Webcomics

I agree wholeheartedly with what you said in class: the future of comics is on the internet. I love buying printed issues and volumes of my favorite comics because I like having a physical copy. I like flipping through the pages and feeling them and seeing the art in person yada yada yada I sound like an old person. But I definitely feel that comics need to make the huge leap to becoming completely digital. Who knows how people are going to monetize on that, but to keep comics alive I think we have to make them (initially) digital.

But on the other hand, I'm not a big reader of webcomics. I haven't found many that I find particularly good or interesting, and many webcomic artists usually give up halfway (and the ones that give up always have the best comics). How I usually find comics is sifting through amazon or a comic store shelf to find anything that seems appealing. But here are a few webcomics I used to read or have kept up with.

A somewhat oldie but definitely a goodie is Ava's Demon. Honestly, I haven't kept up with it for a while but it's a great, ongoing work that I felt brought webcomics to a whole new level. Ava's Demon utilizes a digitally painted style as opposed to being simply drawn, so needless to say the art is gorgeous. But writer and artist Michelle Czajkwoski doesn't stop there. Ava's Demon includes animated scenes with composed music as well, adding a layer of immersion that print comics couldn't do (and only a few webcomics have attempted to do).

Monster Pop! is another webcomic that caught my attention. It's nothing hugely spectacular, but very very cute and relaxing to read. The main character is a cyclops girl named George, and Monster Pop! chronicles her adventures in going to a college with both monsters and humans. The comic is still being produced, and you can see the amount of progression artist Maya Kern has made from when the first chapter to the latest. I think it's a fun read with an interesting world.

If you're looking for a way to make sure the artist and author gets paid for their wonderful web work, comic Giant Days is a good place to start. Available for subscription on Comixology, the slice of life tale follows three college girls in the UK having all kinds of silly college adventures. A cartoony style, big personalities, and tender moments makes Giant Days a really fun read. The comic is also collected in volumes you can buy physically if you're like me and like to hold things like a weird person.

Superheroes Reconsidered

This week was probably one of my favorite weeks reading wise. Mostly because I love how far comic books have come. When someone would say "superhero" you would think of Batman or Superman, DC or Marvel, Justice League or Avengers. But now, I feel that the scope of superhero is much wider than it once was.

Because of the widened scope on what makes a superhero, or even what makes a comic book hero, I feel that comics have flourished into a storytelling format that truly combines art with literature. For me, characters are what make a story. If you don't have thought out characters that reach out to your readers/viewers/indulgers, then why should someone bother engaging?

I believe Brian K Vaughan is a master of characters. He writes such diverse casts with interesting personalities, physical features, and struggles that none of his work feels the same. Like you can't pick up Saga and Ex Machina and think they're within the same universe or connected somehow. I like how different all of his characters read and feel, and when considering the superhero, that's very important.

Superheroes need to have something unique about them that makes them different from all the other superheroes in the world, but still a hero that's super. I've always been a big DC fan since I was a kid, but a lot of their heroes read the same. Tall, brooding, and mysterious with a dark past. Whereas I felt Marvel was never afraid to be more lighthearted while still being serious. Now, Marvel is in some deep shit with their characters for other reasons that aren't so super, but that's due to who runs Marvel now.

I bounced around a few comics, but I mostly read Fables because I'm a big fan of the video game that's based on the series. It definitely was an interesting take on fairy tales, and it's a shame a certain television show ripped off the idea almost exactly, but for its time it was unique. I liked reading fairy tale characters who were not so Disney-like. Whimsy is fun, but in the case of Fables it would make the tone wonky when it's trying to be realistic-ish.

The character of Bigby is so interesting because we're thrown en media res to this situation where the big bad wolf isn't all that bad, but we're craving to know why. And also the character of Snow White is great because, since Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is such an old Disney film with no modern sequels or renditions, we don't know much of her personality. So it's cool seeing a Snow White that isn't pure and innocent, but a curious and powerful character.

