Reconsidering the Superhero

Finally this week we're “Reconsidering the Superhero” which probably rivals manga week for my favorite of the semester.  Obviously we're not dealing with the typical super hero affair, but with most of these comics, a more realistic approach to what a “superhero” would more likely be.  This week I read Alan Moore's Watchmen, which has instantly turned into one of my favorite comics ever.

I think works like Watchmen or Kingdom Come really solidify the fact that comics are a legitimate form of art, which is commonly overlooked due to the market being overly saturated by extremely violent and unintelligent comics that are shoveled into the reader's view.

In Watchmen, Moore explores the psychology and social impact of superheroes as if they were to exist in the real world, while in a way dissipating the common conception that readers have about the practically Utopian worlds that most superheroes seem to inhabit.  Moore looks at superheroes who's sense of justice is hindered by real moral decisions and human desires. I think Rorschach is probably one of the more interesting and realistic depictions, displaying an almost Batman like quality, but he's taken it a step further and let his obsession, take over his life, turning into what most would consider a lunatic.  The Comedian is a great example of human flaws and moral inadequacies, when he has sex with the Vietnamese woman impregnating her and instead of dealing with the issue in a “superhero” way he kills her.  Even Nite Owl and Silk Spectre have their own realistic problems to over come in reference to their love interests, which are ideas I've never seen in any other comic.

There is so many complex themes present in Watchmen that I can't discuss them all.  Moore's argument that everything that we perceive as a positive in the world must also come with a negative aspect was especially prevalent. Another argument he makes is that despite mankind's best effort we can do nothing to alter our path into the future.  He cleverly uses puns through out the novel in order to convey his idea that it's human nature to ignore problems in order to look past the negative reality of their current situation.

Moore's perception of the world and different ideas associated with those perceptions are clearly the reason on would find Watchmen to be a great novel.  Dave Gibbons does a good job of illustrating the book and keeping everything tangible with colorful art and realistic facial expressions that carry over from one personality to the next.  Watchmen is definitely not an art comic and though the art is adequate it could easily work as a fiction novel written entirely with Moore's words alone.

Anyways, Thanksgiving was yesterday and I'm still in a food coma... though I've thoroughly enjoyed this week of reading I will have to sign off!

Graphic Fiction and Non-fiction

I wasn't sure what to expect when I went into this week with the headline of “Graphic Fiction and Non-fiction”, but in the reading list I saw the new graphic novel by Craig Thompson, Habibi, so I decided to give it a shot.

I was pretty interested excited when I heard about this book and my interest was pushed further when I saw the amazing design and presentation of the book. I enjoyed Blankets and was pretty intrigued by his take on an arabic love story.  Thompson took a huge leap forward in the art department when he illustrated Habibi, everything is draw with beautifu line quality and variation.  But, even with how awesome it's drawn, at times I did find myself overwhelmed by some of the pages, with not so much room to breathe, basically making me confused on what exactly was occurring.  Thompson obviously did his homework regarding the calligraphy which was prominent through out the whole book, and it looked amazing.

When I read Blankets I was thoroughly invested in the characters, and their very familiar youthful relationship and because of this I was not able to put the book down.  But, Habibi didn't have the same effect for me; I think this is partially because I couldn't relate to their stories as much as I could to Blankets but also because I'm not as knowledgeable about the Qur'an or Arabic culture in general.

Although I was thoroughly impressed by the design and art of the book I decided to look up some reviews of the book and found that a lot of people were bashing on the book for stereotyping. I don't think it's nearly as bad as some of them make it out to be, but I can definitely agree that there is stereotyping.  I don't think it's used in a bad way though, it's more for metaphoric purposes rather than to insult people. I guess some people were complaining that the females were placed entirely for sexual purposes and I don't agree with this.  Every time something sexual occurred in Habibi, it was pretty much a major plot device.

Anyways, I would say Habibi is worth reading if you like Thompson's work or just want to look at something with beautiful illustration, but the story definitely didn't hit home with me like Blankets had.

