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.

Week Nine - Blacksad

Blacksad had been recommended to me long before taking this course and I was pleased to be able to finally read it. As a lover of animation I've always been a fan of anthropomorphized animal characters, but in a rather unfortunate way, some of the glimpses I first had of Blacksad turned me off. This was only due to my contempt for 'furries' and the weird fetishistic craze that now plagues animal characters with realistic human-like proportions. I hate furries. That said, I really loved Blacksad. The gritty detective drama has a timeless appeal for being tough and badass, which instantly sets apart the soft and adorable world of cute kittens, from the hard boiled world of Blacksad. I was incredibly pleased, by the fact that the gaurnido decided to use color in his illustrations instead of going full on noir with black and white. The use of color and light is what I feel immersed the reader in the environment. So many panels are dedicated to setting and atmosphere with little action that simply push you further into the story. I always felt that light is one of the most important pieces of a dramatic story and Blacksad is full of interesting light direction.

Getting back to the animals, I must say that Blacksad was much more up front about the animal characteristics than in the previous reading of Maus. This made no attempt at abstraction, such as Maus did, instead it makes several points of stating that these characters are indeed aware of their animal traits. While clearly the goal with animals in Maus was more subtle and metaphoric, I rather appreciated the way the characters in Blacksad reacted and made choices based on their animal natures. I was surprised by how often I was able to relate to some of the characters and say 'I know exactly this type of person' which got me thinking about how personalities can be equated simply through animal appearance or behavior. It probably wouldn't have been as relate-able had it not been for the superior emotional contortions of the characters' faces. Most of the comics I have been exposed to jump right to extreme portrayals of emotion and struggle to communicate empathetically with panels dealing with simple dialogue, but not Blacksad. The subtly of emotion and expression built into these character's faces was showcasing a skill most illustrators and animators dream about. I was truly blown away with how humanistic the expressions of the characters were without going full-on Disney in their abstraction and design.

While I've only read the first volume, the story seemed rather linear. I was anticipating more twists and turns, but maybe I'm passing too much judgement before reading the other volumes. In the end the straight-forwardness of the story was okay for me because the power of the execution is what made it so appealing. I suppose I'll keep reading.

Maus

When I first examined Maus I figured, okay, this will more or less be a graphic novel that uses animal characterizations to approach a very serious subject. However, I was surprised by the fact that the characters as animals had almost nothing to do with how the story was written, but had everything to do with how the story was perceived. The telling of Maus isn't a recounting of a Holocaust experience. Instead, Maus is a very comprehensive tale about Spiegelman's experience in gleaning the information about the Holocaust from his Father. Their relationship to each other, as separate from the Holocaust was very intriguing. Getting to know the author and reading the book as it was being created inside itself was very, for lack of a better term, inception-like.

With the characters as animals, Spiegelman was able to use clever devices to sell the reader on certain things that would have been much more difficult or bland had the characters been human. One device he used was mask-wearing, in order to hide from enemies. During the recounting of the Holocaust, Vladek is often seen wearing a pig-mask to represent himself as Polish instead of Jewish and when Spiegelman is being questioned by reporters and businessmen in Maus II. Of course the text does not directly state that any masks were worn, but the device itself is instantly recognizable and understood by the reader, which helps to grease the storyline and make this point clear.  The specific use of mice, cats, and dogs all seemed to make a lot of sense to me, but the choice of pigs to represent the Poles, or the mention of frogs to represent the French, was puzzling. It wasn't that I maybe didn't buy the connection, but rather why he would intentionally use such undesirable animals to do so. In some ways, the use of animals seemed like a metaphor that exposes our own animalistic nature in the face of survival and the horrors of war. Maus of course is not the first to do this. The use of animals has often been used to approach serious human dilemmas, such as seen with Animal Farm. Making the decision to depict the characters as animals does however make the story more sympathetic and relative to the reader in the way that we are capable of assuming the faces and roles of those characters as ourselves instead of distinct 'other' individuals had they been human.

What I struggled with when reading Maus was the fact that I began to see Vladek as a racist caricature of the miserly old Jew. I was happy when Spiegelman made reference to this aspect later in the book, but I often questioned myself on how to interpret the stereotype if indeed this was the truth to this character. Although, what I think Spiegelman really showed by highlighting these characteristics was that these traits were what kept Vladek alive. His craftiness, planning and wit that resulted in his stinginess were also relevant in survival situations. Vladek often bought his way out of situations, with things that he had held secret from others, or presented food when everyone else thought it was gone. This resourcefulness really paid off for him, even if it painted him unfavorably in other ways.