Comics by Women

This was a fun week. I read all of This One Summer and enjoyed it a lot. I was expecting something different I suppose, something with a more concrete ending and explanations of everything, but I enjoyed reading it. It reminded me of the summers I used to spend upstate New York in the middle of nowhere with my cousins.

And now for something completely different.

I typically enjoy works by women more than I do works by men. Women genuinely get it when it comes to art or writing. To me, when I hear that a production team is filled with only men (or worse: only white men) I get a little scared. I mean, we've all seen how male comic artists draw women. Awkward, sexualized proportions, revealing outfits that are like that for the male gaze not because girls can wear whatever they choose, poorly designed armor that's more for showing cleavage than it is for protecting cleavage. There are a lot of negative aspects that come along when men who know jack shit about women write or draw women.

As for women, I feel like they're good at both portraying women and men. They're good at writing women because, duh, if you define as a woman then most likely you know a thing or three about women. Women also know how to write men because they don't see men from the narcissistic central viewpoint that men often see themselves from. That viewpoint isn't always so outright, but I feel that it's a way of thinking ingrained into our society: males > females. But women can see men outside that viewpoint and see them for who they really are. Men can show feelings besides Edgy Stoic Protagonist with a Little Bit of Stubble. Men can fail at things and feel bad about it. Men can be losers, men can be self conscious, men can be confident, and men can be nice.

From how I see it, I feel that women know how to write men because men open up to women more than they do to their close male friends. So yeah, women get that men and women are both complex creatures because they see how both are complex, men sometimes don't. And sadly those men usually run entertainment businesses.

What I liked about Diary of a Dominatrix was that even though we know the protagonist is an extremely sexual person, she doesn't come off that way. She comes off as just your average girl trying to make it in the world, and she makes her way by being a dominatrix. Simple as that. There's even a scene where she's lackadaisically spanking a client while thinking about her list of chores to do for the day. We see her clients as the hypersexualized lustful seductors, when often we see women depicted in those roles. If a man wrote Diary of a Dominatrix, it would be a completely different story.

Comics as Contemporary Literature

Asterios Polyp is an interesting take on the graphic novel. It's very serious and reads like adult literature, but there are fanciful aspects to it as well. Such as how the comic is narrated by Asterios' dead twin brother, or the ending where a meteor may or may not hit the earth.

I thought the meteor was interesting symbolism for how things can go wrong so fast, but that a positive change can come from it. Dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteor and the after effects of the crash, so obviously the same thing could happen to humans. But I felt that instead of symbolizing destruction, the ending symbolized renewal of life. Asterios realizes his wrongdoings and how he treated his ex-wife, so I saw the ending as a massive change in Asterios' life that he would probably relate to the death of the dinosaurs. Because after the dinosaurs, came humans. And we're pretty cool. We have pizza.

I definitely think graphic novels should be considered a medium of literature. There is so much potential combining art with words, it's a shame that there are people that look down on comics and graphic narratives. I enjoy graphic novels because I feel they have a more cohesive storyline than most comics do (of course comics have changed to be more linear, but I feel graphic novels and comic books have always been structured more closely to prose than plain old comics have been).

In writing, we're taught to show feelings and emotions through words without outright saying what we mean (show don't tell). With graphic novels, comics, and comic books it's so much easier to do that because you have art. You can physically show facial expressions that get a point across, or show the passing of time without mentioning it through dialogue. You can show with an image without having to use words to explain it; the pictures explain themselves.

Manga and Japanese Comics

This week I read some Ranma 1/2 since I remember seeing it on TV when I was a kid aired alongside Inuyasha. I thought the story was really cute! The art was fun and the main plot was silly and interesting enough to keep me reading for a while. What I really liked about it was the main twist, how Ranma switches genders when in cold water. I found it an interesting take on gender roles, and how it questioned just how different men and women really are. As opposed to other manga, where there's usually a "gender flip" filler issue, I felt Rumiko handled the story in a way that wasn't awkward or fetishized.

