Online Comics

Off-White

Back in my days of posting my terrible fantasy art on deviantART about six years ago, one of my friends linked me to a wolf comic that wasn't cringe-worthy to read for the first time. It made it to the front page of dA every now and then with each new page out, even though it was snuffed most of the time by terribly drawn other furry comics and giant-breasted anime characters. I decided to watch the person who posted the comic, known as user akreon, to follow it weekly-monthly, or whenever they had the free time to produce each digital panel. I didn't know it was entirely three people working on it until some time later, but by that time I got too involved in school and other things to follow up on it. Now that I look back on it and have had some time to read it, I know why it's so successfully popular on deviantART. They have since produced around 840 pages now, not including those that they've done previously but revamped, because they've improved so much since they first started drawing, laying out the panels, and shading their images. It's also based off of Norse mythology, which it very isn't typical for your regular deviantART comic. It's kind of funny to look at some of the beginning panels and see that the word bubbles use to be in comic sans since it was such a popular thing to do at the time, but now they settled on a font not as….dumb looking.

Of course the other thing that people drew towards it were the talking wolves. I can pass it off as a very more-realistic Balto story, but it never really bothered me since the animals are the main subject matter behind the myth of the plot they are conveying. Humans do come across them at some point, meaning it takes place around our current century and not some world where only wolves inhabited it. Every creature on earth has a black and white spirit counterpart, and it's in no way shameful (as I believe) to learn about this story with realistic talking animals. The art direction, as well, has become so elegant and smooth with color that it makes me want to improve to produce this much art in my future should I chose to be a comic artist.

Link to the Off-White comic.

Superheros Reconsidered

Promethia

Christianity makes it's forms at the very beginning of the comic, as a trope of them are killing off a father that is a Hermetic Scholar (or a magician) that looked like he was devil-worshipping to the Christians. It seemed to be during the time of when Christians were doing existentialism. The father was carrying a staff of Caduceus from Greek mythology/ Astrology. It says that if the staff is applied to a dying person, their death is gentle, and if applied to a dead person, they are brought back to life. The father was stabbed to death but was smiling, hens forth the purpose of it. The Smee was also killed under the same staff. Then two Gods appear before Promethea, which is Thoth, the God of writing and knowledge, and Hermes, a protector of literature and poets (and many other things). This connects to the girl writing her paper in the future when she becomes transformed to Promethea herself as she basically calls forth the spirit of her by writing about her. The last symbol I noticed was the egyptian symbol of Ankh, or "the breath of life" used on Promethea's armor.

The jump to the 1999 super-futuristic time with the two college girls talking about their social life and workload sounded very stereotypical to me. The whole vibe reminded me of a more futuristic version of Blade Runner, with the rich people literally floating above the lower class, and the slums looking super nasty and rusty. But the tone of the college girls who seemed to be middle class acted as if you'd be hearing the conversation today. The moment that made me get a real laugh since I joke with my friends about obsessive celebrities is after the girl meets the "Five Swell Guys" is the "Wait till I tell Stacia. She'll hemorrhage."

I'd find it interesting if this was produced into a 3rd person game. Alan Moore described that his comics are nearly impossible to be re-created on a movie scale, but what about a video game? The old story of the little girl leaving her father could be a little comic/storytelling segment to a preview to introduce the game before taking the controls. Then you could play as the college girl to explore and investigate your way into asking questions towards Barbara Shelly, getting kicked out of her apartment, and wondering around to find your way to a concert in the dumps of a city. You'd move your person around yourself to catch glimpses of something that you think is following you, but can't quite pin-point it yet. Then the Smee appears, with Shelly running to your aid and saving you. There'd be a quick run-down segment of the past and present to tell you your standing, aka how to use your controls. As you are writing about Promethea, you'd be more and more pushed in a time segment to complete it, until finally bursting into Promethea yourself. The action of killing the Smee is honing down your new abilities you've just accumulated. And then the game will take a slight break before the next chapter. 

Comics by Women

Diary of a Dominatrix

First thing's first - I knew this graphic novel was going to be about various accounts of a dominatrix's sexual acts due to the plain heading of it. I'd prefer not to read such things but, I wasn't sure what else to read, so I gave this a go. It started out with the morning ritual of this woman named Zelda Zonks, and how she gets prepared for her "days work" in the dungeon. Molly Keily (author) even adds a paper doll of the character, I guess, for the giggles. She explains the bizarre fetishes and quests men call her to do, and she breaks down each different segment of why and how these men want to be….dominated. There are several pages of items used and listed for these acts and even goes into detail that vegetables are much more humility oriented than a dildo would be because dildos are too personal for her clients. 

