Literature of Comics & The Graphic Narrative

Some of my earliest memories of graphic literature are from the Geronimo Stilton books I read back in elementary school. I guess you could classify them as an illustrated novel, since the pages would alternate between having drawings and then words, going back and forth with the occasional spread to emphasize a climax in the story. Most stories were self-contained, and the first spread of every book had an illustration of Geronimo’s workplace showing off all the characters of the series, and each book that you read you’d be able to recognize more of them. The reason I bring this up is because the work I chose to read this week, Jeff Smith’s bone, gives me very similar vibes to the Geronimo Stilton franchise. They do differ in one way though, while Stilton feels like an evolution of a picture storybook like Goodnight Moon or If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, Bone feels like an extension of a comics strip like peanuts or Ducktales. The humor is quick and snappy, most of it being driven by

  This week we read the killing joke, a batman story with a lot of hype surrounding it. I got some questions to answer so here goes: 1. What is your reaction to the text you just read? I think it's a rather interesting take on the batman and joker rivalry but not as interesting as I would have hoped considering how much people talk about it. For one it seems mostly like any other batman story with a few exceptions here and there. The joker does some bad stuff and tries to push batman to his breaking point, the point where he’ll resort to murder over proper justice. This time however we get an interpretation of joker’s backstory, and the joker assaults people he knows are close to batman. He shoots and paralyses Barbara Gordon, and psychologically tortures commissioner Gordon with nude pictures of his daughter shortly after getting shot. I really liked the backstory segment and feel that it's a pretty way of establishing the joker character. A man simply trying to make ends meet

  Comics by women: Different perspectives. (12 points)  Back in elementary school, I always assumed that girls were better artists then boys, since girls had some pretty nice handwriting while us boys often got work sent back to us because the teacher couldn’t read our chicken scratch. Even today, I attend an art school where my female peers outnumber the males by quite a large margin. As such, it makes me wonder how many great artists were suppressed throughout history because they were women. Picasso, Dali, Da Vinci - All men hailing from a time when art made by women was not publicly accepted and this left out of the pages of history. Today however things are finally different and girl creatives can finally have their work published and recognized by the public. Reading the featured comics this week has my interests for varied perspectives piqued.   This One Summer by Jillian and Marika Tamaki is a really interesting coming of age story exploring a wide range of emotions and how the

  Manga. One of the most widely accepted forms of comics (by its home land at least.) With dozens of weekly, monthly, and quarterly magazines to choose from spanning all demographics and genres, manga makes up a massive share of all printed and digital literature consumed in Japan. Shoujo for young girls,  Shounen for young boys, Seinen for adult males, Josei for adult females. With these rigid demographic based genres placed in the early days of the industry, the stage has ultimately changed very little.  Osamu Tezuka is a legend amongst Manga enthusiasts. The Walt Disney of japan. He pioneered the manga industry and set the standards that it still follows to this day. One of the standards he set is respecting your audience. Primarily a shounen writer, his stories aimed at children contained themes of death, class struggle, war, brutality, distopya, class struggle - all packaged within an adorable and iconic art style. His buddha series deals with all of the above within its opening v

  European comics certainly have an interesting feel to them. Unrestrained by the limits on content placed on U.S. comics and a wider adult audience, Comics from Europe that target adults tend to fall closer to the underground comics than widely published western releases approved by the comic code authority. However these comics seem to have a bit more direction and tact than some of the underground comics. The Mobius and Enki comics tell stories of dystopian futures of a space faring culture and remind me of the stories featured in monolith from the underground comics lesson. They both have a fair bit of raunch, but Monolith and the other underground comics revel in it as a big F U to the mainstream publishers, where the works of Mobius and Enki use their sexuality morseso to tell a more mature story, even if they do both do tend to objectify women.  Mobius and Enki comics present worlds of war and struggle, with lots of tragedy and human suffering for good measure. Greed, longing, m

  No documentation of history is unbiased. Oftentimes, we look at a photo or a video and think “this must be what happened,” or “this is what it was like back then.” While photos and videos are as accurate of documentation as we can get, everything from the moment a photo or video is taken to the exact slice of the world is held within said singularity is all dictated by a person and can even be further cut and edited post-fact. Things really only get more warped from there. First hand accounts, multi sourced retellings film or book adaptations, each medium has its quirks. The prospect of creating a non-fiction comic, then, is not a simple one. Since you’re effectively creating an abstracted version of an already subjective and biased version of history, a lot of thought must be put into creating the image the author desires. But therein lies the beauty of non-fiction comics. After Reading through the 3 volumes of March & Andre the Giant it’s apparent how vastly approaches can vary