Underground Comix

I couldn't really get into this week's reading assignment. Nothing against the style of these comics, even though I would deem it a little strange, but the stories don't capture my attention. The books are set up as a collection of short stories. Between "The Book of Mr. Natural," "The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers," and "Fat Freddy's Cat" I was mainly bored while reading. I found myself skipping over passages to see if, through just the illustrations, the story got interesting at a later point. 

The "Freak Brothers" and "Fat Freddy's Cat", both by Gilbert Shelton, have an overlapping stoner character. To me "The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers" is entirely about the mishaps that happen to a group of druggies. The characters reminded me the behavior of a few annoying persons who attended the same high school as I did, only these men have crazier facial hair. The cat is possibly a more vulgar creature than his human companion. There is some humor, but not enough to keep me invested.

I felt slightly better about underground comics after talking about them in class. They’re still not my cup of tea, but I can appreciate some of them a little. A few stories dealt with political problems that the author thought people weren’t paying enough attention to. Drug awareness was a very big part of most of these comics. Showing examples of how messed up your life could get if you continued or developed an addiction. So some of them had “edu-tainment” value.  Others were just completely full of very badly drawn sex, crazily drawn penises, and using women as solely sexual objects. I attempted to read some ‘Zippy’ but I found it to be just crazy. I don’t know if Zippy has a mental disorder or no functioning brain at all.

I won’t have any underground comics on my personal shelf. They aren’t something I could see myself reading in the future and I don’t really feel like picking up any more of the issues I read this week.

Eisner & Thompson

I thought ‘Blankets’ by Craig Thompson was fantastic. I really like his style, simple and efficient. None of the pages ever felt crowded. I don’t think there were more than 7 panels on any one page. Which kept the story at a nice pace for the reader. His transitions were great too. I had to read the entire book (almost 600 pages) in one sitting! The story jumped between his childhood and teen years, but the time skips were to usually to explain why he reacted to things the way he did. Thompson’s story evoked real emotions. I felt genuinely sad for some of the things he and his family members went through. The chapter about the girl he fell in love with made me miss my boyfriend. Even if I hadn’t known that it was a autobiography, the story has a truthful and relatable substance to it.

The other graphic novel I read this week was ‘A Contract with God’ by Will Eisner. His beautiful is extremely simple the more you observe it. Most backgrounds are just some gradating line textures and dark shading is one large block of ink. Also, the volume I read was printed in a dark brown, so it wasn’t as stark of a contrast as black and white, making it easier on the reader’s eyes. In the first chapter, the story is very narrative, with text covering almost half the page at times. Other chapters are dialogue heavy, but Eisner has examples of how he can show motion and time without any words. There’s also sex in almost every chapter and in one a man is accused of molesting a young girl. I found the rape and cheating unnecessary. I know far too well that dishonest people exist, but in at least 50% of the relationships shown, one of the partners was unfaithful.

'Brief History of the Comic Book' Readings

I found ‘Plastic Man’ very strange. It has the wonderful art of Jack Cole, but a bizarre main character, at least to me. I do, however quite like that Plastic Man and his sidekick Woozy Winks (what a name!) are reformed villains, turning around their previous lives of crime. Even with words this comic is filled with exaggerated motions. With Plastic Man being able to stretch any part of his body, there are a lot of panel with very scary anatomy. His super power though keeps the artist from having to worry about proper proportions too much. Often times some of his stretching seems unnecessary and he’s just either showing off his rubber abilities or it’s impossible for him to maintain a regular human structure for too long.

Tintin has a very whimsical style that plays well with the personalities of the characters. Adventurous and stubborn Tintin, soft but sassy Snowy, scruffy and usually grumpy Captain Haddock, to the exaggerated mustache of friendly Professor Calculus. The line work is simple and direct. (Captain Haddock actually reminds me a bit of Doctor McCoy from Star Trek) The story flows smoothly through the panels with no confusion and the humor helps keep the comic light hearted.

Scrooge McDuck keeps the Disney feel with wacky half-dog/human characters and its classic art style. In ‘Crown of the Mayans’ Scrooge drags Donald Duck along with his three nephews on a silly adventure through Mayan ruins in hopes of joining an Archeologist Club. They have to outsmart non-scary villains hoping to steal the same treasure that Scrooge is after. I wasn’t very interested in the story aspect while reading, but I do remember enjoying the tv show ‘Duck Tales’ as a kid.

