Week 6: Underground Comics

Whoo boy, what a time the 60s-80s must have been if you were a comic artist. Sex, drugs, and rock n' roll as they say. So for this week's reading I took it upon myself to read through a couple different comics on the list that seemed like they'd be best to understand where comics were at within the last 40 some years in terms of style and cultural imagery. My readings were Gay Comix Issue 01 and Tits and Clits. The titles were eye-catching enough if it weren't for the typical colorful and saturated imagery used on the covers. Not too mention the sexual innuendos in the imagery gave me a small chuckle.

As a queer person myself, reading these comics was really fascinating. To be able to read comics which took place in such an interesting time range in our culture I was able to see how the LGBT community saw itself back then and how it was treated through the stories drawn out. Many of the stories in the Gay Comix issues were relatable and were cool to read because even back in the heights of the 60s or 70s queer people weren't too different from the community today. Although the comics were strife with the usual stereotypes that even still exist today most of the imagery was presented positively. If it seemed offensive the image was probably intended as a social critique since back then if you were outed as LGBT you were more likely to be discriminated against or harmed.

I think it was incredibly clever for comics such as these to exist at the time. LGBT was starting to really pick up after the 60s and it exploded in the 80s due to the AIDs pandemic and other cultural issues. Comics like these were a good way to educate people and share the experiences of queer individuals who faced certain struggles in a time where the idea of sexuality was really being played with. LGBT comics were also a good way to help bring more visibility to the community.

Week 5: Will Eisner, Beauty of Movement

After reading A Contract With God I feel like I can appreciate Will Eisner's work even further. Before I can't say I knew much about Eisner's work although I had seen and probably read some of his comics when I was younger. He truly is a comic legend and his approach to making comics is incredible. In much of his work Eisner employs a large amount of body gesturing in the characters he draws in his comics. He does it so well, I believe, that while reading his work you can understand the character and their intentions, emotions, or direction by simply reading the body language.

 Gestures are very ingrained in culture whether you realize this or not. By understanding what gesture applies to what you can use this to your advantage to give your art more life and this is exactly what Eisner did. His drawing style also helps since it's beautifully drawn out ink sketches that are stylistic but still close to realism so you can easily understand what you're looking at.

In A Contract With God the pages are set up differently from the usual comic paneling. The pages are left open with various text or illustrations and most of what you see is taken up by the characters on the page and what they're doing. Most pages in Eisner's novel contained a large amount of characters so using successful body language in the way they were drawn paid off to help carry the story easily along to whoever was reading. While speech bubbles were used for dialogue I feel most of the story was carried through the characters and their movements or emotions shown on each page.

As for the actual story now, I can't say it moved me too much but I did feel a sort of connection through what the main character in Eisner's novel was dealing with. Everybody has lost a loved one and it hurts, and sometimes we turn to finding something to blame to take away the pain. The focus Eisner's story, Frimme, takes out his pain from dealing with a close family death by pouring his anger out on god. Through the novel we see Frimme's anger and pain through Eisner's line-work and well drawn gestures. That I feel was a part of the novel which was really well done.

Week 4: The Comic Book

Comic books have always been something of a love/hate relationship for me. Love in that I adore the medium and I have three large boxes under my work bench back home filled with a couple hundred comic book issues I've been collecting since the age of twelve. And hate due to how much collecting them has killed my wallet. But I digress, I still love to collect them and read them occasionally.

The comic book medium has, in my opinion, been such a great storytelling medium. While I admire simple text and lack of pictures from the many books I’ve read since it left me to using my imagination to fill in the void, comics have made reading a story much easier. This is because comics already have the visuals of their stories drawn out. You don’t have to imagine what the main character looks like or what color the monster of the week bleeds, you get all this detail from the images drawn out in each panel drawn in the comic medium. This I feel makes it easier to read through a story because you don’t have to put extra time into visualizing what you’re reading.

Comic books are also great because the stories told in them are always ongoing unlike most comic strips and you can pick off where one part left off in the next issue.  Depending on how the paneling is done to comic books can really draw in a reader to the story they’re telling. One of my favorite types of comic books is the Japanese Manga. Besides the incredibly diverse stories and worlds presented in many stories told through the Asian comic medium the way in which the action is drawn inside the panels is like the American comic strip on steroids. What the heck do I mean by that? I mean that the art is at times incredibly drawn and the movement is darn amazing. Mangakas really outdo themselves with their work.