All in all I think Maus transcends being just a holocaust book and enters a realm that deals with universal human instinct and relations. I was very inspired by this text, despite how depressing it could be.

Underground Comix

I always had an affinity to things labeled "underground" and I knew these comics would begin to channel my high school self, even though they were from an era that I didn't have the pleasure of participating in. The shock value of these comics is instantly recognized by the Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n Roll, however I saw most of that as husk. While all those ingredients played a role in shaping the characters and story-lines, the stories themselves dealt with very real issues, both personal and political.

The first samplings I read were Cheech Wizard and Mr. Natural. I enjoyed that they both employed 60's slang into the dialogue and that their character ramblings had the heady and ultimately senseless appeal of someone on acid trying to describe the universe using breakfast cereal, yet with slightly more cohesion. At times, Mr. Natural even turned the medium on it's own audience, by poking fun and exposing the hypocrisy of some Counter-Culture values. The story I read from Cheech Wizard approached the topic of Capitalism vs. Communism in a very zany way. What I found interesting was that, given the era, it didn't set out to demonize one side or the other, as is often seen. Of course instead, the story comes away with the old hippie mantra 'Can't we all just get along?'

The topics really ran the gamut, but I felt if you looked closely you could always find a theme that related back to the hippie or counterculture movement. In Crumb's Whiteman, it tells a bizarre tale about a guy stolen from society by bigfoots and forced to live in the woods and mate with a bigfoot woman. In the end, the guy realizes that this return to nature was all that he was ever searching for and that he desperately wants to return to the woods with his bigfoot lover. To me this drives right back to the idea of the return to the natural world and themes of love for nature, yet tells it in such an awesomely hilarious and raunchy way.

However, not all of the comics were hilarious or attempted to be lighthearted. The sampling of Junk Comix that I read was all about the struggles of drug addicts, in particular heroin. The comic was created by junkies for junkies and the irony is not lost on anyone. Having known a few Junkheads that are no longer around, it was really kind of sad to read, even if its intentions were that of a cautionary tale. The edgy subjects of all the underground comics coupled with their often scratchy drawing styles is what makes them seem more real than some of the professionally published and polished works. It's clear that these stories are meant to appeal to anyone who has ever been a part of street culture and societal underbellies. I would safely assume that folks that have either grown up sheltered from these truths, or who are religious, right-winged or straight edged would have had a hard time understanding what these comics were really getting at besides just gratuitous sex and drugs, but it wasn't for them anyway, so who fuckin' cares.

Contracts and Blankets

I find it strange to think that a graphic novel had not been developed before Eisner's Contract with God, simply because it seems that the format is so conducive to storytelling, even in its long-form narrative. The stories Eisner created seemed to flow and deliver just as well, if not better than standard novels. Where the text left off, Eisners pictures picked up, for the images were able to express a page's worth of textual description at a glance which was how the stories gained such a fantastic momentum.

Comparing Eisner's work with Thompson's, I could see that Eisner was still working out the kinks with just how to make a graphic novel work. At times I felt as though the way Eisner handled the text in blocked form made it seem too much like a children's story-book format. Sometimes the text felt very well integrated, while other times it separated itself from the graphics like oil and water. Nonetheless, Eisner's approach to borderless imagery really seemed to segregate this work from episodic comic books or comic strips and gave it a feel of it's own. The stories themselves were very unlike what I've come to expect from a comic book in that they deal with very real scenarios and rarely distinguished a character as a hero or villain. The endings to the tales were what I noticed most about his work. The fact that Eisner didn't feel the need to wrap up the stories into neat packages was really compelling. They were often just open ended and allowed the character to really come to their own conclusions about what may or may not have happened next. Having experienced 4 years of being taught the linear narrative structure to storytelling, I found these short stories to be refreshing.

To me it was interesting that both Eisner and Thompson used graphic novels to capture pieces of their own history. It was as if the format somehow captures memory better than text alone, inviting the viewer to try and experience the scenario as they did. Thompsons work was hugely emotional and managed to pull me through from beginning to end without any breaks. I could see that by the time Thompson completed Blankets, graphic novels had developed much more of a sound structure. Thompsons text and imagery seemed to work much better than had Eisners, yet maintained the same black and white illustrative approach. I feel that despite such a limited palette, Thompson managed to capture an immense amount of mood and atmosphere. The way images were arranged with lots of negative space or conversely with lots of claustrophobic energy, managed to set up scenes in my mind that text alone can sometimes fall short of. All in all, I feel both Eisner and Thompson have really managed to legitimize the comic art-form with these works.

