revised final blog pot on Understanding Comics

     After an entire semester's experience on comic reading I have developed new understanding of comics. So I thought this would be the most appropriate thing to blog about as a conclusion to my learning. Understanding comics taught me a lot about the process of comic making. I often find myself apply Sott McCloud's method on my weekly reading. He pointed out things I did not recognize before.

     Question like why does characters in comics all look cartoony? I eventually got my answer from the book: characters were designed simply to assist audience involvement. We identify with things that are more simple and view the more complicated things as the others. This is why the backgrounds in the comics are often more realistic than the characters. Even the enemies will appear to be in more details just to identify them from the protagonists.

     I once found it quite difficult to adopt this theory at first because I am the type of person who would care more about the "look" over the content. If I were to pick between "Watchman" and "King City", judged by its look, I'm more likely to grab "Sandman". In fact I did. After looking at both works, I have to admit that "Sandman" is more in depth and more completed comparing to "King City". When the Sandman shows up in the comic, I had a hard time to identify with him as the main character. He is well-drawn, with beautiful lines and fine details, he is a realistic representation of a person. I would admire the art, but I feel detached from him. However, I found "King City" more friendly and it ultimately became the book I blog about for that week. Since then, I prefer to look at comics that has a simpler style. Like McCloud said, we are self-centered creatures who relates everything to ourselves. Many things are left for the reader's own interpretations.

     McCloud applied his thinking in the comic itself. He said it and he demonstrated it right in front of our eyes. What impressed me was the image of McCloud - the cartoony version sticked in my head. This is one of the beauties of simplicity. It's easy to adapt and easy to remember. Even after I have looked at the real Scott McCloud in the photo, I still can't help to stop seeing him as the guy with big glasses in a plaid shirt with a lightning symbol on it.

web comic YUME

     We all have the experience when we fall in love with the person in our dreams. The work YUME brought this dream to life. When I first started reading YUME, it started off with the traditional black and white panels. Then after several issues, the author began putting in colors. Usually you would expect that the style kind of settles after a while. However, getting into part 2, the author totally went wild with her styles. Sometimes she deletes the line art and left with more realistic looking designs. Sometimes she combined photos into her art. Sometimes she even uses clays. You literally witness her evolvement over time. The work is not limited to one fixed form but several others. Just like how she named her work, it's a "Dream", a dream is suppose to unpredictable. That's why when I started with part 2, the first I asked myself was "Did I open this thing the right way? It seems like I was reading another comic". 

     Just from the title "Yume" a Japanese term for dream, I can already tell that the author was a fan of manga. The layout of the panels, the way the character's designed and the setup of the plot all represents the elements of manga. Not to mention that the uniform reminds me of Japan a big time  because Japanese people for some reason all have a crush on school uniforms.

     The protagonist is a lonely girl, mistreated by all of the people surrounding her. All of the sudden a hero, well a heroin in this case, usually transfered from another school stand out for her. Eventually they started a romantic relationship. This is very typical beginning of a shoujo manga except that the person our protagonist fell in love with is a lesbian. I saw them struggle and struggle and struggle for decades until they finally confess heir feeling for each other. Just when I thought that this is about to coming to an end but the author twisted everything around. Part two of the comic is what I thought to be the beginning when all the fun starts. As the comic proceed, I was actually glad that she emerge out of the box of Japanese influence later on in her work. Not to say that it's no a good thing to imitate manga but it's much more interesting to do it in her own way.

King City by Brandon Graham

     Just like any other superhero characters, Joe is a adventurous guy who goes all around the city to save people and fight the evils. He has special abilities, he is smart, powerful, cool and he has a good heart. These characteristic made him the most out-standing character from the book - there are a lot of protagonists like him who exist in the market. However although  similar genres may have been published repeatedly for a long time, the authors never fail to fascinate people with his enriched imaginations. The core of this piece of work lays in its design. I could not resist but to say that King City is really a place I would want to visit some day.

