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.