Lit of Comics and Graphic Narrative

 My Favorite Thing is Monsters (4 points) Bone Vol 1 (1 point) CL Berkley A Christmas Carol (1 point) For this week’s reading, I looked a bit at My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Bone, and A Christmas Carol. It was interesting to read all three of these works together because although they were technically all comics, they were vastly different from each other which I think really illustrates how much range and creativity artists have taken into account when creating comics, especially with the changing times. My first impressions of My Favorite Thing is Monsters was definitely the art style and medium, with a sporadic collection of pen drawings on loose-leaf paper covering each page. Ranging from full solo illustrations to sometimes more story type comic layouts, I would categorize this as more of an alternative comic. I thought that sometimes the amount of text really distracted me at times, and on some pages, the author even chose to change the rotation of text so I guess every p...

  For this week I read the first volume of the Phoenix series by Osamu Tezuka. I would say I read manga quite often but I realized I never sort of branched out in reading when it came to styles or more of the older works of the genre. Coming from a person who mostly indulges in standard weekly shounen stories, it isn’t to say I haven’t seen Tezuka’s style of art before. I recognize his influence on a lot of other major works in both manga and animation down the line, so I thought it would be interesting to see how this art style translated into telling a unique story. The Phoenix was quite a surprising read for me at first, and I think it grew on me the more I read. At first, I really didn’t know what type of story to expect, and the art style kept throwing me off just a bit because it really did remind me of light hearted cartoonish stories and funny comics. There were definitely some dark parts and twists that totally knocked me off guard, and it was especially interesting to se...

  For this week’s reading, I took a look at Valerian and Laureline volumes 2 and 3 by french comic duo Pierre Christin and  Jean-Claude. I had previously had some knowledge of this series because of the film adaptation which I was quite fond of. I had remembered that the original source materials came from french comics but I hadn’t had the time to read into it yet. What enthralled me most about this series in general was the classic sci-fi multi-dimensional world that the human characters had to navigate through. For this day and age, I guess it’s not that uncommon for themes/worlds like this to exist in the sci-fi genre, but I really appreciate the pathway that comics like these had influence over, especially for 1967. As an illustration/visual development major, perhaps I do hold a bit of bias for my love of the art style in particular as well. I absolutely love the graphic and crazy details in every panel, with each world/unique alien character having their own flair to t...

  For this week I also chose to read My Friend Dahmer by Derk Backferf. Whether it be because I had already known a little bit about this subject matter beforehand or simply because my morbid curiosity demanded it, I went into this novel expecting nothing less than a creepy story. Overall, it was a completely different tone shift after just reading March , but nonetheless, it did provide some interesting entertainment. I wasn’t too fond of the art style from the get-go, but it was a new take on the Dahmer image and probably was less unsettling than watching a real-world documentary. The blocky yet very stoic depiction of everyone’s limbs left actions feeling a bit wonky, giving me more inclination to focus on the expressions that were drawn out very much like an exaggerated caricature.  This story was a bit different from some of the other Dahmer media material I’ve seen thus far as it was written and drawn out as a personal memoir. Perhaps that could make it more accurate to ...

  For this week’s reading of March , I was actually pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it, or possibly how fast my reading of it seemed to flow. With a lot of nonfiction works I often find myself being a little bored or distracted at times, but this one did a nice job capturing my attention though I guess I could also attribute it to the fact that it was in a graphic novel format. I acknowledge that these were true past events but I guess now more than ever it did strike a little harder with everything that is going around with current social issues and protests. In terms of visuals, I thought it did a great job in keeping interest through the variation of full-page illustrations, comic box format, and text spreads. If these events were played out using only a simple comic box method I don’t think it would translate the mood as accurately, which is another thing I think really helped improve the overall tone of this book. For nonfiction especially, I can understand how diff...

-Comic Book History of Comics (3 points) -The Arrival (3 points) -Understanding Comics (3 points) -Case Study in Archie (3 points) -Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics (4 points) -Little Nemo in Slumberland (2 points) -Jack Kirby Readings (3 points) -E.C Comics Thoughts (2 points) -Thompson and Eisner (3 points) -Underground Comics Collection (3 points) -Maus (3 points) Zoom classes attended: 6 = 6 points Zoom classes missed: 1 

Starting out, I was a bit hesitant to read this week’s comic simply because of the themes alone. I know previously we have read some shocking comics but I tend to shy away towards historical/political comics, especially with Nnazi imagery just because I feel rather uncomfortable by them, though I do understand how reflecting on humanity’s history of war and prejudice is important to take a look at. The most recent piece of media I’ve seen dealing with Nazi Germany and the Jewish escape was the film Jojo Rabbit, which I believed did an excellent job to give a realistic yet humorous/satirical undertone to its darker source material. However, this week is about Maus, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well it held up as well. While there were certainly some panels and real-life events that were horrifying, I liked the author’s choice to portray these characters as animals. I see often in a lot of media that when real-world problems are expressed through animals it can just give off a...