Something I found interesting was the use of nudity. There's always some weird kind of nudity in manga and anime. Like how when any of the sailor scouts in Sailor Moon transform, there are usually shots or frames of them naked, but instead of looking like human bodies they look more like genital-lacking mannequins. In Ranma 1/2, Rumiko actually drew Ranma's nipples in a scene where Ranma was in their girl form. I wasn't like "OOOO Nipples how naughty!" I was more intrigued on why Rumiko chose to do that. Was it just to draw nipples because why not everyone has them? Because I can accept that, that's cool.

On top of Ranma 1/2, I reread my favorite manga which is Oyasumi Punpun. The closest American work I can relate it to is Blankets by Craig Thompson, but darker. The tale follows Punpun, a young boy living in Japan who has a crush on a girl. The art is a mix of hyper realism and cartoonism which separates the reader enough from the world, yet has a familiar quality to it.

The manga chronicles Punpun's unfortunate life from childhood, to puberty, to his early twenties. The story is lighthearted and nostalgic at times, but seriously depressing at others. Punpun is drawn as a tiny bird as a child who then becomes a half-monster half-human being when he grows older. However, all the other characters see Punpun as a regular human boy. Author and illustrator Inio Asano says this is to help the readers see themselves in Punpun, and sympathize with him. It reminded me a lot of the American comic technique that Scott McCloud talked about, where the usage of icons helps readers familiarize themselves with the characters.

Oyasumi Punpun was recently officially translated into English and can be found at Barnes & Noble or you can be sneaky and read it online for free here: http://mangapark.me/manga/oyasumi-punpun/s1/v1/c1/1

Wide World of Comics

This week was a lot of rough reading for me. I skipped around different titles and couldn't find anything for a while that interested me or didn't disgust me. But then I realized: that's the point.

My first reading attempt was Incal by Moebius and Jodorowsky. I think what put me off the most about the work was the art style. The people were too grotesque looking (though the slug man was cool) and read more like an internet porn webcomic to me. I had seen artwork from the story before and liked it, and I love Moebius' work so I'm sure if I read further into the story I'd grow accustomed to the style. But I did enjoy the themes of classism, and how it's represented by a giant space tower city thing, with the rich affluent people living higher up (being adorned with halos) and the lower class living at the bottom. In that way, it reminded me a lot of Le Transperceneige/Snowpiercer which was released around the same time.

I then bounced over to Nikopol and enjoyed the art style, but couldn't grasp onto the story for some reason. But then I read Moebius' "Heavy Metal" collection and fell in love. I adore the art style and how the grand landscapes and color palette felt like I was looking at a dream. The piece that stood out to me the most was "Ballade", which follows a boy who travels away from his mountain clan to see the beauty of nature all over the world. He meets a forest woman who accompanies him on his journey, but their adventure is soon cut short when a group of military soldiers mows them down for seemingly no reason. The story felt very real, even though the characters and environment came across fantasy-like. The brutal reality of war, and the mistreatment of innocent people by soldiers, is something too common in our society.

I can definitely see why Moebius and Miyazaki were friends and fans of each other. Their work is so similar when it comes to themes, and much of Miyazaki's early films reflects the genre and feeling of Moebius' fantasy/sci-fi pieces. There are so many similarities to Moebius' Arzack and Miyazaki's Nausicaä that you can tell the two were truly inspired by each other's work.

Stereotypes: Why does everything have to be gay?

Growing up in the wonderful, complex world of the internet, I was exposed to queer comics and entertainment at a young age. But not necessarily in the most positive light. There was always a slew of comments on youtube videos or online comic forums that complained about the "political correctness bullshit" that was being "pushed." My favorite of those complaints was "Why does everything have to be so gay?" 

Because it effected me. A lot. I didn't understand my sexuality growing up, so once I saw the negative criticism and jokes that gay people were faced with online, I began to form a lot of internal homophobia. I would laugh at people who were striving for sexual and gender equality because everyone else was laughing at it.