Jack Cole & Plastic Man, Carl Barks and Herge

The past week I started my readings with Art Spiegelman's essay about Jack Cole and Plastic Man. The best part of that book was the fact that huge portions were devoted to the source material of plastic man, so one could familiarize themselves with the subject matter while reading, should they not have had any prior exposure to it. Plastic Man really took me by surprise given the lurid and often violent nature of the comic, coupled with the era in which it was produced. I had always believed that the further back in time a comic began, the more censored it was, however that was not the case with Plastic Man. It was a mashup of gag humor with the most unlikely of heros painted in vivid color, incorporated into violent themes with sexual overtones. The stories often seemed as though they were being written on the spot and never revised, or rather revised on the spot by dedicating a panel or two to explain away an inconsistency and then pushing onward with the story. Having read about the comic code that was introduced in the 1950s I could see why I had this preconceived notion that comics became more 'watered down' the further they go backwards in time, but I guess I had just never taken the opportunity to read some as far back as the 1930s and 40s. I felt the essay was a very concise tale of Jack Cole's legacy that really introduced me to the realities of comic history.

I made an effort to read some TinTin, but I fear I'm too much a product of my time, craving fast paced stories with a lot of energy. TinTin for me was a little boring and the humor often was too flat to carry me onward. I was surprised to see that some of the TinTin books were 80+ pages and ultimately felt that the pacing was just too slow for me to get involved. TinTin himself seemed a bit too generic and wholesome for me to find interest in him, however I did enjoy some of the captain's antics as well as the professor. It may have been that I wasn't in a proper mood or place to be reading it and I might return to it someday and give it a try, but my first impression left me feeling as though it just wasn't my style. I will say that the art style was pleasing and very well done.

So my favorite of the readings I did was Carl Barks' Donald Duck Disney Comics. I was first introduced to Duckburg when I was a child watching the DuckTales cartoon show, so I was pretty sure I knew what I was getting into when I started reading Barks' work. I will say that Barks' work is a bit more sophisticated than the TV show ever was, while maintaining an appeal for all ages. I am a big fan of stories that have broad character bases where each character has his or her own subplot and relation to the others, so these comics I found very satisfying. Who knew that a world full of ducks could be so compelling? Barks' work had a lot going for it with the familiarity of Disney and the new yet separate world of Duckburg. In a way, a lot of what drew me to Barks was the nostalgic value of the characters, but I could see that despite all that, the work was very well composed and directed. The Ducks are just all around fun to read and I hope to one day own a collection of Barks' work.

Little Nemo, Krazy Kat, Calvin and Hobbes, and the Peanuts Gang

The first of the strips that I read was Little Nemo. I had some prior exposure to Little Nemo via an Animation History course, friends, and the fantastic McCay exhibit that took place on campus. I found it interesting that the first of the Nemo strips included both dialogue and narration text, but as time went on, the narration began to disappear altogether. I remember thinking that both the narration and dialogue together made for a very broken and turbulent read which left my eyes darting around the page, but it was fun to see how quickly the strip evolved, having most likely gain self-awareness on the issue that pictures can speak for themselves. I also noticed that as time progressed, the strip allowed itself to get past that repetitive first step of having to lead Nemo into Slumberland and began to start off right in the middle of a scenario. While charming, I did find a lot of the Nemo strips to be rather repetitive, of course ending with Nemo awaking and realizing some reason for having had his odd dream. Despite the inevitable ending, the journeys that took place inside Slumberland were very interesting and the characters that became mainstays, such as Flip, added a lot more to the experience.

In Nemo, as with Krazy Kat, the strip is very telling of the era in which they were made, yet they are completely different in style. Everything about Little Nemo seemed sophisticated. The dialogue used in Nemo was very proper and the art that filled the panels could almost stand alone by itself as individual art pieces. So much thought and planning seemed to go into the Nemo strips, while Krazy Kat on the other hand was just a wild and sometimes violent sketch comedy on paper, with the use of slang and broken English, and scratchy drawings that looked like Herriman finished them the night before they were due. While I love both the strips, I feel my personal comic preference is more of the Krazy Kat approach. Thinking back to what McCloud said in Understanding Comics about the abstraction and simplification of character, I feel I was able to put myself in Krazy Kats shoes more often than Nemos and view the comic from that vantage point. With Little Nemo, I always read it as a story about a boy named Nemo, not me as Nemo. Perhaps that is just me. Also, it took me all these years, but I finally made the connection between Itchy and Scratchy from The Simpsons and Ignatz and Krazy Kat. It hit me like a brick.

