Blade if the Immortal revisions

Samurais, assassins, violence, and exactly the manga I’ve been avoiding for years. It’s not that I don’t like the subject matter, rather, it’s the opposite; I always knew if I started reading it, I would be unable to stop until I read it all. And that’s exactly what happened. For two weeks, the bare minimum of class work was done, and Blade of the Immortal was always open in my computer. And it was almost worth it. Almost, because, you see, the series isn’t complete yet. The story of Rin’s revenge is not complete. And that’s mildly frustrating.

Speaking of mildly frustrating, the main character, Rin is very frustrating when she is first introduced. I understand that she wants to avenge her parents and all, and don’t get me wrong, I would probably do the same thing, but she can’t fight. She only has one attack that only would work once depending on the amount of daggers/kunai/needles she has hidden on her person. For a good long while I couldn’t stand her. And then she broke down, going on about how pathetic she was, and how she knew she was going to die. It added dimension to her character, like she was willing to die if it meant meeting her goal. But then, what would be the point of it all? But she wasn’t completely blinded by her goal; she was willing to let a man of the Itto-ryu live because he was taking care of his son, and she didn’t want the little boy to suffer as she did. As it ends up the man attacks her, and the boy lives on with hate and rage towards Manji. She also meets the leader of the Itto-ryu alone multiple times, and yet she understands that she is incapable of killing him. It saves us a few pointless battles for read through, and it shows that Rin wants to be able to kill him with her own hands in an honorable fight. Though it seems like if that time were to ever occur, she would lose.

Manji is a very interesting fellow. He’s known as the killer of a thousand men (before be became immortal), yet he has a soft side. He only kills “bad” men in order to atone for what happened to his sister, because it was all his fault and he knows it. That is also what ties him to Rin; she looks just like his older sister, and he feels the need to help her. When Rin address him about training to make her stronger, he doesn’t sugar coat the fact that she is pathetic and all the training she had done before was pretty much useless because she wasn’t fighting anyone. Manji though, honestly cares for people. A prime example is when Manji held captive under the palace for immortality experiments. The first man to be made immortal becomes the closet thing to a friend for Manji while they both are imprisoned. But when the man is needlessly sacrificed, Manji becomes enraged. And even as he escapes, he mentions how terrible a thing they did to the first patient. He though shares some of the same moral values as the Itto-ryu despite them being his “enemy”. And ironically enough, the Mugai-Ryu who he teams up with to defeat the Itto-ryu, has less in common with him and his values.

The Mugai-ryu, or the Assassins guild, is a group of very interesting individuals saved from death row. The members range from Hyakurin, who murdered her husband after he killed her 2 children, Shinriji, for theft, to Shira, the extremely sadistic and disgusting nasty fucker. Honestly, the members of the Mugai-ryu aren’t bad people, they just did what they needed to in order to get by. Shira is the exception. He is terrible. I’ve read many comic books, a lot of manga, and manwah, in all different genres ranging from shojo to shounen, yuri to yaoi, hentai to children’s comics. But never have I ever been so revolted by one character as I have been by Shira. And honestly, that’s saying a lot. He severs his victims legs so they can’t run away, then depending on their gender he either slowly kills them, or he cuts them up as he rapes them. I can’t wait until he dies. On the other hand, I really hope Hyakurin and Giichi stay together. He’s very sweet and caring and would function as a good stabilizing feature for Hyakurin after all that has happened to the poor girl.

As I wikipedia’d the sword schools, I landed a page about historical sword schools. And I was noticing that I recognized far too many of the names. I really need to layoff the samurai manga…

WebComics

I’ll be very upfront about this: I do not much care for the technological, nor it for me. If I find something I like, I will buy it to therefore support the artist. And I’m terrible at keeping up with web comics, or comics in general if I’m reading them online. They lost their tactile quality and it’s only appealing to one sense, and it’s losing my interest to one of my many other books on that shelf to the right.

So, needless to say the web comics listed bellow are those I can remember. Or have bookmarked and remember them. Or just found them among the bookmarks for times past.

MegaTokyo: http://megatokyo.com/ : This can be labeled the first webcomic I’ve ever read. And its been over 3 years at least since I’ve bothered to open the web page. Needless to say, I have no idea whats currently going on in the story, but it started out fun and very interesting. Two gamer friends hop on a plan to Japan, and broke and are trying to live life and get enough money to buy a plane ticket home. And then the romance started, and then it just dragged on. And I stopped reading. The art style is very simplistic, very anime, and over all cute.

Happiness and Cyanide: http://www.explosm.net/comics/1876/ : Its art style is very simplistic. People are reduced to basic shapes, and the images are flat. But the content is hilarious. Sometimes is violent and gory. Others its very politically incorrect. And then some are about relationships. They are always one page long, though the format varies.