Comics as Contemporary Literature

This week we consider comics as a form of “Contemporary literature”, by this I'm assuming pieces that fit in this category transcend the comic conventions and can hold their own against any other literature in the traditional sense.  Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli is definitely an example of this, as it could appeal to comic readers (like myself) or anyone that appreciates an incredibly well written and interesting story.

Asterios Polyp is a quick and enjoyable read, but that's not to say it's an easy one.  I never felt like I wasn't being entertained and I read it in a rather small amount of time but, Mazzucchelli packs so much depth and detail into his piece that you really need to read it several times to pick everything up.  There are plenty of perfect scenes within Asterios Polyp, like when the guy on the bus shows Asterios his tattooed lip,  which is seemingly unimportant but really adds a certain dimension to the world that we're reading about.

Not only is there a huge amount of detail and depth to the story, but also the art.  The coloring is reduced to a very limited palette, but it's utilized in a way that couldn't be expressed in any other form of storytelling.  In addition to his supreme use of color Mazzucchelli maintains the same level of attention to his linework and layout designs.  This is obvious in the scene where Aterios and Hana's relationship is falling apart and his body is simplified reduced geometric shapes and her body and room around her is a shifting sketchy mess, presenting both of their emotions and personalities perfectly without actually saying them. Also, I found it especially appealing that each character seemed to be drawn in a style of their own according to what type of character they were.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel in it's entirety, though like I mentioned before I think I'll have to read atleast once more to really grasp the smaller ideas that are strewn across the perfectly designed pages.  I also kind of have a suspicion that the story itself would hold an even higher appreciation if the reader had previous knowledge of architectural history and possibly even an understanding of postmodern sculpture, but I think it's a pretty fine comic without it.

Wide World of Comics

This week we're studying the “Wide World of Comics” which I'm just assuming is a way of introducing new and exciting comics from all around the world that we wouldn't otherwise be aware of.  This week I read the extremely well done Blacksad by writer Juan Diaz Canales and artist Juanjo Guarnido, both of whom are Spanish, but were targeting the French market.

First of all it's impossible to read Blacksad and not notice how gorgeous the art is, every page, every panel is a beautiful illustration with perfect textures and composition.  Guarnido knows what he's doing, every character is fully able to be read through posture, facial expression, and he even chooses just the right animals for the job(That's right I said animal).  Every character in this series is a humanoid animal, some more human than others (I noticed the female characters often had more human characteristics especially in their figure), but I think the anthropomorphic quality to these characters just add a certain quality that you couldn't get with a different medium.  Going this route allows the authors to basically tell these well written noir detective tales with a more exaggerated and expressive quality then they would have other wise.

The writing style is perfectly blended with the setting and what you would comic to expect with a noir piece, which is a good thing. I thought it was interesting that given the 1950's noir setting where a lot of the verbal expressions would include animal tie-ins such as, “you dirty rat”, and the character would literally be a rat.  I thought the detective stories were pretty entertaining, and well written but they weren't the most original mysteries I'd ever heard of.  But with a piece of this caliber it didn't actually detract from my overall enjoyment.  The script and illustrative quality is at such a level that I could easily this having been made up of stills from an animated movie by Disney's dark older brother.

Anyways, on to “Comics as Contemporary Literature”, oh and before I go here's one of my favorite shots from the first issue, the lighting and drama connected to it are so well done I couldn't help but share.

Manga

Manga is the japanese word for all comics but in the west it has come to refer to the comics created specifically in japan.  Normally I wouldn't think it's appropriate to categorize things by where it's made, because it should just be looked at for it's storytelling and art, but in Japan comics are integrated in everyone's lives from a very young age.  This is a sharp contrast to how comics are viewed in the west.  In the United States especially comics have always been sort of a “nerdy” thing, but more recently with the Marvel and DC movies comics have become to evolve into something more accepted and mainstream, but definitely not a way of life like they are in Japan.