     King City is a place where imaginations, adventures, and wildness all gather. Usually a setting is just a setting, doesn't matter if it's New York city or Sarasota county or Tokyo. Some people won't even remember the name of the setting, what's important is what happened in the setting. I think Graham really made King City a unique place. From a point of view, this is more of a story for the city itself over the adventure of Joe. If Graham were to illustrate another book based on the setting of King City, the protagonist can be anyone, doesn't matter if it is Joe or not. Joe is just a person who was leading the events of the city. It takes much more to illustrate an unique place rather than illustrate an unique person.

     The true superhero in the book is actually the cat. The cat is just like the spinach for Popeye, it has to be activated in order to perform its powers.  The way the author design the cat is very interesting. First of all, it's an animal that act like a weapon. It can do pretty much anything you can imagine but yet still contain characteristics of a regular cat. Secondly, it's cute, any guy with a lovely huggable fluffy cat would appear to be quite a lovable person as well. I believe Joe has to give some credit for the cat for making him look better in the comics.

Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel

     What first caught my attention is that the entire book is illustrated using only black, white, grey and red. The red is not used to drawn people's attention, instead of a bright or dark red, the red is always a little bit grey. Due to the fact the grey takes up most of the book. The selected colors created a distressed mood from beginning to end. It's indeed a very intense story with a lot of weight in its content.

      It's rather rare these days to find a piece of work that focused on the relationship between mother and children, and I believe "Are You My Mother?" is probably going to be the best example of its kind.   As humans we all run into problems with our parents. It usually resolve with time, or stayed there but fainted away, because we have lived together for a long time. However this book really brought me into re-thinking about my relationship with my mother, and most importantly, how she had impact on my life.

      I looked at the book as an illustrated autobiography, the book can be complete by itself from just the words. The characters are not acting out as much, most of the emotions and information we get is from the text. Yet what's special about this book is that it's jumping around. It's almost like the author wrote this book following her stream of consciousness. She just brought up whatever comes up in her mind, flipping through the book of memories. It's much more interesting this way than following a chronological order. In this case if the author were to write a book based on a time line it wouldn't seem as effective as the way it is. Just like she narrated in the book, “I don’t have the negatives, so there’s no way to know their chronological order but I’ve arranged them according to my own narrative.”

     It reminds me of the "Maus" a big time when I was reading through the book. Although it's more of a personal story and may not be as in depth story-wise, but the fact that the book is illustrated in a memoir form and it's a conversation between parent and child make the two very similar. What's different is the author portrayed herself exactly the way she looks in the reality in the comic. She is coming from her own point of view when telling the story. However in comparison with Maus, it is a lot more emotional story.

   

Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli

     The book is interesting both visually and story-wise. I was really impressed by the unique style the author used throughout the book. The style of art changes from time to time, each time fitting into the story nice and smoothly. Small things such as the color of the panels, shape of the bubbles, even the text varies from person to person. His creative ideas are not only carried out by the story, but it's also embedded in the art itself. I think of this piece of work as "design" over a illustrated narrative. Due to the fact, the art probably told me much more than the text did.

     Asterios Polyp, a middle age man who finally stepped on a journey to self-discovery after he had lost everything. He was particularly designed with architectural proportional lines and shapes, just like his personality. Most of the time Asterios is drawn in a profile view, his face is perfectly symmetrical as well. It's surprising to know that his face is exactly the same shape as his back head, forming an axe shape. I believe the author did this on purpose to emphasis on the existence of Asterios's twin brother, Ignazio. On the other hand, Hana who's completely different from her husband, was illustrated with sketchy hatching lines that represent her sensitive nature. She is also more round and less angular.