Penny Arcade: http://www.penny-arcade.com/ : They parody video games. The two main guys are entertaining, and hilarious and rather likable. They incorporate everyday life with videogame discussions, and video games with even more videgames. Often they point out very blatant “issues” with video games.

xkcd: http://xkcd.com/ : As its title says, it’s a web comic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

I.D. Fracture: http://idfracture.deviantart.com/ : The art style changes and improves as the story progresses and the artist gets better. It recently went from ink and toned and very “anime” to just the pencil sketches and a more mature manga style. The characters are very likable, each has their own story, personality and problems. Though it hasn’t updated in a long while, I’m addicted to it, and have reread it so many times.

Khaos Komix: http://www.khaoskomix.com/home.html : This comic has been redone multiple times, with each one dealing with the same characters just in a different way and situation. In the current version, and the sole one I’ve read, the story has been broken down into smaller segments, each told by a different character. It explores their relationship with their lover, themselves, and then their friends, which leads you on to the next story.

Brink: http://paperfangs.com/brink/ : I was reading this religiously for some time. The art style is very sketchy, done on the computer for the most part. I haven’t read it in a while… It deals with the main characters “insanity” and that of those he meets. It’s nowhere near as deep as it sounds. And that disappointed me. But it’s good enough.

Two Rooks: http://two-rooks.com/ : This comic is tied with ID Fracture for my most favorite on this list. The art is reminiscent of the film noir style, but uses limited color and gets a very strong impact. The story line is very complex and sometimes confusing, yet is still very beautiful. The characters are distinctly different from one another, in both personality and looks. And the entire website leads itself to the story. And I’m completely in love with the main character and well almost the entire cast.

Fables:Legends in Exile and Kingdom Come

Fables: Legends in Exile vol.1

The idea of fairy tales and their characters living in a modern day city is something I automatically fell on live with, which means I’m very biased towards it. The idea of the stories that have persisted through time and in a way are very much apart of our lives as they are today as they were when they were just folk tales before the brothers Grimm bound them in a book being brought together again by a new medium makes me very happy.

Needless to say, I was very disappointed when the individual stories were overlapped. “Rose Red and Snow White” is very different from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. Even though the names are the same, Snow White as a person is different in the stories. And it’s wrong to combine them as one. And then Jack suffers a similar issue. There’s “Jack and the Beanstalk” Jack and “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick…” Jack and its hinted that he’s one and the same person. And then there’s Bluebeard. Written by Charles Perrault, it doesn’t quite settle with all the Grimm fairy tales. But I doubt many others would be bothered by the discontinuity (nor be aware of it), because as a character, he fits the story quite well.

Prince Charming was another who suffered from the naming issue, but I love how it turned out. Most princes are referred to as “Prince Charming” and so like the others, he absorbed all the stories that go with the name, and thus making him a lovely man slut that so many of the princess characters hate. And it’s perfect.

And on the subject of princesses, they also had been transformed from their weak selves into strong women. Snow White for instance, works directly for King Cole, the leader of their organization, and basically runs all of Fabletown. It shows how the role of woman has changed through time and how they would be living in the modern world placed in that role.

Here’s a comic book reviews on Fables, it’s interesting. http://www.popmatters.com/comics/fables-legends-in-exile.shtml

Kingdom Come

First things first: it is illustrated beautifully. Everything is fully rendered and detailed to an extreme level. That being said, I couldn’t force myself to finish reading it. I saw no appeal in it.

When Wesley said he was the Sandman, my mind automatically went to King of Dreams Morpheous, and I was confused. Until they showed the older superhero Sandman, then it made sense. It bugged me, but I understand that there are Sandman fans, and they are probably disappointed with the Sandman I’m head over heals for, so I accepted Wesley as a decent super hero. And then they caught us up to speed with the current state of the Super Heroes. And I almost died laughing. Superman wimps out and runs into hiding, and Wonder Woman is just plain useless. Flash, the Green Lantern and a few others section off the world and protect theirs respectively. And then there’s Batman. He has robot bats that kick crime ass out of Gotham City. Oh the irony! The only super heroes I care for (Flash and Batman for the most part) don’t turn into pansies.

And there’s Americommando. Never heard of him, but his stand on foreign policy is just like many peoples’ and the governments currently. It’s a nice touch how the author can input the character to mock the current situation and not many would find it to be an attack nor a commentary on the current government and have people think nothing of it.

Many things left me rather confused. Why was there a giant penny in the Bat Cave? I couldn’t get that thought out of my head. And I absolutely love how Bruce Wayne verbally abuses Superman. But I was pissed the moment Lex Luther showed up as the main villain. He cannot be the sole source of all that’s evil in the world. He isn’t the only corrupting force, plotting a hostile take over. And then Wayne joins him. What. The. Hell.

I then placed the book back on the shelf and walked away. The art couldn’t save the story. And I’m no Superman fan.

http://superdickery.com/

King of Dreams, Sandman

Sandman.