Definitely my favorite type of comics, as I've read everything from traditional shonen manga such as DragonBall and several series in Weekly Shonen Jump, historical fantasies like Vagabond and Rurouni Kenshin, and brutal science fiction like Gantz.  I think the appeal of manga is the fact that it's so clean and the comics are seen as more of an art form with perfect compositions in every panel and the attractive black and white line art.

This week I read several titles, but I think I'll focus on Buddha by Osamu Tezuka, and write about the others in an additional post.  Although I've read tons of manga and continue to keep up with a multitude of weekly serializations I've oddly never read any thing by the God of comics himself.  I'm obviously familiar with his works such as Astro Boy(but never read it) and I've even watched/read series that closely follow Tezuka's style like Cyborg 009 and Kikaider.

Buddha, was a great read with a perfectly paced story, compelling characters, interesting plot elements, and that classic style that's instantly recognized as Tezuka.  In Buddha the reader will find every classic manga aesthetic with a hero's journey to evolve and make a new life, a heroine in need of help, super exaggerated facial expressions, and japanese referential humor mixed in.  These aren't the only defining points of Tezuka's work, but it's obvious that he played a key factor in patenting most of these characteristics in the comic form in Japan.  The entire time I was reading Buddha I would see these comparisons to other manga and I'd think to myself “oh! That's where that came from” and I think that was a really cool experience for me, to go back and find out a sort of history of what I love to read. 

I think it's interesting that there is so much nudity in this manga, especially the younger characters. I think it's just more accepted in Japan as a culture than it would be to the western audience, and I've seen it in many other Japanese manga/anime across the board, and never in something produced in the United States.  It's also, like many shonen manga, relatively violent with characters experiencing extreme amounts of hardship in their lives, even though it's written for a seemingly younger audience.  This convention is usually exclusive to manga, but I've noticed in recent years traditional American comics are infusing some of these elements into their own pieces.

Anyways, time to move on, I'm going to post an additional post on manga as I've also read, Mushishi and Blade of the Immortal.

Stereotype and the Ethics of Representation

This week was all about Stereotype and the Ethics of Representation and how comics utilize the function of a stereotype and may even be dependent on them.  In class we studied how often stereotypes are used in comics and other mediums, and in my mind often this is to get a character or message across to the reader most clearly and effectively,  despite the opposing view points that were expressed during the class discussion.  These stereotypes had to have come from some where to begin with and working with people at my job, everyday I see these generalizations or more often than not true.  I have thought about the fact that because my pre-existing knowledge of these stereotypes I may be subconsciously looking for them to be true, but I don't think this is the case as I'm not really biased towards one way or the other so why would I bend what I'm seeing to be a specific way.  Anyways that being said I did read a comic for this week! One that I quite enjoyed in fact, American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang.

Yang has crafted a brilliant graphic novel that relies heavily upon a complex narrative that consists of 3 separate and compelling stories that all run parallel and eventually tie together by the end of the book.  Each one has similar themes of self-awareness and how the characters look at themselves to form their own identities.  I have some what of a bias towards anything that includes the story of the Monkey King, which has been used in countless things through out history, from the animations of "Journey to the West", to things a little more subtle but still obvious like Akira Toriyama's Dragonball(One of my favorite manga of all time by the way).  So Yang's graphic novel instantly had me hooked when I saw his use of the Monkey King's story as a sort of parallel story to the main protagonist Jin Wang.

Jing Wang's story is still compelling, it's interesting how Yang is able to weave all the little subtle issues a young chinese person would have assimilating into American culture.  He does this in a light hearted way such as when the teacher mispronounces his name and then he corrects and then she corrects.  Just this little scene it was easy to identify with the situation because I've watched this exact occurrence happen a ton of times to my friend Rani growing up because of his different ethnic background.

