Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Classic Comic Strips

I started off this week’s reading portion with Winsor McCay’s, ‘Little Nemo in the Palace of Ice.’ Which took me longer to read than I expected. The main component that tripped me up was the text. I liked McCay’s panel arrangements, the actions were easy to read, and there was no confusion between transitions. My favorite part of ‘Little Nemo’ was the transition between his dreams and how he woke up, which most of the time involved the poor boy falling out of bed. However the speech bubbles often felt awkward to me. Sometimes text would curve up along the edge since there wasn’t room to comfortably fit all of it in. Or it could have been the period dialect. Society doesn’t use a lot of the mentioned phrases or words anymore.

After that I decided to read some nice classic ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ by Bill Watterson. These comic strips are short and to the point, mostly lasting 4 panels. The witty humor drives the reader to continue to see what other silly adventures Calvin and Hobbes will have. The strip is told in a convincing child perspective and is believable that a very young boy would act this way. The art style is simple with an edge that helps give the characters personality.

The next comic I decided to read was part of volume number 4 of Flash Gordon. Published in 1952, Flash has the traditional comic book aesthetic. The illustrations are in black and white, with the only color being on the front cover and very saturated. I’m not sure if it’s because I started with a later volume, but this story struggled to keep my attention. There was actually a section where two panels were basically repeated back-to-back. The text was exactly the same, but the illustration shifted the perspective a little. I have nothing against the style, I understand that it was popular at the time to be slightly more realistic and there are comics with a similar style I quite enjoy. However I just can’t seem to get into the actual story.


I decided to end on a high by reading some 1965 ‘Peanuts.’ I loved ‘Peanuts’ as a kid, waiting for my parents to dissect the Sunday newspaper so my sisters and I could steal the funnies. This comic strip was always on the front page. Charlie Brown is just your regular, below-average kid with a gang of friends and a dog. Snoopy is probably my favorite character with his internal dialogue. I really enjoy the clever comedy of this strip. The writing sounds like kid problems and comes up with kid-invented solutions. The sassy comebacks keep the comic light and what I really like about this strip is any age can read and enjoy it.

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