I honestly had absolutely no interest in American comics until Sandman, they were all just muscle and they had no appeal. But while at Borders Books, in the bargain section, there was an art book. I flipped through it, some styles of the comic appealed to me while I found others to be quite revolting. But then I started reading about the characters and I found them enchanting. Morpheus just was so human despite being the King of Dreams. Death was so sad and yet so happy all at once. And they way all seven of the siblings interacted was so natural, so human, and so like my mothers family. Whenever they gathered together, there was bound to be a fight, much like real siblings. And so I was hooked on the series before I even picked up its actual comic.

But then, it was one of those comics I wanted to actually read in order, and to actually buy. Well, I caved this year and started reading it, with volume 2 from the library. The recap from the last volume was told by Destiny, the oldest of the Endless. And it seemed so very fitting for

his role, it is also I nice way to establish characters. And then the chapter opens up to a very 80’s Dream moping and feeding pigeons. Then an equally 80’s Death shows up to cheer up her younger brother. Death is upbeat, peppy and all around adorable. Through the course of their conversation, she ends up quoting Mary Poppins, and then eventually ends up chucking bread at her brother in rage. It’s hilarious. I mean, Death is usually portrayed as dark, old, and creepy, while this she is the exact opposite and totally punk and very caring. But who really expects Death to chuck a hunk of bread at anyone, much less the King of all Dreaming. Its obvious that they’re close as siblings and that Death is really concerned with her brothers well being.

The art style if the first chapter of that volume is very clean. Th

e characters look appealing, friendly and… strong? I don’t know how to explain it, but I just like it. Though I really dislike how the drawing style is different chapter to chapter. I know that they had a lot of different artists, and that the comic focused more on story and characters than the drawings, but I found the radical changes in style to be very distracting. And then I found myself liking certain chapters only for the art, and forgetting the story. Very rarely was I able to ignore the art in lieu for the story.

Women in comics [La Perdida and Persepolis]

La Perdida and Persepolis

The one thing these two comics have in common is the gender of the writers and the gender of the main characters, which happen to be one and the same. The character and personalities of the protagonists are very different, which is why I found Persepolis far more entertaining than La Perdida.

Its not like La Perdida is a bad story. It’s a tale of a Mexican American girl trying to “get in touch” with her “Mexican roots”. It’s basically her jealous that her father (who divorced her mother) took her brother to live with him in Mexico, and so now that her life has hit a lull, and she’s in between boyfriends, she decides to travel to Mexico and stay with an old ex-boyfriend. She basically acts like a tourist and then denies it the entire time. She looses herself to her “new” life with her pathetic boyfriend, and his drug-dealing friends. Her vivacity visibly slips, as the story progresses, only to be regained when her brother visits and drags her out of the hole she slipped into.

I found it relatively interesting, that is, until she lost herself and all herself awareness of her situation. Carla just is on the weaker end of the food chain, and has no knowledge of her standing. She willfully confines herself to the lower teir of the population, thinking of them as the only “true” Mexicans. Her generalization of the Mexican population is an egregious error on her part, and rather stereotypical. In her desperate attempt to be a Mexican, she remains ever a gringa. It’s ironic, but true.

Carla’s personality was the sole reason I didn’t care for La Perdida. I’m glad she learned a lot through her experience in Mexico, but she should have learned it earlier. Though on the upside, I loved relearning all the Mexican slang that I’d lost.

Persepolis, unlike La Perdida, is autobiographical. It tells Marjane Satrapi’s story of her childhood in a revolutionary Iran. That being said, Satrapi’s portrayal of herself is rather interesting. She somehow comes off as a very likeable character. Her strength and audacity to speak out against the government at her age, though it may be a direct influence of her parents, makes her very likeable. But she still has her childlike innocence and naivety, when suggesting beating up the son of a government official.

Maybe its because I only read volume 1, and she had not yet reached her teen years, nor her twenties, but Satrapi as a character is very sure of herself.

Inuyasha and Blade of the Immortal

Ironically enough, those two mangas hold a very special place in my heart for the funniest reason. When I was in 7^th grade, I went to buy my first manga; I wanted Inuyasha. Well mommy dearest flipped through the first volume of Inuyasha, and there were a pair of bare breasts on the centipede lady. Oh no, bare titties!! Whatever shall a young girl do? Its not like she’ll never have them, so we must shield her eyes. Yeah, so she was against Inuyasha. She instead picked up Blade of the Immortal: Beasts. That was apparently acceptable. With all its hack and slash sword fights not to mention Hyakurin gets raped and the tortured, but it’s still not as offensive as bare breasts. Cause you know, nipples, they’re evil. But then within a few weeks, I had bought Inuyasha myself. So no harm was done.