Finally we come to the all-american Danny who's fed up with his super blatant chinese stereotype of a cousin Chin-Kee.  I think Chin-Kee was a super funny character and kind of shows the reader that the overly ridiculous chinese stereotype is a huge contrast to the much more realistic portrayal of an actual person of asian decent living in America.  It's interesting to find that Danny is actually what has become of Jing as he tries to deny his Chinese heritage to avoid any more harassment.  Here is where the reader should have a recollection of the foreshadowing that Yang uses in the beginning of the novel where Jing wants to become a “Transformer” and all he has to do is sell his soul; This is a spectacular use of foreshadowing.

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel and I'm glad I read it, I didn't quite care for the ending as much as I had hoped, because I just wanted to keep reading, but it didn't ruin the experience for me.  Next week is manga! Definitely my favorite form of comics!

Maus

I went into Maus by Art Spiegelman expecting a complete masterpiece, and though I did enjoy it throughly, I wasn't blown away.  I think what's most interesting about Maus is that it joins something that's typically thought to be lighthearted, the comic book(graphic novel), with a story of pure evil, the holocaust, and makes it work almost perfectly.  The first half of Maus was interesting and kept me reading, though there were a few dry spells, but the entire second half of the book from Auschwitz and beyond kept me thoroughly entertained without question.

The story is without a doubt the reason one would read Maus.  The story is broken up into 2 stories really, one the father's and the second, the author's own story as he's gathering the actual info in order to write the book.  I feel like the seamless play between the 2 stories is a clear highlight of this novel.  Both stories are incredibly well-written and interesting on their own accord and Spiegelman is able to weave them both together to create one smooth flowing narrative that entertains the reader through out the novel. I found the use of foreshadowing to be pretty interesting how for instance the author's father is revealed to have died, but it continues to show their in-person conversations and then finally reverting to the rest of the novel being created through tape recording. Not only is each part well written, but I think there are quite a few pages that really inspire the reader and give them a reason to reflect upon life, like this one:

This page really shows both the determination of humans to live and what gives them this strength, and at the same time human's total dependency on others.

Spiegelman is absolutely an awesome story teller that much is for sure, but I can't say the same for his art which is far too crude for my tastes and I often found myself not knowing which character was which.  This could probably be attributed to the fact that the characters were depicted as animals based on there nationality, giving them all a much more similar look than that of humans.  I'm not saying that I didn't find this an interesting and unique decision, but I think it came off as more of a novelty in my eyes, rather than an innovation.  I say this because not only did I have trouble distinguishing characters half the time, but other than some specific cases of extreme emotion, the characters showed hardly any, which really made some of the scenes lack the feeling and emotion I think the reader would get with more realistic human expression.  This kind of makes me question Spiegelman's reasoning behind the use of animals and the only conclusion I can come to is the need to simplify and still give it that comic book feel.

Overall I found Maus to be an enjoyable experience, not my favorite graphic novel by any means but definitely time well spent, and pretty educational for someone that isn't well versed in the history of the Holocaust.

...And here's a final panel to give you nightmares for the rest of your life:

Underground Comics

Underground comics, definitely not my cup of tea.  I struggled through some of the awful ones on the course resource page to find out that none of them really caught my attention.  Most of them were littered with extremely poor illustration and juvenile storytelling with not much of a purpose other than to make a disgusting sexual reference or throw out a racial slur and then move on to the next one.   I noticed from the class blog that most of our study would be centered around Robert Crumb.  So, I took the initiative and gathered up some of his comics, mostly “Mr. Natural” and got to reading.  Come to find out Crumb wasn't much better than the rest.

I say this because though he has relatively better craft and illustrative quality in comparison to most of the other underground comic illustrators, his material never says anything more than cheap blatantly racist and extremely immoral sexual references and acts.  I found this to be completely uninteresting in pretty much every aspect.  Come to find out he was taking hard drugs the entire time he was writing/illustrating these comics, which I can't personally respect either, as I'm much more of a hard working person that believes in full coherent understanding of your work and surroundings rather than relying on a substance to do the work for you.  I'm not even sure how some of these were thought to be acceptable for publishing as some of the acts just seemed so outrageous that I don't feel comfortable reiterating them on my blog.