But it wasn't just internet trolls that fed this bad behavior. Movies, TV shows, video games, and even comic books would have overly flamboyant male characters, or hyper-butch female characters, as a joke. As I grew older and came out, I realized how many negative stereotypes are out there.

I started seeing less and less of myself in my favorite childhood characters and superheroes, and I rarely had anything to relate to until I found webcomics and modern comics that do have LGBT+ heroes (like Iceman in X-Men or America Chavez). 

To answer the question: no, stereotypes are not necessary. The only time I believe stereotypes are okay are when the marginalized groups are making fun of the quirks they see in themselves and their own communities. And even that I wouldn't call stereotyping, more of a critique or satire on one's own experiences within their specified groups. As a gay guy, I'm always joking about how gay I am, and I love participating in queer media that's made by queer people. From a writing POV, when queer entertainment is written by a straight person, even if they have the best intentions for representation, something will always seem fetishized, accidentally stereotypical, or offensive. 

I've kind of made it my own personal vendetta to make sure that everything I write is about queer people, has queer people, or relates to queer media in some way. There's the whole conversation of whether diversity is killing the comics industry or saving it, and I think it's what's keeping comics from dwindling out. I love seeing myself in queer-coded characters like America Chavez, Iceman, and Snotgirl. People have flocked to comics as a way to escape from themselves, yet see a part of themselves reflected in what they're reading. I believe moving away from stereotypes and heading towards diverse representation is the way to get more people interested in comics.

So I think that comics like March, that show the historical aspect of racism and stereotyping, are important. But also comics that show change and break down stereotypes through fiction are equally as important.

The Killing Joke

1. What is your reaction to the text?

I guess I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I've heard so much about how great this arc is supposed to be, but something didn't really click with me. I liked the tension, and I liked the art a lot, and the joker actually seemed dangerous for once as opposed to a comical villain. But something was missing for me, as if I had seen it before. And then comes the ending, which I didn't get. I didn't think it was all that necessary, but in my head I saw it as a comparison of how stupid the rivalry between Batman and the Joker is; that it's like a kid in his room planning on killing a public figure.

2. What connections did you make with the story?
Discuss the elements of the work with which you were able to connect.

Obviously I connected it immediately to Nolan's The Dark Knight. All of the segments where the Joker reminisces on his origin story, I thought "Isn't that, like, not real?" So my prior knowledge made his story a little less believable to me. And then he proves that thought when he goes onto say he doesn't really remember his past, but he likes to think of it as multiple choice.

I do think that the frames are set up quite nicely. In a way, they're very cinematic and are definitely engaging. The art seemed to flow easily from page to page which made the story simple to read and digest.

I definitely think the ending and the beginning are connected in some way (the ending as in before the afterword, where Joker and Batman have a giggle fit). The first frame and the final frame are the same, and I definitely think that symbolizes repetition. Both Batman and the Joker know that they'll never stop going in circles with each other, one always escaping the other, one always thwarting the other, one always tormenting the other. Both of them know that any attempt at peace or an even ground are futile, and that's what the punchline is.

3. What changes would you make to adapt this story into another medium?
What medium would you use?
What changes would you make?

I think The Killing Joke would make a really nice short film. The way the story is physically framed is already very cinematic, so I think it would flow nicely into the world of film. Color theory would definitely come into play as it already is displayed with the highlight of red colors in the Joker's black and white past.

I'd take out the ending (the after the afterword ending), again I don't think it's necessary. Or, if anything, have it at the beginning instead of the end. I'd also like more obvious parallels to the Joker's past and Batman's past. It's very clear that the writer was comparing the origins of the two, and how they're more similar than they are different. But I think a few more in your face hints would be useful, because I didn't really catch the parallels until I read through it again.