Anyway, I digress, about Rumiko Takahashi’s Inuyasha. I have had up to volume sitting on my book shelf at home for many years, afraid to add to the collection until I knew how long the series was going to be ( and therefore how much money I would have to invest). And as of last spring (2009), the series was completed in Japan, and so when summer rolled around, I reread through my volumes then continued the series online. I completed the series. Yes all 56 volumes. Through all the filler arcs, those filler arcs that it seemed like the anime threw in to take up time until the manga caught up to it, those damn filler arcs were built into the story. And dear god, are they rather painful.

Jakotsu though was a saving grace. He was very different from the standard villains, and completely and utterly flamboyant. It wasn’t the standard “we’re fighting you Inuyasha because Naraku told us so!”, just a bit more of the “our leader said so, and you are adorable”. Maybe he just reminded me of the Amazon trio from Sailor Moon. Well whatever the reason, I found him adorable.

The Band of Seven was also the last of the decent villains being manipulated by Naraku. The baby ends up just wanting to take over Naraku, and betraying him like majority of his other spawn (Kagura for example, except she becomes a much stronger character after a while). And then there’s Byakuya. I can only see him as completely and utterly useless. Sure he has a small pathetic role of slicing Kagome, which causes a Meidou to appear behind her. But really, he shows up at the end does like one thing, then dies. Woo. He’s the exact opposite of Naraku.

That annoying Hanyou is thee villain and doesn’t know how to stay dead. No matter how many purified arrows he gets shot with, nor how many times his body is destroyed, he will never be truly defeated. That is until the Shikon no Tama is completed and history must repeat itself. Because you know, because Kagome is the reincarnation of a priestess and she needs to be useful for once.

And so last in the line up of villains is Sesshomaru. He’s not really a villain per se, but he was the entire reason I was such an Inuyasha fan. In the first half of the series, it seems like he’s just an older brother jealous that his father left the youngest all the good stuff. But as the story goes on, Sesshomaru finally gets an amazing offensive attack for his sword. Then it is revealed that his father planned to have Sesshomaru’s sword to be absorbed into Inuyasha’s Tetsaiga, Now that’s just plan sad. Seriously, think of it from his point of view: Daddy dies and leaves the youngest the stronger of the two blades. Once he finally makes his blade amazing, it ends up it’s going to be given to the younger sibling again. Maybe its just because I’m the oldest sibling that I sympathize with him so much.

Blade of the Immortal is done in a completely different artistic style. While Inuyasha is solid simple lines, Blade o f the Immortal is full of crosshatching, sometimes messy lines. It’s geared to a more mature audience. It’s a series I’ve avoided for a long time just because I knew I’d fall in love with the violent samurai story of revenge. And so I caved, and current am on volume 14, page 67 out of 24 volumes.

But Rin bugs me; She’s pathetically weak trying to defeat a man who’s destroyed so many Dojos. She is just being unreasonable. Though I must say, she’s not the worst. At least she trains and admits she’s pathetic. I’m rather apathetic towards her I guess. Manji though, he and those boys of the Itto-Ryu, and the Assassins keep me reading, Hyakurin especially.

But, I honestly haven’t read enough of the series to write anything really concise nor conclusive about it. I want to though, I’m seriously too into Samurai manga not too.

Notes on Peach Pit's Zombie-Loan

Peach Pit’s Zombie Loan

A very recognizable style, Characters look like older versions of other Peach Pit chara’s. Ver narrow faces for adult males and teenagers, girls have rounder faces and big ‘innocent’ loli eyes.

ß beautiful use of the lack of sound in comics. Assumed the one talking is a big beefy male mob boss, while it’s a cute little androgynous thing. Good justaposition.

Main character is slightly human, freaks out when she realizes she’s going to die. And doesn;’t leave her room until the Guys retrieve her and the lesson learned is life’s too short to do stuff you don’t want to do.

IRONY! The NUNS A ZOMBIE KIDNAPPING STUDENTS AND NOMING THEIR FLESH!

Main character is almost easy to relate to. She goes through life with no real purpose. But her past and shinigami eyes which are what sets her apart from everyone else.

Biblical references. YHWH, 72,

It seems to stress the message live life to the fullest or it’s the same as being the walking dead. And implies that majority of the population are zombies and don’t even realize it.

It also treats immortality like a curse. The immortal’s body may stray young and full of life forever, yet there emotions, feelings and senses dullen and face something described as “rigor mortis” for the ‘insides’

It heavily attempts to analyze Death and what defines being dead.

Rule: If the characters go to a hot springs, there will be awkward naked chicks and some one will most likely get felt up. And there will be a scene with the guys playing ping pong.

<-MC ESCHER REFERENCE

King and the Golem's Mighty Swing

The King Vol.1 by Ho Che Anderson

I found the author’s preface to be rather moving; It was reassuring that what I was about to read about Martin Luther King wouldn’t just be another repeat of all the glorified versions told in school. The beginning was hard for me to understand, like, I know its supposed to show how life as a minority is still as violent as it was before desegregation and that racism is just hidden and denied now. But it took a few reads for me to even understand what was going on inside the panels. Then it took even longer for me to link the depicted violence to the point Anderson was trying to make about race violence being worse today than ever. It was rather frustrating.