The part that shocked me the most is how tortuous these men demand to be punished, like branding - AND she gives an easy-looking explanation of how to circumcise and preform a vasectomy (though of course Keily writes a disclaimer on the side not to blame her if other people even follow her instructions). But I know that's her intension to make it as unpleasant reading as possible and to make men who dare to read it become squeamish instantly. Infact, this whole comic is served to be squeamish towards men from the step-by-step processes of how to torture a man and his manhood - yet making woman only laugh and enjoy it by comparison. After all, Keily doesn't draw Zelda Zonks obscenely elegant and beautiful like most stereotypical male-oriented comics are. She has imperfections like any other normal woman. 

Comics as Contemporary Literature

Acme - Jimmy Corrigan -The Smartest Kid on Earth

Chris Ware seems like a rather anti-social individual from the interview we watched of other contemporary artists we saw in class. He has a bad reputation with his absent father and that directly correlates to what he inspired to draw comics about. I mean, after all, just the very first page to Jimmy Corrigan states that he's missing his absent father and would like a replacement father. From there on its an ancestry line of awkward and failed living matters from this partially bald man-child and his terrible relations he had to his mother, his father, and to some of his friends. The whole comic is kind of a downer to read, but it provides shelter to those who have been through the same personal experience and would like to view it from another person's level. That's why it serves well on a contemporary level because issues like that still occur to this very day, and there is always depression lingering in individuals at some point of their life.

Ware's style is very shape-oriented and well organized. It almost looks machine or factory-made in a away, as you can tell there is no variation of line quality - just thick outlines and the same pressure of inner details. I guess it's what leads him up to how oddly he distributed these comics as a board game hardback, a newspaper clipping, a flip book, a map, and other unusual ways as seen provided in the class. He also adds atmosphere to the comic by not showing current events or characters in each panel - but the moody weather outside, the shadows of the furniture in a house, or how decently and spaced objects are in a room.

Manga

Berserk

I think the first ever time I new about Japanese comics and anime as the airing of Sailor Moon I used to watch on the T.V.. Granted, I hardly remember any of it, but I knew it was way different than watching Scooby Doo. I kind of showed interested in the shows Toonami aired like Dragon Ball Z and Zoids, but I never really liked the Shojo style of anime (or anything with huge eyes. I still secretly hate Pokemon, don't tell anyone.) I've read my share of Shonen Jump magazines when I started attending high school, thanks to friends I met there carrying them around and reading them in their free time in class. It made me interested in collecting Bleach volumes, after I got hooked watching an Adult Swim commercial to the English dubbed anime they began to air around that time as well. I never really expanded onto other mangas until I realized Bleach's storyline sounded more like Dragon Ball Z, so I began to venture out until someone told me how gruesome one manga is. I was curious and started reading this manga called Berserk. It's infamous for it's blood, guts, rape, pedophelia, and even incest. I was soon drawn into reading a good chunk of the way through, and was disappointed when I read info about it that the manga hasn't even been finished yet even after running for 22 years (first volume was released in 1990).

The way Kentaro Miura inks his panels is what mostly got me fixated into reading more into the volumes of the manga. During action scenes, the shaded lines point in the direction of the moment, which is my favorite part seeing in every action sequence. Guts's expressions are pushed to the max when he is enraged while fighting countless demons. The backgrounds are definitely not flushed out - there is every detail added to every nook and cranny, even a page filled with thousands of soldiers lined up for battle all have their armor drawn out. The demons included may be atrocious, but it's things like them that make this gruesome story stand out more than other mangas. There are also some really human moments in the story that make it believable, aside from the fact that everything becomes insane in other chapters. Overall, I recommend someone to give it a try to see how thrilling it branches out to be.