Blue Dragon Ral Grado

Week 3:The Comic Strip

I've always been an avid reader of newspaper comic strips since I was a kid. Sunday was my favorite in terms of running over to my grandparent's house to grab the paper to read one of the many comic strips featuring my favorite artists and series. While I've read comic strips from Foxtrot to Snoopy , one of my favorites, especially in terms of comic strip styling, is Bill Watterson's is masterpiece Calvin and Hobbes. 

From its gorgeous line-work to it's witty and endearing humor, Calvin and Hobbes is truly a wonderful example of how well the comic strip has progressed as a visual form of quick storytelling. Like most typical comic strips Calvin and Hobbes follows the basic formula of using 1-4 panels to show a situation that young Calvin and his friend Hobbes gets into. The dialogue is usually funny and childish, but Watterson manages to layer some deeply insightful ideas into his work that any adult would be able to catch when they read his comics.

Besides the dialogue the line-work done for Calvin and Hobbes is one of my favorite among the older comics. The style is incredibly energetic and has a lot of personality. Calvin and his rambunctious and clever personality is shown through how he's drawn. I'm also a sucker for line-work that shows varying weight so of course Watterson's comic caught my eye when I first saw it as a child. The panel work is one of my favorites as well due to how easy it is to read and quickly figure out what’s going on. That’s how most comics are drawn but the content within each panel is what makes it work so well, which is why I think Calvin and Hobbes uses it so well to show Calvin and Hobbes’s various adventures.

Week 2: Understanding Comics

While many diverse and fascinating topics were brought up in McCloud’s  Understanding Comics, I found that one of my favorites involved the cartoon. I’ve always assumed a cartoon was just an animation with catchy visuals and stylized, and usually simplified, designs for their characters, etc. The concept of a cartoon is more so used as a term meaning to simplify something so it’s easier to understand and push the story to an idea to the broader audience in a way that doesn’t lose their attention. This is something that’s carried over to comics pretty heavily, and it’s why cartoons have such a high appeal.

McCloud discusses how we are attracted to cartoons because of their simplicity and how their visuals allow us to see ourselves. I thought this was cool to read because it brings up a lot of interesting ideas about identity and visual awareness that is connected to these “cartoons” that we watch or read. The cartoon, as McCloud said, is a vacuum in which the viewer’s identity and awareness is pulled into it. Whether identifying with a character, object, etc. we the audience put ourselves into what we’re taking in.

           

As discussed before McCloud brought up how people see themselves and concepts within cartoons/comics. We put relatable images and experiences into our work after all so it’s not far-fetched to think that so many cartoons and comics are easy for the general audience to throw themselves into to understand what they’re reading better.

The visual style of the cartoon is also incredibly popular in comics due to it’s simplicity compared to realism, ability to create many visuals which are easy to read, a multitude of different styles you can draw out, etc. The cartoon also get’s ideas across really quick. Take for example the usual comics in the Sunday paper. The comic panels are simple and easy to read and whether or not they contain the scenes or ideas presented are easy to understand thanks to well chosen images and a simplified style.

Week 1: "The Arrival" by Shaun Tan

When most people think of graphic novels they probably imagine many of the comic book volume paperbacks or hardcovers you can find amongst the shelves in many book stores which are littered with colorful visuals and tons of dialogue bubbles to read. Many visual novels rely on a combination of images and speech boxes to help tell their story but not a lot truly rely on imagery alone.

            The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a magical little graphic novel whose beautiful visuals tell the story of a man and his family who’ve immigrated to a new, strange land. While the visuals alone are striking and wonderfully drawn, what makes Tan’s novel so well done is the fact that he relies on visuals to tell his story. There isn’t one piece of dialogue anywhere.

            Tan’s detailed and carefully drawn out panels each show scenes that help rely the story to the reader through the character’s actions, important objects, visual focal points, showing specific events, etc. It is through what is seen that you understand what is going on in the story and it’s so well done that you can quickly gather what’s going on in each panel. Not one word of dialogue was needed.

            What also makes The Arrival such a great visual novel is that uses bizarre visuals to depict how everything the main character is experiencing is something new and almost otherworldly. The whole novel is a visual metaphor of how truly alien it is to come to a new country. Despite how odd the visuals become it’s still easy for the reader to follow along and understand what’s going on in the story. This is especially true for when the main character meets and talks to new people. We are shown a few panels that give a backstory to these characters and while the imagery is strange or outlandish at times we still understand the meaning behind what’s being shown to us without any dialogue.

            The method of relying on visuals also lends a better connection to the main character and an understanding of what its like to come to a new country whose language and culture you don’t understand. You have to rely on what you see, now what you can hear or read.

            The Arrival is a fantastic story and is a beautiful testament to the wonder of a purely visual graphic novel. I could only hope for more novels like it.