Another thing I noticed that was frustrating was how sexist everyone was. I mean, I’m no hardcore feminist, but even I noticed when the King family’s guest had a comment about how good dinner was and that Mrs. King “knows her place”. Seriously, lets see how many ‘women belong in the kitchen jokes” we can make. MLK Jr. only makes it worse by commenting on a date how he believes women belong in the home, fulfilling more traditional roles. The girl then is offended and as he drops he off, he proposes. And to make it worse, apparently it was their 3^rd date. Yes date numero tres. Yeah. I see no logic there. At all.

The Golem’s Mighty Swing by James Sturm

The first thing I noticed was how baseball centered it was, and I was surprised at how much I liked it. I thought it was just going to be another “we’re a minority and everyone hates us”, but this one was more based around a specific baseball team named the Stars of David. And although many of the players were Jewish, some were not. But that didn’t matter to the people they played, nor to the spectators. So it shone light on the peoples ignorance along with their racism.

It surprised me that the story went so far as to reference the Kabbalah seeing how many people (or at least to my knowledge) don’t know too much about it, or even what it is. So needless to say, it made me very very happy to see it addressed. I also was happily shocked when the main character spoke of golem’s and their true nature. Very rarely in books, comics, or any other storytelling device that involves golems do they ever get their source explained, much less their true nature. And so to have a story revolving around baseball explain something like that made me rather happy.

All in all, this one was actually fun to read, unlike the MLK one. Maybe it was because I could actually tell the characters apart, or maybe because it was a story I haven’t heard before. No matter the reason The Golem’s Mighty swing was the one I actually finished reading.

Maus

I had tried to read Maus once before this class. I just couldn’t get through it at all. I saw no appeal in reading about WW2 and the Holocaust; much less seeing them portrayed as animals. Maybe subconsciously I was revolted by the idea of humans being slaughtered like animals, and I just had no desire to see it portrayed at all. Let’s just say it isn’t my favorite subject matter to read on. And what really frustrated me with the story was how “common” (as in popularly told, not common as in many people have escape Auschwitz and survived to tell about it). It was a Jewish man’s story. Jew’s weren’t the only ones slaughtered by the Nazi Party under the control of Hitler, yet the most common stories about the Holocaust are all about Jews. No one seems to care for all the other minorities Hitler had killed, neither before nor after the Holocaust. And that in and of its self really bugs me.

That aside, I believe the comic did a good job at presenting the story. I found myself more drawn to Vladeck’s story than to what was happening at the time, much like Artie. But I didn’t really care for the Artie character at all. I know it’s supposed to be the author, but he seems so ignorant of his father (both his emotional and physical pains). Vladeck had lost his immediate family, so many friends, his first son, and then his wife. No one really wants to remember the painful times of life, and it just seems like Artie doesn’t really understand the possible effects it could have had on his father. And then at his therapy sessions, he doesn’t seem to understand whatever he happens to be feeling about it how it must be so much worse for his father who actually had to live through it and then relive it again through relaying the story.

But it’s a shame Anja’s diaries were burned. They would have lead to a beautiful insight on her story and I understand Artie’s bewilderment when he hears what Vladeck had done. It would have been completely different from Vladeck’s story entirely and a very unique story for Artie to write. But I can’t help but wonder, is Vladeck really to blame for burning his wife’s diaries? He only burned them after she died, as a way of trying to purge her from his memory. Its normal to want to forget someone once they’re gone and you would rather have them there. And Artie’s frustration with Vladeck probably makes him miss Anja even more than before. Just think, you and the love of your life survived a terrible ordeal and managed to make it out alive, yet once you escape harms way and establish a good life your love commits suicide. That would be so heart breaking. No one would ever want to live through that. But Vladeck is forced to live through it twice. That would be extremely painful in ways so many of us would no be able to live through much less relate to.

But then maybe it was best that the diaries were burned. Anja’s mental state was not the best even before the war started. She was taking medication for anxiety and taking many pills. And that was when she was living with her wealthy family, being well taken care of. Who knows what was going through her head when the Nazis started rounding up people, or how many more pills she had to take to keep up the semblance of normality while her world fell apart. When standard food was being rationed, pills would be ridiculously hard to find. And then how would she react? Everyone reacts differently when taken off medication. Maybe her outburst when Vladeck mentioned sending Richelieue away the first time. It must have been infinitively worse for her as times went on and got harder seeing how it would have been longer and longer without her meds. It becomes evident that the decline has hit her hard when her and Vladeck are hiding under the floorboards of the woman’s house. She screams over the brush of a rat on her leg. Seeing how she’s depicted as a mouse, a rat shouldn’t really bother her. Plus, there are plenty of potential enemies within the house, a rodent should have been the least of her worries. Auschwitz must have been very interesting through her eyes, her writing would have given much insight on how she was coping. Her mental state though could have warped the world in such a way that she was barely aware of what could happen to her. It’s a pity from a psychological study standpoint, but her son would have been heavily affected by it in a negative way, for more extreme than what happened from hearing Vladeck’s story.