European Comics

The Hunting Party (Partie de chasse)
Normally I would turn my head on a comic about political thrillers, but what drew me to reading this comic was the overall art direction. I couldn't follow half of the story, but if I knew more detailed history of the Soviet Union and the communist leaders' roles of power, I'd fully understand the background stories of all of the characters they flashback to during the story. I knew hints of why they went to Poland to do their bear hunting trip - to plot and kill the new executive committee person to stop the spread of Stalinism. Vasili Aleksandrovič Čevčenko, and old revolutionary leader who's paralyzed in the face but still reins power, lead the plan to this under some very troubling past experiences he had with a woman he loved who was arrested and killed during the revolution. In the end, they 'accidentally' shoot the man, then the bear, and call it off as their deed is complete. However, Vasili ends it in a different way on the train back home....

But the illustrations! I haven't seen a style quite like this before with both the coloring and the way the artist Enki Bilal drew out the figures. There's much detail put into each of the old men - how their jowls are, how wrinkled their brow is, and how saggy their eyelids are. None of them are pristine looking, and you can barely see the whites of their eyes in every panel. It makes them somewhat soulless in a way, which is in itself a good and a bad thing if backed up with the right amount of writing put into it. Yet the coloring as well striked me - it's all dull grays and browns other than the use of the three primary colors of red, blue, and yellow. They used these in certain areas of interest and attention, mostly when Vasili was having a flashback to his revolutionary days. I also liked the added wisps of paint over the inked lines for a sublime hazy effect.

Stereotypical Representations

Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi does an excellent job of defining various types of rebellion in our society. She explores the probable reasons, may they be fear or knowledge, and quite literally, illustrates the consequences. A teenager enacts rebellion by separating himself or herself from the general, and dives deeper into another extreme. Adults enact rebellion, by separating others from themselves. It's ingenious of how she illustrates each picture focusing on sillhoutes and simple shapes without any bit getting confusing for me to follow which shape is which. It's a very easy read even with word bubbles across all countries in my opinion. 

One of Satrapi’s many strengths is how she shows us the prevalence of social censorship during unrest. It comes to a point where everyone is out there to protect themselves. To point the finger at others, and say, “No I am not like you, you are not like me.” As our society is continuingly putting up boundaries and constructing ideas of “ingroups and outgroups”, it is important to realize and understand the effects on the present. We may be fighting for the future, but are we looking ahead before looking to those beside us. Her book excludes no one and doesn’t place strong judgments on any particular group, though opinions are voiced. This is not a story of who was right, and who gained the most, or who suffered tragically. On the contrary, Persepolis is a novel of the importance of being aware of ourselves and understanding the consequences of change.

Maus

Art Speigelman's Maus is a story of, simply by looking at the cover art, surviving the rain of Hitler and the Nazis taking over and creating the Holocaust. Upon first opening the pages to it and adjusting to the style, it looked like heavy hatches into the paper than swift lines on a paper. Everything is rough with no actual added tones or layered backgrounds. It's either silhouettes or cross-hatching, fitting well to the tone. The next thing is that there's no human characters, but anthropomorphic mice, cats, pigs, dogs, and frogs. The Jews are the mice, the pigs are the Polish, the cats are the Germans, and the dogs are the Americans. I find it fitting though, that the rank of animals to one-another rank from the cats chasing the mice, to the dogs chasing the cats. Another thing I noticed is that the normal faces of the animals had no emotions besides the eyebrow lines and their mouths, but when there were dire situations the character were experiencing, their eyes would bulge and not look bead-like. The graphic parts of the retelling of the Holocaust were never fully shown to an extent, either. Most brutal beatings or killing where off the panel, but only emphasized in an entire panel (like the burning of the mice in the graves) to explain a heavy moment.

Besides the visuals and grave history, the overall retelling of Speigelman's story is entertaining to read, simply by the way the father is retelling it to his son. Artie could have clearly left out the shenanigans that happened between the main storytelling, but it's a nice break to read. It's almost like getting fun little commercial breaks between a long documentary. The grammar in a lot of the panels is mixed in format as well, and I don't know if it was Artie's mistakes, or the word-by-word retelling of his father's English.

Underground Comics

Surprisingly, I thought I'd hate every single underground comic that I came across online or in class. Which, I really do to some extent since 'adult' or porn comics are a big no-no for me, but I can't get past the fact that these comics are unedited and uncensored and telling of the world as it is to these comic book artists. There's always a hard truth behind every comic, no matter how raunchy or intensionally offensive it is. Of course, some I don't even understand because it's so random and blotted with conscious thoughts here and there, but there's always a will and motivation behind each story and panel that the original 'artist' was trying to jot down. Not all of the 'artists' were even experienced with drawing before, as we discussed that one line of comics were drawn by people who use to take LSD (or some other hard drug). But each artist has been known mostly of the middle-class, and what their personal experience with life or drugs leech out and form some kind of obtuse idea of a comic for other people to read.

