Week Thirteen - Alan Moore's Watchmen

This is one of those tragic cases in which I watched a movie before reading the original source material. It's always an interesting journey because you know essentially what is to come, but you're looking for details that may have been omitted or that may have simply enriched the story overall. Story aside, reading a comic is obviously not like watching a film and I found that I enjoyed reading this story much more than I did watching the film. I liked how the color choices were so indicative of its time (1980s). The bright neon colors or yellow, pink and teal are so closely associated with the 80s for me that I found myself to placed in that era as an audience member, even though the story transcends many decades. I also enjoyed the unique use of flashbacks or 'visions' to what had occurred previously. The panels were often spliced in between present time, but I never felt like I was lost while reading. This method of explaining the characters' history I felt was much more effective than attempting to explain everything up front, while waiting to advance the story. The history seemed to evolve very organically and was very effective as a story withholding device which kept me as the reader wanting to know more.

My first exposure to Watchmen was the film and I found it to be too visually clean for the world they were trying to portray. I felt the comic was much more convincing in it's grit and underbelly, despite it's wild use of vibrant color. The heroes themselves were so unconventional, flawed and tacky that I took aversion to them at first, but as I read I came to accept them more, especially after placing myself in the 1980s mindset of what was 'cool'. From that angle these characters were actually quite perfect. I also really enjoyed how the ends of the volumes were so text heavy and drew back to more of what a novel is. I feel like I got just as much enjoyment and visual stimulation (albeit imaginary) from those excerpts as I did from the illustrated portion. All around I found the writing to be exceptionally well done. The author seemed to really understand the multidimensional characters he was writing for and that made the story so much more believable.

Week Ten - Osamu Tezuka's Buddha

I've always struggled with the cultural differences between western and eastern comics. For the most part I believe that Japanese manga does an excellent job with developing really intricate and unique stories, but the second I see someone's head grow 5 sizes bigger to emphasize their anger or see waterfalls of tears pouring from someone's eyes it pulls me out of the story. It can make something serious turn 180 degrees into a cutesy, tongue-in-cheek joke in just a matter of one panel. With that said, Tezuka's Buddha (Vol. 1) was no exception to this, however as a whole I enjoyed the story with it's many sub plots and characters. At first I didn't know whether to expect a true, but slightly exaggerated version of the life of Buddha, or a completely fictional work using Buddha as a character. I realized quickly that this was a mash-up of the accepted history of Buddha with Tezuka's own contribution of fantasy and found that I was really entertained while reading it. I couldn't understand why Tezuka made the conscious choice to include references to contemporary life while telling an ancient story, but slowly I began to just let it ride and not question it so much. After all, it did make me smile at certain points.

As an author Tezuka made a lot of 'appearances' in his work which I'd never seen before. The idea that he wanted the reader to be aware of his presence was very interesting and having seen the documentary on Tezuka before writing this post, I can see that he was very much an icon and celebrity of manga. I'm sure making small appearances appealed to his fans. As for the flow of the work, the book seemed to be rather jumpy in areas. It progressed at a fast pace, but the lapsing of time seemed odd in areas. Knowing now Tezuka's working schedule, I'm sure much of this book was produced in a hurried manner, so I don't hold it against him. At least it seemed to all weave together, but it was certainly a deviation from the type of story arcs I am used to.

The artwork I found endearing because of it's cute almost innocent appeal that manga captures so well, but juxtaposed against serious subject matter it can sometimes feel out of place. It a way I was a bit confused by many of the characters because of how similar they looked. Overall though I feel he had captured a unique and effective style for works that require so much drawing. Had the artwork been any more intricate I'm not sure Tezuka would've finished anything.