Shaun Tan's The Arrival

So The Arrival was the first wordless comic i read, and it also was either the first or second one assigned for class. Hence this post is rather long overdue. And to add to it, i didn't bother to take notes on it unlike what i did for the rest (mae culpa). And so the following are the impressions that have lasted since the first reading which only furthers the fact that the book has such a strong affect on people. The post will be edited at a later date, after rereading the book, and will be further expanded upon...

The first thing I noticed when I started reading was the overall sense of being lost. I had no idea what was going on. And as the story progressed and it was revealed that the man was an immigrant, it was very easy to sympathize with him. He was going through what I have merely pages before. It was brilliant. Tan is a genius; he created a way for the reader and his main character to experience slightly similar situations. It allows the reader and his main character to have something in common, causing the reader to care more about the character’s quest. And that’s exactly what I found myself doing. I wanted him to succeed and find a job and be reunited with his family.

The art was as beautiful as the story. Every panel of every page was delicately crafted with as much care as fully rendered illustration. It was breath taking really.

Blankets By Craig Thompson

As of right now, Blankets is the comic most like the comics I read in my free time. It was beautiful plain and simple. The lines describe the very emotion Craig goes through. Its laden with details and its line work is ever changing. The emotional range the story takes you on is as if you’re living his life along with him.

I think doing an autobiographical piece like this must have helped the author grow a lot. When looking back on his childhood and when he shared a bed with Phil, he admits his cruelty and his weakness. He confides in the reader how he feared what was happening to Phil and therefore didn’t act out. Many people don’t usually admit to such personal things. Also in regards to his younger brother, it seems as if Craig envies him especially when they were younger (like when Craig was getting bullied and such). Its also become obvious that Craig admires Raina’s strength in her ability to defend and stick up for he siblings in ways Craig would be too afraid to. I saw it as something that drew him to her. Her courage that he lacks; That he craves.

Yet in her family it seems as if her father needs the most help. The world he’s worked so hard to build is crumbling around him. The wife he loves dearly is leaving him, his oldest daughter doesn’t seems to care the slightest about the family, his son is now rejecting him, and Raina, the one who’s holding everything together is growing up and soon will be leaving. Although I sincerely have no idea how Craig can live with his blindly religious mother, I can’t help but feel that Raina’s father is the saddest character. He has basically no control over his situation.

But on to Craig’s mother. Possibly its because I can’t understand how someone can so blindly follow a religion that I find her infuriating. She lets her teenage son stay over at a girl’s house for a week straight merely because they’re a Christian family. What difference would it make their religion? I understand religion played a very strong role in their family. But then she gets very upset when she finds out they’re in love. Would someone honestly go spend a week with someone that they didn’t care for? I know its part of her character, but that just blew my mind.

I seriously stopped taking notes on the story aside from major points. I found myself so involved with the story that I just kept reading. It was that good. Though I must say, I laughed when they were mentioning art school and its nude models. It was something I could relate to. And if my extended family knew about it prior to me telling them, they’d have offered the same opinions as Craig’s religious friends.

Underground comics

Underground comics

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers

Is it awkward that the first thing out of my roommate’s mouth as she was reading this over my shoulder was “the cat’s balls are in the wrong place”? And then for a while, that was all I could see. That is until I noticed the style in which the main characters were drawn. If it wasn’t for this class, I would have never given it a glance. I was very rough, very sketchy and just overall ugly. It took a few pages for me not to be distracted by the art and for me to actually notice anything else. Then I noticed that in almost every page, the title was presented differently; I found myself reading the pages just to see how the title will be seen next.

Content-wise, I understood it was supposed to be funny. I knew it should have been, but not to me at least. Possibly it changed with time and is no longer funny or just maybe I’m just too far out of the drug culture to find the humor of it. And also as I was reading it, ii noticed every page has its own little story. Though the end of a page was the end of the story, it could be referenced later on and on other pages. I thought it was interesting at least, although not interesting enough to make me actually want to read it.

Girl Fight Comics

The woman are very masculine. Not at all what I’m used to reading (in manga the men can be girly if its shojo). But the art was more appealing than The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, so I kept reading. I loved the paneling where Fox stabs the man she was sleeping with in the first 4 panel spread. The last two panels are beautiful timing. And then it hit the lesbian make out page. Can we say awkward? It wasn’t even like, “oh romantic moment’, it was just a very sudden make out. I’d have no issue with it if it was so just seemly random. But then following that, the story made some very sudden jumps from the city to an airplane then to the jungle. The transitions weren’t smooth enough for me.

