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.