Literature of Comics and Graphic Narrative

 I chose this comic because it was done by George Pratt. I had him as a professor my junior year at Ringling for Sketchbook Class. He's an amazing person who is so wise yet curious about life. He's full of wonder and I also notice there's a bit of sadness in him that comes out as something beautiful in his work. He loves to illustrate images on the topic of war. Whenever he gave us a demo in class, he would paint. soldier in watercolor, always with the face blurred out in some way. I always wondered why doesn't he like to paint the faces? Well, after reading his graphic novel I understand where this style of his was developed. The story is about trauma and war. I think the reason for the faces to be blurred out in some instances, not all, was to put the reader directly in the shoes of the character. Without a face, we don't have to really watch the character progress through the story as an outsider. I think this tactic creates emotional empathy for the viewer. This

 I liked this comic a lot. The illustrations were amazing! Everything was so consistent. The quality of line work, values, even the proportions of the characters stayed true to the model which I found very impressive. I liked seeing the characters who were all cats, act like they were folks from the Great Gatsby. The time period was so stylish and rebellious with the underground speakeasies happening and the gangster type groups of people doing crazy things. The story was really cool and I liked it even more just because of the art honestly The way the characters interacted with each other was kind of sassy which I thought was fun. It also coincides with the fact that they're all cats. I think of cats as sassy creatures who are independent and don't care about much. They have nine lives anyway. They shouldn't worry. In that sense, I think cats were a good choice for telling this story without using actual humans. From my perspective, I would assume that this story, or at le

This comic made me see some reoccurring trends in comics by women. It seems to be a pattern, in my experience, that the characters' reactions to things are over-exaggerated. this kind of brings me out of the story because I can't relate to the unrealistic way they communicate with each other. I'm not saying this is bad necessarily, but I think a great level of sophistication is simply wiped out in these stories because I felt like I was just reading about the character's life day by day. The topics of the day by day pacing of the story, almost always include something about being gay or something sexual. These moments were squeezed into the story where they didn't really belong. It was nice and silly to see those things happening but I didn't see a true purpose for so many of those moments. I didn't really see a strong plot in these comics. At some points, it seemed a little bit random but in a way that wasn't so exciting. For example, The Sandman is a n

 Watchmen totally changes the normal view of the general idea of superheroes. It was like an alternative reality if certain things were to change in the line of history when president Nixon was president. In the story, the world is really close to having a nuclear war that will destroy humanity. The famous image of the couple kissing after we had won the war, becomes a lesbian couple in Watchmen. In the story, that time period was dealing with a gay movement much sooner than in our reality. This was really cool to see, but also jarring in a way because something just feels wrong about the overall state of the people's minds and the world in the comic and in the film. I watched the film and I noticed it was pretty accurate to the comic. This story strongly reminds me of "The Boys" which started as a graphic novel but was turned into a show. I've watched it recently and it also plays on the whole idea of superheroes being not all that good. There's something scary a

 I really love the artist and the work in this book. One of my favorite artists is Nell Brinkley. So many others love her work too and it's hard to ignore that she has done something unique in the illustration I just love the way she draws women with such attitude through wild golden curly locks of hair and graceful expressions. I think there is a lot of movement in her brushstrokes. She uses ink often in her drawings and the line quality she achieves is beautiful. The images are very clear but they are really designed in a nice way by leaving certain spots on her figures a more simplified value and adding more detail in the area of the focal points. the images almost give me a sense that she completed them quickly and with a free way of thinking because some linework I've seen before is always very structured and perfect. In Brinkley's work, we get the opposite. It's so nicely done that we don't worry about any messy lines in the picture because we become more inte

 I was excited to see that Lumberjanes was on the book list for this week. I own a copy myself, but I haven't read it yet! Sometimes I go to the book store to get a couple of graphic novels and then I wait a while to read them. I was happy to be able to read them in this class, but I was a bit disappointed. My first impression of the books was sort of an action-adventure, maybe with some serious trouble more like the show Gravity Falls but with scouts instead. After reading the first couple of issues, I was noticing that the characters did go on some cool adventures, but there were no consequences for the characters at all. Every obstacle they faced, they were able to overcome it with no prior knowledge as to how to accomplish the tasks they were doing. I felt like the characters all had similar personalities too. And since they were basically invincible, I got bored in the times of the stories that I was supposed to be intrigued by. The dialogue I have to say was a bit...silly. So