Some of Robert Crumb's Mr. Natural highly restates events of uncensored truths and denied responsibilities. I think of these comics as personal diary entries of ideas of whatever comes across this man's brain (whether or not he was high or not, since I don't know the details). No one would ever steal money from a Buddhist homeless man, give it to a young girl of color, and then it would somehow cascade to a gang wanting that homeless man's income of free money which would lead to that man going to an insane asylum to find inner peace. BUT, it's a radical way of getting someone thinking of the poverties of today, of seeing homeless on the street, and thinking that there really are people out there that steal money from homeless people and a constant threat of gangs and racism. None of these comics paint a pretty color of the world, but it does make perceiving the world sharper and clearer and expectant of what's to come from certain outcomes.

Eisner and Thompson's Approach to Comics

Clarity. That is the main reasons why both of these comic book artists are so successful for what they've drawn. Clarity in posture, emotion, and action. Eisner's A Contract With God may be about the fateful live of a Jewish man and a contract he wrote on a rock at a young age, which is very odd (though insightful), but we are lead step by step and clear readings to understand each panel to it's fullest. Eisner even wanted to publish it as a graphic novel because he wasn't sure what it was, but eventually had to publish it as his own comic since it fit under the category than a foretold written story. It's easy reading because the characters in each panel perceive exactly what the written words are conceiving. Nothing is confusing. The raining water is the most interesting part I found personally - when it rains, it pours. Just exactly like he drew it out.

Thompson's work, on the other hand, is like a more evolved version of Eisner's work. It has just as much clarity, but it's stylized in such a cool and neat way that even the borders of his panels and fun to look at. The subject matter Blankets cover is definitely of personal accounts, but ones that teens can relate to the most. Emotions and mood swings can be seen in all of the characters he's able to draw through body shapes and simplified but whimsical facial expressions. Even if I wasn't personally drawn to the subject matter, I couldn't help but love the composition of each frame and page Thomson laid out. It reminded me of woodcut work from when I used to do printmaking in high school, and woodcut was always my favorite medium to work with. You can't ever get too detailed with carving hard surfaces, but you can still figure out a way to chisel a fine and emotional line quality in the wood that would eventually turn into a finished composition. And that's what I feel toward's his work, even if a layout of a page is of two sailors floating on a large poo floating down a diarrhea river.

Beginning of Comics

The '30's to '60's was the real start of mass-produced comics for all ages to take a hold of. Cheap newsprint paper, around sixty-four pages, and sold at almost any convenience store, these things were everywhere, even in the army. The attraction to these wordy comics with panels, in a way, 'seducted' the innocent into learning literacy in a way as well. Though, since comic book-making was started primarily in a male-industry, mostly every costumed character and arthur was made by men, for men (or boys). If there were relationships, it was always a man and a woman. If there was always a woman, that woman would relate to a man by being romantically involved with him, or an evil seductrise in a way. Even the romance comics made to appeal to women seemed to still have a rather male audience because of the woman-in-distress-and-needs-an-attractive-man-to-rescue-her with necessary male-gaze body shots and whatnot.

Another thing about standard costume superhero comics is that the reader must be a die-hard fan and read every issue from the start to the most recent that is on the market in order to understand the storyline and the plot. I'd be confused with picking up a random Superman comic off of a shelf and start reading it without my input of heavy background information for everything to make sense. I personally don't like the standard issues of these comics because it's more wordy than action to action pictures, but, I can understand being on a strict time schedule and a limited amount of pages to fit all of the drawn content on. I also noticed as well that the exchanged artists in some of the mass produced comics seem to be really lazy in some drawn panels, like drawing lazy-eyed faces that seem to be more comedic to look at than the actual story of the comic. I'd blame it on the lack of coffee, but simple errors like that in a comic really throw off my emersion. Guess the motto for back then was quantity over quality.

