Lit of Comics Kevin Liang

Maus is an interesting story about a Jewish survivor of the Nazi invasion and the Holocaust.  In this graphic novel, Nazis are portrayed as cats, and the Jews are seen as mice.  The story is told from the perspective of Vladek Spiegelman's perspective and his son Artie.  The book jumps back and forth in between the past and present, jumping from Vladek Spiegelman's past and the present time with Artie.   Despite the characters being displayed as animals, the overall story feels very human and real.   Apparently Maus was a graphic novel that brought the whole genre into the mainstream, which contributed to the legitimacy of the medium overall. The overall aesthetic of the novel seems to appear as though it was drawn by an amateur artist. So the thing that set this book apart from the other must have been the subject matter rather than the actual art itself, not that it undermines the artistic value of drawings themselves.   The mature and “re...

Underground comics seem to be comics that is not afraid to add in more mature subjects.  Seems like most of them use adult subjects as a joke/punchline.  What is interesting is that in Harold Hedd No. 1 I noticed that the comic avoids using profanity.  I wonder why that was a line the author did not want to cross. Based off the discussion we had in class, Underground Comics seemed to be a counter culture movement within the comic book community.  It uses its nudity and vulgarness to send a message to its reader.  Yes, there are some that are simply there to make poop and dick jokes.

Will Eisner's "Contract with God" seems to be a tragic story about a man, Fermme Hersh, making a contract with god and living his life based around it.  He lived his life as a "good" man, helping his fellow people and tries to be righteous.  He takes religious instruction and devotes himself to good works.  The man does good and raises a child, only to die from sickness.  The man goes mad, and believes that god broke a contract saying "If god requires it that men honor their agreement...then is it not god, also, obligated?"  After feeling betrayed he turns away from his beliefs and becomes a hard man.  Later on he ends up owning a real estate empire and pays a few wise elders to create a contract with god for him.  Femme Hersh never let go of what happened and what he felt with his contract with god.  Maybe the contract was not properly written, so now he asks wise men of god to create one for him.

The comic book I spent time reading last session was a compilation of Superman comics in its early days.  Superman was very much the same as he is now on principle, the most powerful being on earth.  Clark Kent was always able to find a way to save the day, however the problems and solutions he faced definitely feel dated.  He is supposed to be the "perfect man", but the view of what "perfect" meant only reflected the values of that time period.  In one issue, Lois Lane get engaged with an "Ugly Superman", and Superman tries to break up the engagement simply because "Ugly Superman" is "ugly".

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson is one of the classic comics that remember reading as a kid.  It was always fun and easy to read Calvin and Hobbes as a kid.  There was always something about these comics that felt easy to relate to when I was young.  The dynamic duo Calvin and his stuffed animal tiger, Hobbes.  Hobbes is clearly an extension of Calvin's imagination of his stuffed animal tiger, but Hobbes is also an extention of Calvin himself.  Whenever Hobbes is seen in the comic, it is usually a representation of what Calvin is actually feeling or thinking.  I believe Garry Trueau explained it better than I could.  "There are few wellsprings of humor more consistently reliable than the mind of a child.  Most cartoonists, being childlike, recognized this, but when they set out to capture the hurly-burly of the very young, they almost always cheat, shamelessly creating not recognizable children, but highly annoying, wisecracking, miniature ad...

Chapter 1 of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics discussed what exactly comics are, and its precise definition.  Finding the right definition of comics was actually quite tricky because comics are in between other mediums such as films and books.  After much deliberation McCloud settles on a final definition of the word. He defined comics as "Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer".  McCloud also explored the history of comics, and the some of the earliest forms of comics in history based off of that definition.

The Arrival is a graphic novel with no words used to tell the story.  The best thing to compare reading The Arrival is a storyboard of a movie or TV show. Being able to communicate an entire story without words can be a fairly powerful thing.  Without using words, the artist has to figure out how to tell a narrative through context clues and visual cues.  It can be difficult to achieve this goal, but the mind is pretty good at piecing things together, and filling the gaps of details.  Even in movies where the picture is moving, there are gaps and spaces of information not shown to the audience, but they accept it and still see the picture as one cohesive story. If the author/artist shows the story well, the overall message of the graphic novel can be more powerful than ones with words.  The story would transcend language barriers, and allow anyone to relate to. The Arrival was able to tell a story cohesive story without any words.  From my point of vi...