 I read the Sandman the Doll's House. I chose the title because I knew that Sandman was about the dream world, and I have reoccurring dreams about dollhouses so I was curious. The entire Sandman series as a whole, however, is just beautiful. The story is so wonderfully written by Neil Gaiman that I don't think there has been anything like it since. The Sandman is such an awesome masterpiece. The topic of dreams is expressed so beautifully in the concept alone with having these interchanging worlds all existing at once. The story feels like your traveling through different dimensions. One transition I found to be really impressive was the early point in the story when Rose and her mom are riding in a car to their destination and Rose begins to drift off in the backseat. The panels around her started to spread apart and tilt completely sideways leading us into her dream she was having on the next page. This is then where we see the sandman talking with Lucien. What's interest

 I really liked this comic. It was on the edgier side I would say and it makes sense because it was listed with the Roots of Comics Punk titles. I think it was a fun read because of the imagery combined with the craziness happening around the characters. The whole feel of the story is very wild and nonlinear. It's mixed in with little side stories which were really fun and also kept things interesting. After the side stories and even some comics resembling an advertisement, the book always takes the stories back to the tank girl at some point. The stories were pretty crazy overall with humorous commentary that was raunchy and a little dirty at the same time. There were a lot of adult subjects like sex, but it was very direct. The images were explicit in some spots. One page had two characters staring at each other naked and there were little arrows pointing out the anatomy of a penis on one page. The characters were really interesting and they become even more unique through the st

     I  really enjoyed reading this Manga. Phoenix was a really interesting story. I was surprised by the content and the drama that was told. The story of Phoenix is always fascinating with the mystery of a creature being able to burn to death and then regrow from the ashes. So I was intrigued from the beginning of the story and I was following along pretty well. Right away there is a bit of a "plot twist" within the character where one man leads on an entire tribe. Meanwhile, his own tribe comes to the island to kill everyone and when this scene played out, it was still the beginning of the story. I wasn't the biggest fan of the art style in general, but I started to enjoy it once I was captivated in the drama. The images told the story really well with a simplified style. The entire piece is in black and white but the images are clear and crisp which makes for quickly understanding each panel. I think this style choice was important to the story because it worked well

 Every time the topic of the holocaust is brought up whether it's in school or elsewhere, it breaks my heart. Maus is a beautiful piece that describes the experience of a Jew in this time period in a simplified way that really triggers the emotions. I think something unique about this story is that the people aren't actually people at all but they are drawn as animals. To be more specific, the Jews were drawn as mice while the Nazis were characterized as cats. This is utilized really well in my opinion. Cats and mice have always been seen as enemies or predators and prey because cats eat mice of course. It makes a lot of sense for the story and for the topic of Jews vs. Nazis. But I also think it helps the reader connect to the situations even more. It's easy to see the emotional aspect of the story through simplified expressions and it also helps those who cannot relate to the Jewish people entirely, relate to them as just people. At some point, you forget about the charac

This comic was an interesting read. I kind of enjoyed it just because it seems so over the top with the sexual jokes and literal sex included in the comics. Without a doubt, this comic is for adults! I enjoyed the commentary between characters. I realized that the thoughts and comments made throughout were usually women of course and the way they described their situations to the readers was both relatable to other women as well as exaggerated. For example, there was one story where a woman was a sex addict and she set out to find different ways she could satisfy her needs. one of these ways was waiting on the street to get raped by whoever was willing and whoever was lurking the streets that night. This situation made me think because for the character it was a positive thing, technically, but in reality, rape is a very traumatic situation that many women go through. So they are touching on what some men have been told that women really want and that they are always looking for sex, b

 After reading The Killing Joke, I thought it was a very good comic. The Illustrations were really well done and made me see the two characters I've always known, in a different light through a very aesthetic art style. Some of the mark-making used to describe textures in the illustrations was psychedelic and hypnotic with repetitive usage of circular shapes causing a swirling effect in some scenes. The way everything was depicted included a bit of surrealism in the designs of the figures as well as environments. I was pretty invested in the story not only because it was interesting and beautiful to look at but also the characters were familiar to me being the Joker and Batman. Personally, I would say that the Joker felt more evil in this comic compared to the cinematic films I've seen in the past. I've always known The Joker as a crazy character, one with very little to no empathy for others which can be terrifying in the position of a villain. Especially one with nothing