Lit of Comics Kevin Liang

1. What is your reaction to this comic. I have read Killing Joke before, it is a great read and an interesting analysis of the Joker’s origins and psychology.  The story gave more depth to Joker’s character and gives a compelling reason as to why he has such a fixation on the Batman.  “One bad day” is the small thin line that separates normal people and who the Joker is.  Alan Moore was able to take the story beyond just action and drama. 2. What connections did you make with the story, what elements? Why? Joker’s thesis on the human condition and his claim that madness is just one small step away for any person in the world.  Granted that his experiment failed with Jim Gordon, I still think his idea holds some ground.  Our lives are fragile and could be turned on its head at any moment.  Everyone lives with a shadow attached to them, and anyone is capable of becoming something cruel and insane. Alan Moore’s choices in storytelling for this comic is ab...

Manga is a medium I, and probably a lot of the class is familiar with.  Japanese culture, anime, and manga has become more and more main stream these days.  It is no longer a genre/art style that is in the minority, regardless of this it is still a "rejected" medium in western culture art for some reason.  Understandably there are some anime/manga that lack a level of sophistication and accuracy to basic anatomy when it comes to its "style"; however, just like in western cartoons, there are highly acclaimed animations as well as poorly received ones.  It is still strange to me that some art teachers still seem to have a knee jerk reaction to any "anime" inspired work. Battle Angel Alita was an easy read for me, probably because I have years of experience reading manga.  I always appreciate the way most manga translate action on to panel of the page, the action is clear and easy to understand.

Color in every panel!  I was pleasantly surprised to finally see color in every panel of the graphic novel, there might have been some other colored ones in the past, but they were few and far between.  The Black Incal seems to be a science fiction graphic novel about a dystopian world with giant cities and flying cars.  The main character John Difool is a tired detective that finds this magical device that brings him loads of trouble.  This was a pretty fun read.

March: Book One is a graphic novel about civil rights among African Americans.  This graphic novel is another good example of this medium touching more mature and complex themes in its stories.  The art style and pretty clean, so for me it was very easy to read and follow.  In comic books, I personally always felt cramped when reading, since every image seemed cramped, and was being squeezed so closely to text all the time.  For March: Book One there was room for images to breath with the artist's use of empty space to fill the gaps, pretty refreshing to see in a graphic novel/comic.