Battle Angel Alita

This week I read some Battle Angel Alita and I was instantly hooked. There's just something about cyborgs fighting and strange cloud cities that really appeals to me.  I'll be honest, I've always preferred manga to western comics, so this week's reading was a lot more interesting to me. I always appreciate how much detail goes into the work and how the stories feel deeper and more complex.

In Alita, I really appreciated the themes of purpose and "humanness". The characters are constantly questioning what makes someone "human" and for the majority of Volume 1, it seemed like those who qualified to most were the least human. Like Gally implied, even those with brains and hearts can be monsters. This element in particular made the story even more interesting to me and not just random cyborgs fighting each other.

I still have a lot of story questions about this manga and I'm interested to read more of Alita. I just want to find out what Dr. Nova's intentions are and what's waiting for Gally in Mars!

Underground Comix

Underground comix were very influenced by sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. From a distance, it's pretty obvious these guys were doing lots of dope and LSD; a lot of the work from this period was very psychedelic and trippy and usually didn't have a very interesting story or relatable characters.

I read a bit of Tits and Clits before class and got to see some Zap and Dopin' Dan in class. Tits and Clits was definitely an introduction to this genre; nothing is censored and all the stories are very sexualized (obviously). I was not a huge fan of most of this work, just because I couldn't get myself interested in the stories. But there was one story that really caught my attention and that was I Was a Sex Junkie!". This series deals with a woman who's addicted to sex and turns to drugs to get the money she needs to pay male prostitutes. Even though the story was a bit strange and not really my style, I enjoyed getting some perspective from female characters. This character treated rape and drugs like it was nothing and it certainly gave me an idea of the type of people who would go nuts for these underground comics at the time.

I thought these works, while not taken very seriously and usually considered crude, are super important to understanding the people of the era and the work that followed it. Everything came back to the Vietnam conflict and the pop culture of the time.

Will Eisner's A Contract with God

I appreciated a lot of things from Will Eisner's work, especially his draftsmanship and compositions. In A Contract with God, I enjoyed the topics and themes since they were very real and rough, in a way. My favorite story was the first one, since I felt more for the characters and was a lot more invested in his story. I also thought it had an interesting take on one's relationship with religion.

I really wanted to know how the main character's life turns out after he becomes selfish and "evil". It was interesting finding out his original motive was his daughter, though, by the time I got to that point of the story I couldn't relate much to his character. I enjoyed going through it, mostly because I appreciated his style, but often I was brought out of the story because I could very easily tell when dialogue was written to teach a lesson. These lessons were usually very on the nose and obvious, which made me disconnect with the work.

Overall I enjoyed Will Eisner's work and I'm excited to check out more of it!

Classic Comics

This week I got to read some Krazy Kat, Popeye, Popeye, and Calvin and Hobbes, amongst others that we looked over in class. I've had a connection with these comics for a long time, since they were a big part of my childhood and it was very interesting to analyze them in a different context. 

I've always thought these comics, specially Calvin and Hobbes, were always very simple but had a very complex humor and wit to them. They always have this deeper context, that at first glance just seems like just a funny gag, but in reality it really exposes even more about the time and context it was written/illustrated in. 

A lot of the comics we looked at in class were fun and interesting, and others didn't hold up as well and ended up being very dated or boring. In a lot of them the characters felt really flat and one dimensional and the stories or gags never really hit for me, even in franchises I really love like Popeye. You can always tell the time period the comics were done in because of the types of issues the characters had or how far the racism and sexism went. I did notice something very interesting when i was looking through a lot of the comics. I noticed that none of the female characters were very strong or had any purpose to the story. Most of these girls, like Polly and her pals, weren't very engaging to read about. The only woman I was entertained by was Olive; which I found really surprising. I guess it's mostly because she's a working class woman, and no rules apply there! I'm glad this made it character trait made it all the way to the animated series! I think it's the main reason she still survives as a very successful character. 

Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics

I had heard great things about Understanding Comics, but I had never gotten a chance to really sit down and read pieces of it. I've obviously always loved comics and cartoons, but I had never analyzed any type of formula on why this art form is so appealing to audiences. I thought McCloud had some very interesting points, regarding success and abstraction, some of which had come to mind before.

One of the "lessons" that really resonated with me was how a lot of successful comics have a very simplistic style, but very detailed backgrounds. I had mostly noticed this technique in anime and manga, and I had often found myself mesmerized by background paintings in some of my favorite anime shows/movies. Recently, my thesis partners and I have been addressing the backgrounds in our film and although we have very stylized characters, we decided to go with a more realistic approach. It was nice to see that technique boiled down, since it gave me a lot confidence in our decision. Hey, if Tintin can do it, we can do it too!

Understanding Comics was a very interesting read, and although I agreed with most of it, I had to disagree on his idea of the striving artist. To me, it felt like this hierarchy of dissatisfied artists was really a chart for a single artist's life. The first couple of stages could easily refer to students or entry-level professionals who are still trying to find their footing, whereas the later stages in his chart could refer to older artists or leaders in their field.

I can't wait to read more of this book later, I'm excited to hear what else he has to say!

The Arrival

Shaun Tan has an excellent sense of visual storytelling and does a really fantastic job of telling a story with no words in The Arrival. A story of immigration and travelling is extremely universal, even for people who may have lived in the same place for the majority of their lives. I’m originally from Puerto Rico, but every time my family and Iwould visit the US, I would discover something new from the everyday American life. I found the food strange and exciting and the TV channels at the hotel rooms to be more engaging and fun. I really related with the character in The Arrival, because, like him, I was experiencing this strange new world with fresh eyes.

Although the idea of experiencing a new culture sounds very fun, it can also be very scary and frustrating. I really related to the page in the comic where he is trying to interact with an immigrations officer and he doesn’t understand what the other person is saying. A couple of years back, I got lost in Italy and had to speak Spanish to some Italian officers and hope that they picked up one or two words from my hysterical cries. Shaun Tan’s drawings felt so true and powerful to me that I physically reacted to the page I was looking at. I think that’s what makes his work so successful; his ability to present a universal topic in a very relatable way. Speaking more technically, The Arrival also had very clear drawings. The artist was a very good draftsman, and was able to communicate ideas clearly; as an audience member, I never had to detach myself from the story in order to analyze what the drawings meant.

Max Urnst

A translation of Max Urnst's work:

1. Banish the chicken

2.  Healing the girl with chicken powers.

3. The girl died and chicken people are looking over.

4. Chicken people making more chicken people from the dead girl

5. Chicken people go collecting dead girls and using chicken to massacre them

6. Chicken people watching their prey

7. Chicken man is about to strike

8. Women are know aware of the chicken people race and their evil plans

9. Collecting skeletons for chicken overlord

10. The chicken massacre, they raided a train full of young women

11. Converting the new victims into chicken

12. Chicken feeding on people and torturing young girls

13. The girls go up in arms one defending the humans and one defending the chicken race.

14. The girls are killing themselves in order to avoid becoming part of the chickens

15. So are the chicken men. Or is it a staged suicide?

16. Chicken race has taken over France. The humans have lost their battle. Viva la chicken.