Literature of Comics and Graphic Narratives

I tried to read a wider variety of these, but found most of them to be kind of boring. I think it's interesting that underground comics were used as a way for people to express their voice when they didn't have the opportunity anymore in regular comics. However, I don't think that the stories are necessarily better than what was currently being produced for "kids". The only one that had some substance to it that felt like more than just an excuse to make comics about sex was Gay Comix. It was about sex, but it was also about how a group of people were being oppressed and expressing some of the experiences that gay people have had throughout their lives. Such as the first issue with the woman going through her life not being able to find the one, and then the man who had gone to the club but was recounting many different scenarios during the night. That comic I thought was interesting, because it was very personal, and expressed the thoughts anyone might have while...

There are a lot of storytelling similarities between Eisner's Contract with God and Thompson's Blankets , but they also have their drastic differences. They are both seemingly very personal stories, coming from a very specific point of view on life and the situations that the characters are faced with. They have similar themes involving religion, morality, and the consequences of those actions, as well as how these characters choose to resolve those situations. They feel very human and honest, as if we are being told someone's life story and the lessons they learned in each of those cases. Because they are so personal, we as an audience are able to more easily relate to these feelings that the characters are going through, even if we may have not been faced with the same situations. Blankets especially brought up some questions in my own head of things I have gone through, and make me question what it is the character learns in this story, and how I could have done thin...

Comics books are an interesting form of sequential art, as there can be a large variety of genres and art styles to explore. Compared to the comic strip, comic books have more lengthy narratives and are meant to stand on their own, and are sometimes meant to connect to other, longer story arcs. Some of my favorites that I've sat down to read are Tin Tin by Herge and Batman by Bob Kane. They take the stance of a similar genre but manage to make them two very completely different approaches. They're adventure stories with sidekicks with an ultimate goal in the end, which usually has to do with solving a problem that arises at the beginning for the story. They also often have some fantasy elements that don't occur in real life in order to solve their problems. I'm a really big fan of Tin Tin because of the art style, as well as the unique characters and how they interact with others in their story. This series also retains some of the comic strip humor and formatting, but ...

The pieces that I read this week were a short series of Little Nemo strips by Windsor McCay, Krazy Kat by George Harriman, and Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Waterson. Some things I've noticed that all these stories have in common is that they are very precise and straight to the point, compared to what graphic novels and comic books are today. They are short stories in their most basic form. They don't typically last longer than a page, and rarely have a follow up to compliment the first spread. Many of these aren't terribly exciting, but they're still entertaining and are the sort of things you look at and read when you need something to do. You can certainly get lost in them, reading them dry until there isn't anything more and you've spent a few hours of your life without realizing it. Despite the fact that the entertainment value isn't astronomical, they still tend to end on a joke, or a reveal of some kind, or just have something interesting to say. My fa...

Cinema as we know it very much had its beginnings in stories such as The Arrival, told by author and artist Shaun Tan. To create a story without words and only through images seems difficult to us now, as we rely so heavily on auditory explanation, but it's not as hard as one would thing if they know what they're trying to communicate. Tan uses gesture, clear drawing, and value to express moments people have experienced in their lives and can relate to in order to tell his story. There are very many wonderful examples of this in The Arrival , but ones that stood out to me the most are the those that use specific imagery that we as viewers are already familiar with. For instance, there is a scene where a couple are trying to find a way out of the wreckage of their city and to escape, and they ask a man for help. He shows them a map, but indicates to them that it would cost something by holding up two fingers and rubbing them together with his thumb. They offer him a trinket; al...