Man or Maus: The Comic that Changed the World

Maus is an illustrated interview of the author, Art Spiegelman, asking his father about surviving the Holocaust. It's gripping, emotional, and dramatic. Everything about the comic mentally places you in Poland during the Nazi reign, even if all the characters are animals. One of my favorite parts of the graphic novel is when Vladek, Spiegelman's father, and his family have to hide in a non-Jewish friend's basement while her husband comes home from a business trip. In the basement they find a rat scurrying around, and even though they're anthropomorphic mice, the rat is depicted as not having human characteristics. It's just a rat.

Besides the events of the Holocaust, Maus also delves into Spiegelman's relationship with his father, and his father's relationship with his new wife after his first wife, Anja, who survived the Holocaust, commits suicide. It's interesting to see that Spiegelman's father is split into two separate characters: the young, spritely man doing everything to keep him and his family alive, and the grumpy (almost neglecting) father.

The comic deeply explores anti-semitism, survival during war, persecution, and the many things people will do just to survive. In a way, I think that's why Spiegelman decided to depict everyone as animals. Yes, obviously the horrific torture and murders carried out by the Germans/Cats against the Jews/Mice are inexcusable. But as illustrated in Maus, sometimes survival means betraying those who are suffering just as much as you. Is Maus effective? Of course. Reading it, you can't help but laugh at older Vladek's marital and health issues compared to the day to day struggling survival of young Vladek. His older self seems caught up in almost frivolous problems compared to what he dealt with in his younger years. The entirety of Maus reads like war, which is why I believe it became so popular. Whenever the reader meets a new character, they shouldn't expect them to last very long.

Yes, Maus is a comic book, but why can't comic books discuss real life issues as well? That's the exact question Maus challenged, and we can thank Spiegelman for all the mainstream comics today that would be considered "underground" years ago. I find it very interesting how we're reading Maus now, where the comic might be one of the most relevant to our time. Literal pogroms and attacks against Jewish communities have been rising in popularity in France over the last few years, and many are considering the new hyper conservative party, the Alt-Right, who are supporters of President Trump, to be a group of racists and anti-semites.

I remember being bullied as a little kid for "looking too Jewwy" to be a Catholic, and my older brother went through similar torment for having "Jew curls." While I don't necessarily fit the typical "Jewish" look, I do have Jewish ancestry and family members who are practicing Jews. My father, who very much fits the typical "Jewish-looking" stereotype, is constantly stopped at airports and travel destinations for no reason other than supposed "suspicious activity." It's scary thinking that roughly six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, with so many novels, stories, and historical texts teaching us how horrifying and inhumane the Holocaust was, yet there are Nazi sympathizers and anti-semites out in the world.

While my childhood torment is nowhere near what the Jews in Europe faced during WWII, the fact that people make still make Jew jokes, as if the Holocaust never happened, is frightening. If Maus was made to be relatable, it sure is relatable now. Spiegelman perfectly blended history and art to create an outstanding piece of fiction that not only redefined comics, but redefined literature.

Underground Comics

Naughty, disturbing, funny, crude, political: all of these words can describe underground comics. I never in my life expected to see Mickey Mouse fuck Minnie while held captive by pirates in a blimp, but life is full of surprises. And at least they kept their gloves on, protection is key. I mainly read a bunch of Air Pirates and Robert Crumb stuff, but also a bit of Gay Comix and Tijuana Bibles. Air Pirates hit way too close to home by sexualizing (and humanizing) the popular Disney characters I grew up on. While the majority of Crumb's work was interesting, to say the least. I read Whiteman, which is the tale of a husband and father who goes camping in the woods and is captured by a yeti. He soon falls in love with a yeti woman, and adventure and sex (and adventurous sex) ensue.

Something that surprised my about many of the underground comics was how not-so-underground they felt to me. Obviously sex and drugs and many political things have changed and society has evolved to be more accepting, but I found it hilarious how the majority of the stories in Gay Comix weren't even sexual: no tits, no dicks. Just gays. And I found something reassuring in that, knowing that LGBT+ people weren't being sexualized too much in the comics, or seen as gross items. Rather, I feel like underground comics celebrated gay culture. I also really enjoyed the absurdity of some of the comics. My favorite has to be Frogman, a deep sea diver who can swim in the air but can only breathe out of water for so long to have an affair with a married woman. Trouble ensues when she has to suddenly move farther inland, away from any large water source. I thought this was the funniest shit when I read it, and honestly it's something that I could see being published today with the huge horde of comical comics (I'm punny) out in the world.