I know I'm generalizing a lot when I write this, because I'm sure not every underground comic is like this, though from what I've looked at, it seems the majority is. During class I “read” one that I thought was interesting, it had decent art that had obviously been inspired by traditional comics but still had a sort of amateurish feel.  But, what made it interesting was not the art, but the fact that it contained no words, but it was really easy to follow panel to panel, and even included some memory scenes. I respect the scene for the fact that it put comics back into the hands of readers during a time when the industry was lagging.

Anyways, I think that's about all I can say about Underground comics, but I've already began reading “Maus” for next week and I'm really enjoying that one, so look forward to my thoughts on that!

Graphic Novel

A Contract with God by Will Eisner, is often considered the first “Graphic Novel”.  I don't really understand this, as to me it was more of a picture book consisting of a few short stories, rather than something that's using the standard comic devices and using it more in a novel format.  This however is merely a dispute in classification, because regardless of what you call A Contract with God, it's an undeniably great piece of art and writing.

Eisner's comics often times seem to read as a sort of still frame of a movie, stopped to show specific actions, giving it a polished storyboard feel.  His art is absolutely brilliant, as you can see in the below frame where he takes away everything in the background that is unimportant and shows only what the subject is doing.  He is able to depict all of the emotion through the character's slumped over body language and the feeling of almost being just overcome by the torrential down pour that's flooding the street.  Another thing worth mentioning is his amazing use of type;  Each page seems like a design where he weaves the type into the picture.  Sometimes he just uses expressive typeface changes or deliberate sizing changes to portray a certain emotion or sometimes he makes it a little more illustrative to blend it with the drawing which can also be shown in the picture below.

Blankets by Craig Thompson was an interesting read.  It's definitely appealing to most people because of the sense of familiarity and connection humans have with their first love.  I think it's definitely a realistic approach to a first relationship, having the couple realize that they aren't perfect for each other and by the end of the novel go their separate ways.  This isn't always the case obviously, as “storybook endings” are a possibility, but this outcome is more of a probability.  I wasn't particularly a fan of how abrupt the story ended since it was really well fleshed out until that moment and I would've liked to have seen a little more craft to the end.  It was speculated in class that this was an error on the author's behalf, and he most likely spent too many pages in the beginning and didn't pace it correctly for the publisher's restrictions, and I think this is probably the case. Thompson definitely has a gift for prose, not ever wasting a single word, keeping things to a very minimalistic narrative, but still giving the reader a deep understanding.  This transfers into his art too, effortlessly transitioning between panels.  One of my favorite devices that he employs is when depicting flashbacks it never really says it's a flashback but you can instantly tell through his use of imagery what's happening and that you've been transferred to a different time in the protagonist's life.

Overall, I think this week's reading has been the most satisfying so far, with the introduction of the graphic novel, my personal favorite comic format.

