Week 15: Revision

After having more knowledge on comic books this semester, I decided to revise this week's blog post.  I feel that now, after having more exposure to the medium, I am able to understand more the medium.  Carl Bark definitely was the the inspiration to many of the comic (and animation) artists today.

I think the biggest precedent Carl left for this medium were his strong storytelling poses and his visual style.  A lot of animation artists can definitely take inspiration from Carl, especially since his characters look so similar to the world Wal Dsiney would create anyways.  But his drawings are perfect for what animators need to see: clear poses that are a quick read.  For example, you can take out the words from the comic below and still understand what's going on very clearly.

TinTin is another comic book that follows this way of being very visual in its storytelling.  Similar to Bark's work, TinTin has a dry humor to it that is still very apparent even if you don't read all of the words.  You can see the direct evolution from comic strips to comic books, especially in the form of short gags like this:

Gags like that within TinTin are still very reminiscent  of the comic strip era, yet I argue that the early comic books are an evolved version of this because now this gag correlates with an overarching story.  I think that it can be argued that TinTin is even more evolved that Bark's work, since we see more experimentation with the panels and how they're laid out.

Ultimately, these comic books would sent the precedent for sequential storytelling and their influence has been so impactful on future comic artists and animation artists alike.

 

Extra Credit: Scott Pilgrim

I had been meaning to read the Scott Pilgrim manga for a while and after we watched a bit of the movie in class, I finally forced myself to sit down and read it.

My first reactions are, Wow.  What an awesome book!  The movie basically is this entire book copied strictly to the T, even including locations everything happens to the dialogue of the comic.  They capture the spirit of it perfectly.

Describing wallace's room in the comic book

Describing Wallace's room in the movie.  

That's honestly about as close as you can get.  Even though most of the credit goes to the original Manga for dreaming up the world and the story, you have to give major credit to the movie for maintaining the original intent of the comic and figuring out how to continue that fun and playfulness of the comic into a moving picture medium, which I think they did successfully.  There are some characters that are so spot on (and even kind of look like the Manga version), such as Kim:

I think the added effects make Scott Pilgrim stand out, and I think it also makes it very appealing.  Most people, at some point in their lives, have read a comic book and all of these tropes are so similar.  It is also just so entertaining when you see these (often times, ridiculous) ideas brought into real life.  Ridiculous, and AMAZING.

You just don't get much better than that.

I also really love the style of these comics.  It's different from most Manga i've read and it's just a very playful style that allows for a lot of great expressions.  It's a super quick read and really enjoyable -- though honestly, if you've watched the movie, you've already understood most of the comic!

Week 14: The Future of Comics

Other than comic strips in the paper, the second form of comics I regularly read were webcomics.  Nothing enriching; it was first just Mutts daily comic sent to my email, and then I found a comic that most teens find called Cyanide and Happiness back in my old deviantArt days.

This comic I love, mostly because the characters are just stick figures.  It was something so simply that made really appreciate this type of raw (and often crude) humor.  Since I liked Cyanide and Happiness so much, it only makes sense that the next webcomic that I would enjoy immensely would be Hyperbole and a Half:

Hyperbole and a Half is great, because it's not even told in traditional comic form.  It's just some long blog posts split up with these crude little drawings the creator has made.  This webcomic usually tells tales of her past in such a funny and comedic way.  Most people see some aspect of themselves in her characters.  

From this post, I decided to visit another webcomic I really like, called "Infinite Nap."  I think this comic is a great example of what is really appealing about webcomics, which is that they're short little blurbs that are usually about real life.  At least the webcomics I'm familiar with all seem to reflect someone talking about a personal experience or just how they feel that day.  In this day and age, I think people are looking to feel more connected with each other; every online community has that feeling of being just that, a 'community', and I think people automatically look for a group of people where they all have shared experiences.

I felt that way when I read the comic Ducks Ducks Ducks.  I really enjoy the loose nature of comics like these.  They bring me back to the idea Scott McCloud brought up about how the simpler something is, the more someone can project their own details onto it and relate more.  I think it also helps make the story feel like it's being told to you by a friend, rather than a random stranger on the internet.  

Octapus Pie was another good comic and I liked how this one had more of a storyline that it followed thorugh each week, rather than the other webcomics which were either little gags or short stories.   Each webcomic offers something new to the table and I don't believe they will die out anytime soon.

Week 13: Reconsidering the Superhero

I kept postponing making this blog post since I was having a really hard time getting into this genre.  The first time, I read just the script for Watchmen on the course syllabus and could not get myself interested in the story at all.  I found the comic online and started reading that, but for some reason, I just couldn't get into it.  I wanted to get into it, but I just couldn't.  I can definitely see the appeal behind it; I think that it is such an interesting idea to have a superhero that is the total opposite of a superhero that is well liked, or a superhero that even likes the people he's saving.  In the first few pages of Watchman, we see Rorschach call the humans around him 'human cockroaches' and watch him as he breaks an innocent man's fingers just to learn information:  he's definitely your friendly neighborhood Clark Kent.  This idea in itself is really intriguing, which is why I'm not surprised why so many are drawn to it.  Watchman on a whole deals with more adult topics and it shows the darker side to superhero/masked vigilantes/humans in general, and I think this element makes it more appealing to adults.