It was also cool being able to see where a lot of modern, mainstream comics were inspired. If Saga by Brian K. Vaughan were to be published in the 70's or 80's, it would totally be considered an underground comic! No one in that time would ever believe a mainstream comic in book stores all over the U.S. would have a breastfeeding woman on the cover. But lo' and behold: it exists. Another popular comic going around that would be an absolute hit back in the days of the underground comics is Sex Criminals. The tale of two ordinary people who just so happen to stop time when orgasming. I always considered something to be "underground" if I hid it from my parents. If I'd be afraid of my Mom finding something I hid under my bed, then it was definitely "underground."

Blankets

Blankets by Craig Thompson is a highly personal graphic novel. It's a coming of age story about falling in love for the very first time. The autobiographical comic follows Thompson in (mostly) his teenage years, bullied all his life and believing that Religion is his calling until one day he meets Raina, a girl he encounters at a Christian camp for teens. The comic explores sexual and religious exploration, as well as coming to terms with love just not working out. I grew up in an extremely Italian Catholic household where I was homeschooled until high school. It's needless to say I had my family's religion forced in my mouth like a strep throat test, and my gag reflex is horrible. I never necessarily felt any connection with God, or Jesus, or any part of "my" religion, but I felt obligated to go because people told me I had to. And of course, like any white Catholic boy, I was an altar server, which made my parents think it would be perfect if I went into religious studies. What they didn't expect was for me to be a gay, gender confused, blue haired art student who doesn't particularly care about religion. I'm delving into my forced Catholic background because, when I was in Catholic high school, I read Blankets for the first time. It was the most relatable work I'd ever read in my life, and it validated to me that I wasn't crazy for not believing in what I was raised to believe. While I may not be a straight Christian fundamentalist with long hair and a sad, long distance relationship, I definitely understood all the social awkwardness, the bullying, and the unsureness of what's up there beyond space.

What I've found out after reading the comic is that when Thompson's parents read the book and found out about their son's true feelings towards religion and how they were depicted in the book, they didn't talk to him for six years. I've had points like that with my parents, where we completely disagree on matters and they never attempt to see my side of things. Or they do, and pretend like they didn't hear it. All in all, Blankets is one of my favorite works because I understand the Christian guilt, that's beat into us at a horrifically young age, is what makes us so afraid to enjoy life at times. And while it's just another wall I have to break through, breaking things is fun, and I like to have fun.

Emergence of the Comic Book

Pretty soon after comic strips grew in popularity, longer story driven comics began to come into play. Carl Barks' work for Disney was on the rise, as well as the growth of "costumed characters"/super heroes like Batman and Captain America. Even over seas, comics like Tintin were blowing up. What really caught my eye with this weeks reading in particular was EC Comics' Tales from the Crypt collections.

Tales from the Crypt are illustrated anthologies of short horror stories. They range from the mysterious, the campy, and the outright disgusting. Sure, the "scary" stories may not be as effective now as they were back in the day when horror wasn't as normalized as it is now, but the tales sure are interesting. The style of the comic is super realistic, which I assume is to make all the horrors seem real enough that they could actually happen. From swamp zombies to murderous werewolves at summer camp, Tales from the Crypt was for our parents what Goosebumps was for us.