Though I did like the feminist edge it had. It was very different from the other comics we had read previously for the class. I guess I could relate more to the female characters.

Speed Queen Among the Fruedians was hilarious plain and simple. My roommate and I were hysterical laughing. So I sent it to some male friends to see if it was just a chick thing. They ended up laughing almost us much as us. It was a ridiculous story of penises. The feminism is also at a forefront here. And I thought it was well placed.

Gay Comix

In general these comics were a lot more emotional than any others (Well, Thompson’s Blankets kind of has it beat). It dealt more with the relationships of the characters within the short story. Though the art is very different from the others. The lines are cleaner, the backgrounds are drawn in and realitively detailed, and overall, has what one would assume as “clean art”.

Take “Billy goes Out” for instance. Billy is very clean looking: no rough lines, solid shading. It somehow kind of reminds me of reading a manga. I liked how while you get a sense of Billy’s daily life, in the same panel, you get a bubble of what’s going on in his thoughts. It shows the characters’ background without having to do extensive flashbacks. And by the end, I was glad for Billy that he had gotten over Brad, and I just hope that he meets up with Mark again.

The Boondocks

I had seen the Boondocks previously in its animated form and it took some getting used to. The strip comments on many social issues ranging from racism to mass medias influence on the lives of everyday people.

At first I found it hard to relate to the characters, but their rebellion against suburban life was some thing I could easily to relate to. And then I noticed that I’ve met people just like the characters.

Huey is highly educated, a Black rights activist, and usually a voice of reason. Riley on the other hand is basically “gangster” (gangsta if you will) of the strip. He is the common stereotype of African American males in popular culture. Granddad’s life long dream is what creates the entire strip; He wants to live in a safe neighborhood and raise a family. The standard American dream, you could call it, except Huey and Riley would rather have been left out of that dream if they had their way. Granddad is the embodiment of the standard American in some aspects. He is consumed by television and mass media. Yet unlike majority of parents, he has no issues with whipping the boys when they’re misbehaving. Then there’s dear sweet Jazmine who lives in an awkward state of both rejecting and embracing her mixed heritage. According to Huey, she has “afro denial”. She also is a very sheltered naïve little girl, and very optimistic. She contrasts almost directly with Huey’s personality.

The comic art starts off rough and sketchy, and slowly becomes a bit more refined as time progresses. Like the artist is slowly becoming more accustomed the characters. Majority of the panels though are stark white. A detailed background is included only when it’s necessary, like to show the school, or to set the scene. I can’t decide if it is an artistic statement, forcing the reader to focus more on the characters and what they are saying; Or if it’s just laziness. But when a background is included, it’s more detailed than the characters: much like mangas.

TinTin/Barks/KrazyKat

TinTin in Tibet

TinTin as a character is very clean in almost every sense. He’s drawn with very smooth clean lines; his coloring is very pure and solid. Even his personality is clean. He doesn’t swear, smoke, nor drink. The latter, on the other hand, is a favorite past time of the Captain. As a character, the Captain is a bit more interesting than TinTin; he is a bit more human be cause of his alcoholic tendencies. But those tendencies are ridiculed within the strip itself. TinTin chastises Snowy for getting drunk off the Captain’s whisky and that if it happens again, he wouldn’t bother saving him (which almost goes against Tintin’s usually cheerful character). Though what bothered me was that he didn’t say anything to the Captain who brought enough whisky with him on the hike to drowned an alcoholic.

The only think I really enjoyed about this comic was the idea that no one is evil. Everyone that has the potential to be either good or evil, and in the comic, even those who seem evil from out point of view are proven to be in fact good in the end. For instance, the Sherpa at first refuses to guide them to the plane crash for fear of his life. Then he changes his mind after the Captain talks to him again (shows both a kinder side of the Captain and the Sherpa). The Yeti is the best example of this though. The general public fears and shuns him. That fear, hatred and such is then taught to TinTin and the Captain. Yet, Chang knows the Yeti in a different way. The Yeti saved him, and cared for him. At the end of the comic, I felt more for the Yeti, than I ever did for any of the other characters.

Donald Duck and The Old Castle’s Secrets

The art style was very simple, much like TinTin. The characters themselves each had one identifiable characteristic, with the exception of the Triplets; they were basically all one person. Upon the mention of possible ghosts, all the ducks respond with varying degrees of fear, which reflects the general publics reaction (which in turn allows the readers to connect with them emotionally). Most of the storyline is spent trying to escape and find the villain. And I kind of liked how that was different from so many other stories. And also, everything in the story had a reason or explanation. Like with the ‘ghost’ was only a skeleton shadow since the criminal couldn’t spray his skeleton with the invisible spray like he did with the rest of his body. Although the logic is rather off, it is interesting. What I also found interesting was Scrooge McDuck with a gun. Its nothing you would see now, so I found it enjoyable.