     Asterios's cool, clean and perfectly drawn lines versus Hana's warm, messy, but complex lines, the collision between the two different personality is like a chemical reaction. Their lines mixed into each other, Hana gets some of Aterios blue structural shapes and Asterios gets some of Hana's sketchy marks. At times when they are in argument, they will go back to their own form again. There's no doubt that the visual representation of the characters are the most unique element throughout the entire book. Not only the main character has their own style that's unique to their personality  so does the others. The massive amount of detail easily takes away my attention, everything has a meaning. It will take days to explore the whole.

Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka

     It's been more than ten years since I last watched Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy on TV. It's the very first anime I ever watched and it has formed a crucial part of my childhood, ultimately leading me into a career in animation. Even today, the image of the little robot boy is still vivid in my memories. Despite the fact that I had forgotten most of the plots of the story, Osamu Tezuka had carved the character into my heart. I will always remember the pointy hair, the big eyes, and the pair of bright red boots.
   
     Astro Boy has impacted on people of my age greatly. Different forms of media of Astro Boy were made throughout the years, first from manga, to anime series, to feature films and even video games. It's simply rare to see a piece of work to remain popular for decades.

     The setting of Astro Boy is fifty years from its publication, in the year of 2003. We have already arrived at 2012, but our society haven't yet develop into how Tezuka predicted. However, it's quite obvious of his influence on today's Japan, which is turning itself step by step into a mechanize country. Now we have factories full of machines, computers and smart phones that we can literally "talk" to.  It won't be long till the arrival of the entirely robotic age. Although a robot, Astro is portrayed by Tezuka as a regular human kid. He can think and he has emotions just like anybody else. He is a living soul inside of a robotic body. Tezuka gave him a lovable character, even under the condition when robots were discriminated by the human, Astro still maintain his good heart. He greatly emphasize on the respect of life and fulfillment of the spiritual world - even for robots. That's why Astro is a cute and lovable little boy than a big guy with muscular body like superman.

     Why Tezuka choose to make Astro a robot rather than a regular human boy? In the story, he treated Astro like a human. Well,  beyond human, because he is invincible. After all, Astro is a robot, he is a weapon. However, Astro uses his power to protect rather than destruct. I believe that this is the ultimate message told by Astro Boy, great power should lie in the hands of people who wish to protect others. After the mistreatment of human, after the abandonment of his "father", Astro still choose to stand on the side with human. He loves human, even if human doesn't necessarily love him back.

   

Ranxerox by Tambourini and Liberatore

     Frist impression I had on the comic Ranxerox is that it's beautifully drawn. There's no doubt about the artist's drawing skills. The comic both portrays the realism of the true world while maintain the cartoony side of the imaginary world. I can see every muscle and blood vine clearly on the body. I even doubt that the comic is made with photoshop filters if it's not from the 70s. The art in a way, took away my attention from the actual content.

     The comic does the opposite of McCloud's "Understanding Comic", it looks too real. It's hard to "get involved" with the story of Ranxerox. Especially when the main character is an ugly and overly muscular manmade robot. In addition, visually appealing doesn't make the comic appealing. Due to the fact, the comic made me very uncomfortable. The realism of the drawings made me even more disgusted once I hit the violent scenes. I don't think even much of the adults can handle it. The comic overall is violent, bloody and sexual. Comparing to many of the zombie comics we have today, which also include many violent scenes, Ranxerox is even worse. That's because in my mind I consider zombies to be nonhuman, but people in Ranxerox (except Ranxerox) are real people.

     Tambourini and Liberatore depicted the worst part of human nature. It seems like the comic is not meant to be enjoyable, but rather serve as a punchbag to relief anger and desires. There's no moral in Ranxerox. While most of us were trained to hold back our angers at times when we face conflicts, Ranxerox just go ahead and solve it with his fists right away. He is free and wild because he has the power no one else can compete with. I believe that if a real human in the real world has the strength Ranxerox got, he would be more likely to use his power the same way as Ranxerox does rather than be a world saver. Overall, although the content of this comic is hard to appreciate, but it did tell us something about ourselves.