My favorite story from the collection had to be Madness at Manderville. It was the first comic I had read for class that featured a female lead character who wasn't hyper sexualized or only there for the male gaze. The story tells of a woman who is seemingly going crazy, hearing noises in the night and seeing strange lights through the window. Her husband pushes her to seek psychological help as he claims none of these noises or sights are real. They arrive at the asylum where it's shown that the wife isn't crazy, it's the husband for not hearing the noises which are just birds and traffic outside, and not seeing the lights in the window which are headlights from a car coming down the street. I thought it was an incredibly interesting twist seeing how women, especially mentally ill women, were treated back in the day. A lot of the main characters in the stories are women, and I found that particularly interesting. Sometimes they're the protagonist, sometimes they're the villain, but from what I read they were never put there just to be there. They're characters with motivations, drives, goals, and wants. They also have fears, and in some stories a strong will to survive.

Comic Strips: Charlie Brown and the Unimaginable Depression

The comic strip has been seen as a staple of modern American culture since the 20th century. As a little kid, I would wait seemingly forever for my father to finish reading the newspaper, which he'd then throw to me so I could read the comics section. My favorites were Calvin and Hobbes and Undertown. When I got older, I got into buying volumes of older comic strips like Peanuts and Archie. As the years went by, I found myself with a pretty decent comic strip collection. I've always been interested in comics because I thought they were cute and visually appealing. It wasn't until reading Scott McCloud that I realized the power of icons and seeing oneself within the comic world were why I was so interested as a child. A lot of comics, especially Peanuts, were relatable to me as a child (and I'm sure were relatable to children the world over). What I found most interesting about comic strips was how secretly educational they were/are about the real world. So many Peanuts strips showed Charlie Brown going through existential crises that no normal 6 year old goes through, such as the meaning of life, where do we go when we die.

Charlie Brown is a very interesting child, he enjoys typical childlike thinks but thinks like a depressed adult. I think that's why Peanuts has been around for so long: when people read the strips as a child they could relate, and now that they're adults they can still relate just in a different way. I think duality like that in comic strips is why some have survived the years and why many haven't. Having a specific audience is great, but when multiple groups age groups can relate, there's a long lasting effect that these strips and characters have.

Understanding "Understanding Comics" (see what I did there?)

In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud presents what one would think is comic book writing for dummies. What Scott McCloud is actually presenting is a dive board lesson into not just making comics, but fully grasping them.

McCloud talks a great deal about a lot of interesting topics, and boy does he analyze them. Such topics include self insertion of the reader, cartoonism vs. realism, and how icons make stories memorable. One of the bigger topics McCloud touches on is time, and how it affects not only the world inside the comics, but the world outside as well. 

Time is a lot of things. It's relative, a human construct, and most importantly: it moves. Time is constantly in motion, there's no stopping it. Even moving your eyes from panel to panel when reading a comic strip takes up time. Comic artists play on this by splitting up scenes using the panel's frames and "gutters". Gutters are the empty space in between panels, where the reader mentally fills in the gap of what has happened from panel one to panel two. To me, gutters are part of what passes time in the comic world. They're the split seconds between Captain America punching Red Skull in the face from Red Skull falling to the ground from the devastating blow.

The writing that appears in comics is also a huge component of time. It literally takes time to read words and decode what they mean in our heads. While we might not think of reading as decoding, that's how our brain sees it. Each movement of the eye to read the next word, and the next word, and the next word of a sentence takes up time. Speech bubbles in comic books obviously represent speech in real life. It takes time to talk to people, it takes time for a villain in a movie to say his monologue, and it take time for your grandmother to tell you the stories of her younger life. Comics realize this, and use writing to either slow down or pick up the pace. Panels with bigger walls of text take more time to read, meaning that the time it takes a person to read that panel, is usually the time it would take that character to say what they've said if they were real. Panels with little bits of text, or no text at all, move much faster. 

My favorite example McCloud used of time affecting comics is this:

It seems like all these speech bubbles are happening at the same time, right? Wrong! This is a sequence read left to right. It takes time for each character to say their "lines". It even takes time for Uncle Henry's camera to go off. Time is essential to comics and graphic narratives as it is essential to real life. Time affects characters, just as it affects us. 

