Literature of Comics and Graphic Narratives

The comics I read for Women's comics were Ms Marvel and Bitch Planet. I really enjoyed Ms Marvel because of the attention to detail not only in her personality but also for the attention to detail for her culture. It's not a culture I myself have been exposed to much, and I found it very interesting to get a point of view from a character who goes through what most teenagers go through but in different ways. I also enjoyed learning about some of the misconceptions that outsiders are exposed to. Overall it felt really solid and it was a good read. I'm interested and really wanted to read more. The main character is very likable, and the art style is appealing and compliments the character.  Bitch Planet was also interesting, as it was another take on a young girl who is from a different culture than my own. It's a fun contrast to read Ms Marvel and Bitch Planet side by side because of the stark contrast of one character doing good and another doing bad, but all for th

In class. Read a lot of interesting things!  I think my favorite was Bone. It has such an interesting and funny commentary on our daily lives, but they take an interesting spin with the characters and the humor of it.  Sin City's story wasn't very enthralling, however the art was quite something. One that I wish I could have read more was Every Girl is the End of the World for Me. It started off very interesting and relatable to me, and I would like to get to finish that at some point. Why I hate Saturn Defining characteristics:   Starts off with narration and wider illustrations Gradually gets closer to the characters About a girl who is unsatisfied with every aspect of life Black and white ink drawings Fairly detailed Every Girl is the End of the World for Me Defining characteristics: More cartoony style Speech bubbles Cast list that serves as prologue Loose pen drawings Chapters are separated by dates Crosshatched

I have been a fan of manga since I was a kid, so this isn't new territory for me. However, the kind of manga that I've read are more in the contemporary shonen genre. For this assignment I decided to branch out and read something different. I haven't read much older manga or gag manga, so I decided to read a few chapters of Astro Cat. It was really cute and entertaining, although I assume still paying homage to the original content of Astro Boy (which I have not read). I thought the drawings were really cute, and I enjoyed the playfulness of the story. The other comic I read was My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, which I really enjoyed. I have never read a manga that was more like a memoir, and actually took LGBT content seriously. It was refreshing, because I also haven't seen a lot of comics like this from Americans either. I thought it was really impactful, and had a lot of good and insightful things to say, and a lot of things that I could relate to on a per

The comic I decided to read was Ran Xerox by Tombourini. It has a much different feel from most comics I've read, as far as content and also the art style. It has a very gritty and dark tone, and the pacing is very fast. There's always something going on, and the story is always moving forward so I feel as though there isn't much time to relate the characters and how they are feeling. But they don't shy away from unappealing drawings or characters, which I think is really fascinating. My one complaint, although this may just be personal preference, is that a lot of the panels feel crowded and hard to focus on. I believe this is because of the color and value choices. There's also an embrace of more graphic sexual content than a lot of American comics dare to show, which I also find interesting. There are a lot of moments like this with the main character of this comic, and lot of it is arbitrary and doesn't feel connected to the story and more of a choice that t

Stereotypes can be a dangerous thing in media, although I think that not all stereotypes are necessarily bad and not all of them are untrue. I think it's a way for people to organize things in a way that makes sense to them, but again they can be dangerous especially if they are taken out of context, or created based off of things that aren't true. One representation/stereotype we were shown in class was the origin of racial stereotyping of black people in the early to mid 20th century. This is a harmful stereotype, and was made as a joke and holds no truth about the physical appearance or behaviors of black people. This unfortunately found its way into media, and then the butt ends of jokes, which ruined any other representation of black people in media and has taken a long time for our culture to destroy that stereotype. I think it's important to give truthful and honest representations of groups of people as a whole, but I don't think that that goes without stereot

Maus by Art Speigelman is a very impactful piece. It's told in a very interesting way, cutting back and forth between the past and present. It's also very heartfelt and feels very genuine despite the visual aesthetics. It's fascinating that we can become so attached to these characters despite their lack of human qualities in a visual sense, but we still feel them as real people. I think that the art style definitely matches the story though, nothing feels off putting or strange. The symbolism is also really clear, between the cat's being nazi's and the mice being the Jewish people. I really like this because it's a lot different from other comics we have read up to this point. It is definitely longer, but it has more of a personal narrative to it. Some of the underground comics came close in a sense to the seriousness of the topics they were writing about. However, I think Maus really tapped into something special as it reads more like a novel in content, vs