After reading Little Nemo and Krazy Kat, when I returned to more modern comics such as Charles Shultz's Peanuts and Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes, it was interesting to see how the medium had grown and was made more concise. I noticed that the contemporary comics tended to remove themselves from larger narratives such as Nemo and Krazy and focused more on more common human experiences. The strips used a lot more 'silent' panels that spoke for themselves than did Nemo or Krazy, which I often found to be the most charming and funniest. I always felt that Calvin and Hobbes was very philosophical in the points that it made, making excellent use of the polarity of their characters and their opposing viewpoints. Peanuts was very similar in this way, but was able to make more of a statement about different kinds of personalities because of the broader character base. I find it very clever and charming that both Schultz and Watterson, used children to discuss ideas that were often very mature, but kept their viewpoints from that of childhood innocence. Had the characters been adults, I'm not sure these comics could have lasted.

Scott McCloud - Understanding Comics

I'd like to start by saying that this book was a far more comprehensive look into the world of comics than I imagined it would be. I found it clever that McCloud used the medium itself to analyze the anatomy of comics and how perfectly suited it was to do so.

While there were many profound observations in this book, I particularly enjoyed the section that used the trianglular 'reality/ language/ picture plane' diagram to graph different drawing styles and how they are perceived. I had never seen this graphic before, yet I wish I had because it applies to every visual art-form. The idea that the more minimal a representation is, the more personally identifiable it becomes, is something that really stood out to me. This concept is something I feel I've always known subconsciously, but was brought to the surface by this book. It is seen in the very way that the narrator character was drawn and the conscious choice of the author to do so. This use of a more graphic approach to character design is also seen in animation and for the very same reasons. I think that some of the reductive qualities of comic art is what gives it the stigma that is discussed in the book. Somehow people feel that the cartoonish nature of comics makes them less qualified as art, but for the very sake of being able to communicate and identify, that approach is in and of itself a sophisticated art form. Before arriving at Ringling, I too felt that simplistic characters were on a lower tier of art, until I was faced with having to design one. Choosing which elements to include and which to leave out, while still maintaining appeal is something that can be very difficult. McCloud mentions that masters of their craft are able to reduce their work to its most basic elements and still produce a masterpiece and that statement couldn't be more true.

I also liked how the simplification of design added to what McCloud called 'closure'. Our ability to make leaps in the storytelling process is eased by how iconic the images are. Of course not all comics go this route, but I felt the side-by-side examples of realistic vs. simplified images and how they read worked perfectly to explain the concept. Yet even comics that take a more realistic approach to their design still employ the use of icon via speed lines, speech bubbles etc.

This book was very informative and at times absolutely hysterical (i.e. The 'I Guess' panels depicting how to express a long or short pause, or the panel with the creepy guy and the dog that didn't love him anymore - pure gold) As rich as the text was about comics, I feel that I also learned a lot about the psychology of images as well as evolutionary biology. I will be recommending this book for sure.

Shaun Tan - The Arrival

The Arrival reads much like a black and white silent film, not only because of its monochromatic schemes, but also because of the reliance on expression, direction and staging of the compositions. Since 'The Arrival' lacks any supporting text and the language and characters of text found within the book are of a foreign and invented language, there is heavy reliance on gesture and subject matter to communicate to the 'reader' just what is meant to be interpreted. I found the book to be surprisingly fluid in how it read and that I wasn't left scratching my head as to what it meant. From the first page I could see that the story was going to be that of an immigrants tale with the display of all the uniquely different faces. Tan made effective use of familiar imagery and fantasy to create a universal experience that any reader would be able to interpret. It may be a convention of cinema, but I instantly understood what Tan was conveying when the sepia toned pages turned to gray scale to depict back-stories and memory, as well as the passage of time that was depicted in the life span of the leaf. I found it clever that the architecture, textiles, creatures and food, were all very stylized as to place the reader in the shoes of an immigrant arriving somewhere new for the first time, where everything is foreign and bizarre.

Being an animator I find that pieces such as 'The Arrival', truly strike at the essence of communication and expression. Without a reliance on text or dialogue this piece transcends culture and enters into a universal language. Stories such as this show just how many words can be formed from one image. I found that the illustrative style also matched the soft silent appeal of the book and where each panel seemed to have been given so much attention. I feel that given the panels in the book, this piece could just as easily read as a short film if someone were to adapt it for that medium. The direction was spot on and overall I really enjoyed the artwork and simplicity of the story.