts with Tintin on vacation when he all of a sudden he gets a vision that his friend Chang Chong-Chen (a rather offensive name...) is stranded in the Himalayan mountains after his plane crashed. Eventually Tintin and company manage to track down the crash site and find Chang who was being taken care of by a Yeti.

Admittedly, it took me two tries before I could fully read through this. The moment I saw walls of text bubble start to come at me, I had to slowly close my laptop. (I don't like to say it, but Kanye West's quote, "I'm a proud non-reader of books," unfortunately rings too true for me...) However, when I finally gave it a chance and hunkered down to throughly give a good read, I was surprised to find how well the dialogue was written. Overall, the characters felt human. It really made me enjoy the interactions between the characters, especially the fun dynamic between Tintin and Captain Haddock. I really didn't expect Haddock to be such a caring figure towards TinTin, it was really nice to see!

As a first time Tintin reader, I really loved getting to experience Hergé's drawings. I always find myself drawn towards simple, slick drawing styles, so I wasn't really surprised to find myself enjoying Hergé's clean line work and character designs. The vibrant colors also give the drawings so much life, I don't really have another way to describe it than pure fun to look at.




Week 3 | The Comic Strip

2:59 PM


The good ol' comic strip, a staple of the American Sunday paper and morning breakfast.

For this week, I looked at several strips, starting with Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland which ran from 1905 to 1911. I loved the visual storytelling McCay was able to achieve in his clever use of panel space and progression. His clear progression in character action managed to create the effect that the strip were playing out like an animated film; no surprise when McCay eventually did turn his cartoons into animations. Perhaps my favorite part of his work in this series was his ability to convey the dreamlike sensation by allowing there to be those quiet moments where Little Nemo seems to be floating in negative space. McCay isn't afraid to let the the comic take a breath, and it's these quiet moments that speak the most to me.

This leads me to the one issue I had with McCay's work, along with many other early comic strips such as Krazy Kat. Sometimes there's just too much text! The sheer amount of words was too overwhelming for me, which initially set me aback at first when I first took a glance at the strips. The speech bubbles often obscured the flow of the comic or were very difficult to read due to how tightly the words were cropped into the bubble (shout out to all the letterers out there today and the amazing work they do).

On the other hand, Ernie Bushmiller's comic strip Nancy from the 1930's appears to be much like a comic strip we might see in today's paper in it's way it delivers a simple visual gag through somewhere around two to four panels. It is certainly a much simpler strip compared to McCay's Little Nemo, but I think it's interesting to see two different takes on how to handle a comic strip.

It's pretty amazing how far comic strips have changed. What's more awesome to see these influences stay strong to this day, where we get to see Little Nemo get a modern remake in 2014 as Little Nemo: Return to Slumberland by IDW publishing, which I think I'll definitely have to check out one day.


Week 2 | Comic Theory

7:32 PM

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

Scott McCloud presented a quite thorough look at comics and how they influence us. 

Perhaps my favorite point he made was about how much we relate to characters on the scale of reality and abstraction. As a child, I always felt odd that I was never quite interested in movies or shows that weren't animated, but it reassuring now that McCloud shines some light on why that is so. When a character is rendered realistically, there is little room for interpretation in who that character is. However, the more abstracted a character becomes, the easier the reader can infuse their own subconsciousness on them (whoa!). That is why when things are cartoony, but uncomfortably realistic at the same time (I'm looking at you Polar Express and TinTin), we venture into Uncanny Valley where we just don't know how we are supposed to feel anymore.

The best example to illustrate his point: Kingsglaive Final Fantasy XV.


Kingsglaive: The most unnecessary 2 hour cutscene

Kingsglaive is a CG movie released last July as a multimedia expansion of Final Fantasy XV (why this is a ridiculous concept is a whole other topic). The visuals are, admittedly, pretty gosh darn amazing, but...

...they are just too real...  

So real, in the end of things, I could care less about most of these characters. To be fair, I haven't watched the whole movie, so I can't beat down on the movie too hard. But if you tried to ask me what happened in those 12 minutes of the movie, I'd just say there were some pretty explosions and big monsters doing cool things. If you asked me who the main character's name was, I don't even think I could tell you who the main character was, less so their name. The characters are so realistic, it's hard to evoke any empathy from me. Which is strange, you'd assume something so lifelike would be easier to relate to, but in the end, the opposite is true. 

Like McCloud says, things that are more abstract tend to be more relatable to the viewer. Things that are realistic leave no room for the mind to reach closure, because the closure is already right there. That's why I think what comics and cartoons are able to achieve is pretty awesome.