For me, I think Watchman was a little too grungy for me.  I'll also be honest and say that stories which require a lot of dialogue and less relying on the visuals are not as appealing to me.  Especially at this point in my life, where I'm an exhausted college student looking for something to take my mind off things.  It is for this reason that I also didn't like Preacher as much, but felt more drawn to Hellboy.  I think Hellboy was also more appealing to me because the characters are completely different than anything I've ever seen before; whereas Preacher and Watchman are mostly just humans, Hellboy's new designs made it more interesting and I felt that the tone of it could get a lot more light-hearted than the other comics:

I think the art style also contributed; Preacher and Watchman are much more detailed than Hellboy and aren't as much of a quick read, whereas here there are very clear visuals with only one or two items as the main focus.  To me, it's comics like Hellboy that keep the action that made the first generation superheros famous, that I find more fun to follow and can relate to more.

In Class Questions

Were there any prominent symbols and how were they used?
In this comic, I noticed that they brought up the idea of the Church and liquor and usually compared the two in some sort of way, or there was trouble happening near liquor or involving liquor.  In the beginning in the bar, that's where the preacher started delivering his 'truth's, and you can see a liquor bottle on the ground.  The reason the preacher starts on his whole rant is because of the watered down beer.  It is also right outside the bar where Tulip first sees the man she's supposed to kill.  There's also the idea of innocence; in the beginning, the Preacher delivers the 'truth' to everyone, which infuriates the public so they beat him up.  Then, the public claims their innocence in the whole ordeal.  Tulip kind of loses her 'innocence' at shooting the man.

Is there an aspect to the story where you were able to make a personal connection?
I'm not really sure if there's any aspect I personally related to since the characters and their situation is so different from any I have ever been in.  However, there are some feelings that are the same between the comic and myself; I relate to the Preacher in the beginning with the frustration of hearing everybody claim their innocence yet hearing all of their secrets, as most people in any given situation will usually try to act like they had nothing to do with it.  I also relate to Tulip and how she decides to ignore all warnings and drive into the explosion; I am of a similar mindset where part of me is curious but most of me would be worried for anyone there, and I believe I would probably do something similar.

If you were to adapt this story to another medium, what changes would you make and why?
I could see this as a TV show, similar to the format of Lost or Supernatural.  I think the biggest change I would make would be to not have the wings on the ruler of Heaven.  It's a tiny change in the grand scheme of things, and this change would be rooted in practical VFX money reasons and also the fact that I think it would be harder for people to be intimidated by someone with wings.  Because it's a symbol that we're not used to seeing on people in everyday human life, it would cause the show to lose its sense of being within a realistic reality.  In comics, people are more used to the unexpected, and when the details are just enough for you to imagine the rest, you can imagine it.  With a format like TV though, it would have to look so accurate and there's not much room for mistakes.

Week 12: Comics By Women

I had heard good reviews of This One Summer from my friend Anna Craig, who has a personal copy, yet never got around to reading it.  I stopped by the library today and was so absorbed in the book I read it in one sitting!  It seemed to utilize everything I loved about comics; the visual sounds, stunning imagery, and just honest storytelling.  The way the two girls interact is so similar to the way I acted with my friends when I was younger, even down to the awkward pauses which you could just feel within the writing.  The entire story dealt with the different complicated themes that women of each age go through: from the pubescent worries and trials of your first crush to your teenage exploration of your sexuality (and what the consequences may be) and to an older woman dealing with a miscarriage and what that means for her family.  I think that's why the story was so gripping; there were so many different relatable themes going on at once that you wanted to know the stories to, even though the story only really focuses on the interactions of these two friends.

The greatest thing about this story that it is a gripping story dealing with mostly all women dealing with real women problems talking about actual things women and girls talk about and it is written by women!  It is rare to find a stories that are so relateable to how women actually think; stories that treat us as complex characters, and I truly feel that this is probably the best piece i've read in this class so far.  From an animation standpoint, I naturally pick up on acting and dialogue.  For me, I love the acting in this bit right here:

It's something where they're both completing an action, and not just spitting out dialogue.  And the whole wringing out your hair is such a part of honest acting and you are even more intrigued with the story when the other character swims away.  I really love moments like this because there is so much subtext within it, and of course it's drawn and portrayed beautifully.

Week 11: Comics as Contemporary Literature

I really liked Chris Ware's work.  I felt that it was simple and elegant, a sort of mordern way of reading comics.  I enjoyed his storytelling, with how he would often incorporate words in more of a graphic design piece with his comics.  With newer comics, each works to reinvent itself, and I feel that with Chris Ware's work specifically, he is working on reinventing himself through the format of how his comics are packaged and viewed:

I feel that his clean and isometric style speaks a lot to the modernization of the medium and I really enjoyed his work.

Additionally, I feel that authors and artists keep getting more and more creative the merging of text and images.  This is especially true with Aesterious Polyps, another comic that features a very streamlined style.  In my opinion, this comic departs so much from the 'traditional' comic form we have seen previously and I would personally define it   I really enjoyed that this author didn't feel limited by the panel and thought, in the most literal sense, out of the box.  I think this comic does SO many things well; it uses the color palettes to help differentiate between Aesterios and everyone else as well as a different color palette for each flashback.  Additionally, when Aesterios and his wife Hana are in an argument and they are seeing less and less of each other's sides, he plays around with giving them opposing colors as well as different styles of drawing them to emphasize the differences in how they think.

This is so effective and part of me is very curious to see what this would look like in an animated format, because I think this is such a cool way to tell stories visually.  I actually wasn't sure whether I would like this comic when I first started it, but I loved the muted color palette and the art style so I kept reading it.  Now, after finishing it, I'm glad I read it all the way through, because I feel that the way this story is told is in such a new and innovative way.  Even with how the comic ends (which I won't post for no spoilers) is something I would have never expected but it seemed to fit the tragic story well.