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.