Krazy and Ignatz

The overall story seemed very simple to me. Krazy is inlove with Ignatz. Ignatz throws bricks at him. And the Cop tries to arrest Ignatz fro throwing bricks. Maybe I just didn’t get the strips I read or something. I felt the brevity of the strips to be rather off putting, it may be because I’m more accustomed to longer series with more complex characters with incredibly long storylines. I understand its supposed to be something infinitely more complex than how i saw it, and that theres much more to it as a whole. Yet I felt as if I wasn't meant to get it. Like as if I was lacking the basic foundation of the subject matter. It seemed as if the comic wished to keep it that way. I just couldn't get into the comic, and maybe thats why.

Little Nemo in the Palace of Ice

I had learned about Windsor McCay’s Little Nemo before in History of Animation, and was initially introduced to the work through the animated movie as a child. I was in love with the idea that Nemo traveled to Slumberland every night, though as a kid, I was jealous that I didn’t get to do the same. Awkwardly enough, no matter how many times I watch the movie, I can never seem to recall the ending (although, it is very easy to correctly guess). And so when the comic was listed for this class, I had to read it.

The very first thing I noticed about the characters was their very clean line work. The outlines were very smooth and solid all around. They also have no crosshatching for shading, making the characters look clean. The only other black ink would be the solid black on their clothing (like Imp’s shorts/skirt) or their hair (namely Nemo’s and Flip’s). The characters usually don bright colored outfits, and on more than one occasion Nemo’s costume will be ridiculously elaborate, and to the modern reader possibly just plain ridiculous. Although the princess undergoes as many costume changes as Nemo, her clothing seems to be more believable, less gaudy yet still ornate. The only thing about the characters that left me a bit peeved was the overall lack of facial expressions. It could be that I’m used to manga, and the exaggerated expressions. But I found a character’s emotions in the speech bubbles rather than their face. The characters personality-wise are rather flat. Nemo does whatever he is told, Flip seeks trouble and wants attention, and the Princess is proper, seeking an audeience with her father. They characters aren’t what draws readers in. The backgrounds though, are another story.

The backgrounds are amazing. They are exquisitely detailed with vibrant colors. They are what makes the comic so surreal and phantasmagorical. They not only lead the characters from land to land, but they also take the reader from reality into the nightly adventures of Nemo. In addition to being detailed, the backgrounds are just as clean as the characters. The lines add surface texture to objects yet leave enough for the eye to rest. Cross-hatching is used sparingly, and usually to describe where the ground becomes visible from a pitch black (or doorway when McCay didn’t want to overburden an image with superfluous details).

-The Invisible Art-McCloud's Understanding Comics

Scott McCloud’s “Making Comics” leaves me with mixed feelings. On one hand, he breaks down the stereotype of comics, all the misconceptions of its lack of worthlessness, and then rebuilds it starting from its definition upwards. And then through more of his examples, he further proves that comics are much more than they appear.

McCloud begins his argument by presenting his old view on comics; He believed them all to be poorly drawn men in tights who routinely save the day. He then continues to present his personal story of transformation. Next comes the powerful history lesson (and possibly his most convincing argument on the subject of the importance of comics). He takes historically important sequential art pieces like the Bayeux Tapestry and the ancient Mayan and Egyptian art (not the hieroglyphics, nor the pictographs, the images that accompany them). The images themselves without all the “words” recounts a tale the culture deemed worthy of being preserved. Personally, if civilizations as technologically advanced as those saw “comics” or at least sequential art as a worthy way of preserving history, our current culture can at least appreciate them for their storytelling quality. As the say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Speaking of pictures, McCloud’s Pictoral Vocabulary is possibly the best single image explaining the beauty of comics. The art of written text, the beauty of reality, and the abstraction of Fine Art, all blended together. How can a culture reject a hybrid of how its culture shall be remembered, I know not.

Another job well done to McCloud is how he described the panel to panel relationships of the scenes and the varying amounts of reader involvement needed with each. It was something I was aware of well enough from reading all the comics that I pour over, but the way he explained was very clear. I actually enjoyed those pages, possibly because I felt that it was one of the few places he actually went into depth explaining the concept and ideas.

Though I must say Chapter 4 could have possibly ruined the entire book for me. It was about the timing within a comic panel. I always just assumed that was intuitive that if the comic reads right to left the speech bubble furthest upper left occurs first and so forth until the lower right corner. I felt it to be a waste of a chapter. McCloud could have written about the pacing of comics through the size, shape, and layout. It still would have dealt with the concept of timing with comics while going further in-depth for his readers who have for experience with comics. And it also would be more useful for readers who would like to make their own comics.

Sadly, after that chapter, I barely was able to drag myself through the remaining 5 chapters. I know he made some lovely points, especially chapter 7. But by the time they came up, I just was hoping to flip to the back cover and to find the book over.