Little Nemo, Calvan and Hobbs, and Peanuts

Charles Schulz may not be the first artist to innovate taking the kid's eye view seriously (Little Nemo definitely beat him to that), but it still counted as a turning point in every day kid's comics. Peanuts is a long debut of self-experiences made by Schulz, made by a once-kid for kids. Kids are broken from adult ways of life and are focused with who closely can talk to and interact with them, whether it be their best friends or their favorite stuffed animal. The adults and teachers are pushed to the side and insignificant to the main strip because that ain't something a kid wants to focus on. Instead, kids want to look for fun and adventure, and not be lectured by an adult all day. They want to discover things for themselves. Each little comic strip is it's own little learning experience, and, even if they're not exactly laugh-out-loud material, the real hint of irony and sarcasm is what make each enjoyable.

The success of these tiny comics even pushed other comics to the same size Schulz's was. Not because of forced ordering, but instead, by encouraging imitation. The easy-read caricatures, as related back to Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, are icons in themselves that relate to so many people on their own levels that everyone can pick up a newspaper, read it, and get personally attached to them. But the downside is that all of these comics have aged, sadly. No kid plays marbles or other old forms of child's play. They're becoming harder to relate to because the norm of today is becoming more and more different than how it was back then. It truly is turning to more of comic of it's time than of a contemporary comic of today.

Understanding Comics

Scott McCloud makes the interesting point that in his comic, there are a range of icons (not symbols) that are used in comics that we relate to. He explains that we are a self-centered race, and we somehow always find ourselves relating and/or extending ourselves to inanimate objects all the time. The majority of all those icons pin down to one factor - the face.

The face is what makes us involved in reading comics and watching cartoons. Cartoonists simplify a face to the point to whoever looks at it can perceive themselves as that character, or insert themselves in their shoes. No one can ever truly draw the visual we see when looking at someone's face in real life, so in turn, everyone ends up drawing their own simplified perception of someone's face whom they can relate to. Be it two dots for eyes and a line for a mouth, Bart Simpson, or Superman, we all can see them with human expressions because our mind processes them that way. It's a main reason why kids are so drawn into watching cartoons on the television all the time - whatever the cartoon adventures through, the kid adventures as well in their own universe. The kid becomes the character.

But the other cool thing that we're able to do as humans is extend ourselves to whatever objects we hold or are placed in. Our minds extend to the boundaries of what we are around, and also in a way, become that object. If we're driving a car, and someone fender-benders our car, we automatically think, "That idiot hit me!" instead of "That idiot hit my car!". I do the same when I play action video games and the character I'm playing as gets attacked in some way. The responsibility of you behind the object you relate to becomes personal, and therefore, you take personal offense to whatever happens to the object. When people insert themselves in the shells of characters they read in comics, the emotional or physical trauma that character goes through always tends to lead to imaginative personal offense as well. (But of course, not all comics are great at breaking that down, so it doesn't always work.)

The Arrival - Wordless Comic

The Arrival by Shaun Tan is an excellent example of a wordless comic conveying a story without any (or only a little) confusion. These soft yet finely detailed drawings capture every emotion, action, and objects of certain attention to presume each situation in every panel. Faces can contort in many shapes to display surprise, hate, sorrow, happiness, and utter confusion. The body language, especially the gestures of the hands of every character, establish communication between one another. Added sways and wrinkles in clothing depict moving action. Not every object in the environment may be finely detailed, but each panel is never too busy - leaving the most important features more detailed than others. There are pinpointed breakdowns of complicated actions to fool-proof the reader, too, to not mistake what action that character is making. Even the slightly different shades of pencil or ink, ranging from a red to a raven-blue, add more tone or moods to the flashbacks of the people the main character meets up with.

To summarize, the story begins with a father packing up a suitcase. His wife and daughter run along with him, leaving an entire city filled with mysterious, but large, jagged-tailed monsters. They escape by a large boat to a strange new city of paradise, apparently where everyone flocks to as refugees from other distance cities. The man's wife and daughter must part from him and live in a separate quarter, until the father can find a stable place and a job to support them. He wonders the city confused to his whits about the weird creatures and symbols. Luckily, other refugees help him go on his way, to where he eventually ends up on a job at a factory. He's finally able to mail money back to his wife and daughter, so then eventually, they return to him and live in their new house in peace.

The story itself is interesting on how odd creatures, monsters, times of famine and war, inhabit their world (or separate worlds); every different refugee converges at some point or another to help each other along to live in their new odd world of paradise. But each refugee has a connection we can relate to or remember from our own history to look upon and feel sympathy for them. So while everything maybe super odd or weird, deep down there is a connection we understand to push the wordless comic more as story we are reading in our heads.