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.