I felt that the film ‘Chasing Amy’ spent less time focusing on the comic book making aspect and more on the fact that no one could accept that Joey Lauren Adams’ character was actually bisexual. I can understand how being bi was hard to grasp in that time (which wasn’t that long ago at all) but everyone had this square cutout idea of “this is gay, and this is straight, and never the twain shall meet.” The movie had a misogynistic overtone until the very, very end. At which point Ben Affleck’s character stops being an asshole and uses his experience to create a comic book with personal meaning and rekindle his passion for the pure art of comics, regardless of payout. 

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.

Puppy Surprise

Our assignment was to tell a story using 3-4 panels.

I wanted to make a simple story that conveyed at least two emotions. The importance of wordless comics is to have really clear expressions. Both facial and body language. Exaggeration is often used since the expressions have to be amplified to make up for the lack of text.

I asked my roommates to look over my strip to make sure that it was easy to read. 

Between the Panels

Closure in comics can be achieved in several different ways. Scott McCloud categorizes six methods in his book, 'Understanding Comics.' They are: moment-to-moment, action-to-action, subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene, aspect-to-aspect, and non-sequitur. These different methods help control the pacing of the story and how much closure the reader must provide.

The first method listed requires very little closure. It is barely used in Western comic books, making only slight appearances. By far the most popular transition is action-to-action, usually taking up a minimum of 50% of all panel transitions in a single comic book. They require the reader to fill in a bit of information between the panels. Action-to-action transitions can convey the same amount of information as moment-to-moment in far less cells. They make appropriate jumps that the reader can easily follow. Subject-to-subject transitions make slightly bigger jumps while scene-to-scene can either cover very long periods of time or show another scenario happening simultaneously in a different location. Aspect-to-aspect transitions show snippets or varied angles of one scene, such as a party, kitchen, or campground for example. They focus heavily on the environment and are popular in Japanese comics. The last method, non-sequitur, is almost never used. There is absolutely no logical relationship between panels with this transition. The underlying meaning between cells requires a lot of searching.

Sequential art must be looked at as a complete work, with an overriding identity that the reader can understand. The gutter continuously connects the panels and is responsible for the flow of the story just as much as what is depicted in the cells is. It is very important to find the right balance of deciding how much of the story to show. Editing out panels changes the pace as well as the mood.

The arrangement of panels is also crucial as to how the story will read. The author assumes which direction his or her audience reads and bases the placement from there. Sometimes the flow of stacked panels becomes muddled, or the artist intentionally wants an ambiguous interpretation. Closure doesn't have to come mostly from the gutter. It can also be played with by only showing a segment of the whole picture within a cell.

Shaun Tan's 'The Arrival'

There is great care that goes into the chosen illustrations. These drawings are the entire story and must have the right emotional weight and pacing for the reader to understand what’s happening. The spot illustration pages with several cells on them carry most of the movement. They are beautifully drawn and paced wonderfully. It did take me two readings to understand the demon shadows as the embodiment of war.

One of my favorite pages is the one covered in cells of just cloud drawings to show the passage of several days. Through just the illustrations the reader knows that our main character and his family was driven from their home unwillingly and he must set out to a “new world.” This new place has so many foreign and strange things in it for the protagonist. The language barrier is shown in a simple and relatable way. He meets others who are dealing with the same hardships and must find work to bring their family over for a shot at a better life. He slowly makes friends in the city.

I just really love how Shaun Tan depicts war as these scary robotic looking beings or as a faceless scaly demon. Also how strange everything is in the other country they have fled to. It makes sense that someone would be uncomfortable or confused in a completely different society, and he pulls this off by making it look like its own unique architecture and agriculture that doesn’t exist here. Using fantasy elements, Tan makes his story remarkably realistic.

The story is monochromatic, but there are slight color tones that differentiate the moods. A cool, dark gray tone is used to show sad memories or war scenes and a yellow or more sepia color is presented in the hopeful scenes.

The passage of time is again shown beautifully through the sprouting and death of what we can recognize as a flower. He is finally reunited with his family and must help them adjust to this bizarre environment.

The family photo was a large motivator for the protagonist during the story and is shown on another spot page that resembles the one shown at the beginning of the story. This symbolizing his official new home now that his family has arrived. The ending illustrations portray his daughter helping out someone who has just come to this new place as well.

Words are completely unnecessary for this story. The feelings of the characters are expressed through the drawings better than what words could do.