A Rooster Revolt and the Sentient Easter Island Heads

My original notes:

• A dancing woman entertains a toy chicken
• The woman then goes home to sleep, but a large chicken man watches her slumber
• The sequence then switches to the girl’s dream where she visualizes herself being lowered into a coffin
• The woman then climbs out of her coffin, her clothes taken away by chicken seamstresses
• In real life, the woman falls out of her bed
• The woman gets dressed in a fancy dress, seemingly about to go out on the town with another woman in the scene as a chicken man peeks in
• The two woman appear to have arrived at some sort of theater with their chicken man friend
• Meanwhile, somewhere else in this chicken integrated world, two women in night gowns and a large goose seem to be escaping a chicken. Is the chicken an intruder?
• Elsewhere, two girls find skeletons clad in dresses and bonnets
• Chicken men carry women off a train
• There also seems to be a chicken torture factory, where chickens torture women who they deem disobedient. 
• A battle goes on, woman vs. chicken, the ultimate gun fight
• A woman is hanged by the Chicken Imperium as an example to other women
• The women, however, do the same to a chicken in retaliation
• The chickens seem to win the battle for the day

• Easter Island esque men recount their lives and regrets: a man staring at his own reflection in the mirror, a man on his wedding day, a father berating his daughter, a sailor regretting cheating on his wife with a prostitute, a drunkard, an abuser, an actor, a man who has run out of time. 

It's very easy to tell that the first story, Thursday, is about sexism and the treatment of women. I didn't understand it at first--mostly because I'm horrible at analyzing things quickly-- but as the pictures progressed I understood that the roosters represented men. I came to this conclusion about halfway through when I realized there were no human men being depicted. Then, of course, the torture scenes and the hanging of a woman at the very end made the message quite clear.

One could argue that the next story is the reverse, how men feel they are treated by women. But I don't think it's that at all. I believe the first story is linear, and shows almost the progression of the female revolt against the roosters. However the second story seems more stagnant. It doesn't seem linear, nor have any sense of moving forward in time. The individual images of the Easter Island men show that man's personal story, whereas the entirety of Thursday was an overarching story of women all over the rooster infested world. 

In Thursday, all the men were roosters, but in the Easter Island story not all the men had the statue heads. There's an image where an Easter Island Head man is seen confronting a woman having some kind of romantic physical interaction with another man. This could be the Easter Island Head man's wife cheating on him, or maybe it's his daughter being with a man her father doesn't approve of. But the man the woman is with doesn't have the Easter Island head, he is depicted as a regular human. That's what makes me believe that the Easter Island narrative is an inward reflection of each individual man's life, regrets, or desires.

The Arrival and Me

Shaun Tan's, The Arrival, had a profound impact on me. Both sides of my family immigrated to America in the early 20th century via Ellis Island, so needless to say The Arrival was a reality for my family. Ironically, there are no words to express within this comic "book". Books are supposed to have words, right? Shaun Tan proves that wrong. Aside from a strange language beyond any readers' comprehension, Shaun Tan concocts a story that's all too relevant to our time. He packs heart, good humor, and personality into every finely crafted image.

Just by viewing the first page of the story, which is a compilation of various head shots of people of varying races and fashions, I could tell what the story was about. And that's fascinating to me. How is it possible that I could understand what the story was going to be? Was it the look on the people's faces? How they dressed? How all the pictures looked lined up like some official government document? Or was it the odd mixture of hope and pain in the eyes of each individual drawn on that page? Shaun Tan tells his story of a man immigrating to a new, whimsical world to find a better job. How could I get that from just pictures? Well, the pictures show the man in a small house, donning a professional suit, a sturdy suitcase, and a fancy hat. The protagonist's wife and daughter have sad looks on their faces but don't seem distraught. Then the man leaves the house and boards a boat packed with many other strangers dressed similarly: like they're going somewhere.

Shaun Tan utilizes what readers know about immigration, or simply going somewhere new, to tell his tale. The mind is a strange creature, but Tan shows us that it's a beautiful one.