The Comic Book

    The Comic Book, in my opinion, a much more familiar and appealing format to experience sequential narratives as opposed to last week's comic strip.  I've been reading comic books in one way or another since a very young age, typically the usual comic book super heroes and promotional books for things like dental care and other pursuits such as environmental awareness through Captain Planet.  But, the comic book is a much more broad genre of sequential narrative and I've come to find that the most popular ones in the beginning weren't your typical super heroes.  The work of comic creators like Carl Barks was more typical at the time as comics were perceived as a medium for children.
    I read quite a few Carl Barks stories with Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck not forgetting about Huey, Dewey, and Louie of course.  These books are certainly being written for a younger audience with their light humor, charming characters, and fun situations, but Barks is able to bring a certain sophistication that many comic book illustrators, at the time, weren't able to achieve while still keeping the youthful audience.  I enjoyed Barks' comics to a degree and respect them for what they are, but they weren't really to my taste.  After Barks,  I stumbled on Herge's The Adventures of Tintin, and I'm exceptionally glad that I did.
    In specific I read, The Adventures of Tintin: "Explorers on the Moon", a relatively long “comic book”, closer to what I would commonly associate with a Graphic Novel in length.  Herge has a similar practical and simple drawing style to Barks, but obviously for a slightly more serious and mature audience.  This is shown in "Explorers on the Moon", as you progress through the story, there is an obvious fear of death, both through the loss of oxygen and through murder, as well as a blatant use of alcohol, though it's used in a humorous way.  Herge gives each character very specific strengths and flaws that blend effortlessly into their role in the adventure.  It's interesting how accurate some of the ideas are in "Explorers on the Moon", written before man actually went to the moon, such as the oxygen supply problem and the lack of gravity.  Obviously there are inconsistencies, like the Martian caves, but these are added to supply a sense of danger for our heroes in a time where science fiction and aliens were first getting popular.  I was extremely surprised to find that Tintin was originally a French comic book that had been translated into English, because it read so naturally and actually reminded me of other English comic books of that era.
    I also watched Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy.  I had never watched this movie, but I've always been some what of a fan of Smith's other movies that I didn't hesitate to watch it.  It was a well done movie, but I expected it to and wished it had more to do with the actual creation of comic books rather than the “romantic” story that it turned out to be.  It certainly wasn't my favorite movie (I hate Ben Affleck too, by the way) but, it was a good twist on the typical love story.
    After having the good experiences with comic books this week, I'm looking forward to the graphic novel next week!

The Comic Strip

I've never really been a fan of “comic strips” when I was a kid because they just weren't complex enough to read 1 at a time in the sunday paper.  They do have a place in my mind however, because they eventually lead to the creation of comicbooks and graphic novels which I do enjoy quite a bit.  But, we'll get into comicbooks next class, so for now lets discuss some comic strips.

I'd never been exposed to any of Winsor McCay's work until coming to Ringling, but I really do have an appreciation of his work as a whole.  I read the first few years of production on Little Nemo: In Slumberland.  McCay sets each strip up by showing Nemo getting “awoken” in this new world but it's usually pretty normal for a few panels until he's fully immersed into the Slumberland.  I think this was intentionally done as to gradually move the reader into the fantastic worlds that McCay illustrates in each strip.  Almost every strip I read however ends in Nemo becoming terrified and either falling out of bed or yelling for his mother or father to help him.  The comic strip about Nemo going to Santa's workshop and being able to eat all the candy he wanted ended in a more cheerful way with Nemo actually wanting to go back to Slumberland.  This made me realize that I wanted to see a little more variation in how each story ended and I didn't want all of his experiences to be bad ones.

During class we read some of McCay's earlier strips in the form of Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, which is an obvious interlude into Little Nemo, as each odd unrelated dream ends in the dreamer realizing they had the dream because of something they ate the night before.  The illustration style is also derived from his earlier work with an almost animation quality to the characters, but Little Nemo has a much more diverse and vivid world for the characters to explore.  Dream of the Rarebit Fiend is also far more adult in content, most strips resulting in some sort of violence; Nemo also does this, but not to the same degree and it has a lighter approach.  One thing that bothered me about Nemo, was that McCay often would put a caption at the bottom of each box telling the reader exactly what was happening in the panel and not only do I think it slowed the experience down but, it was completely unnecessary in most cases because is little dialogue and excellent illustrations already do the job.

I also read quite a bit of Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon.  I really got into this one, the illustration is superb in every panel reminding me a lot of the golden age of illustration pen and ink work and kind of a prelude to what you think of as a comicbook style use of ink.  I think what drew me into Flash Gordon is that even though it is a comic strip it follows an interesting story for an entire arc, which leads me to believe that it's one of the comic strips that sort of launched the comicbook format, with longer more well written stories and dialogue.

Oddly enough, after hearing about Little Nemo in Slumberland for the first time when I came to Ringling, it brought back memories of one of my favorite games that I played on the NES when I was around 4-5 called “Little Nemo the Dream Master”.  I thought this would be interesting to some people, it was developed by Capcom, but I don't think it's very well known...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0b/Littlenemocover.png

Understanding Comics

Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art was definitely interesting and engrossing enough to read through, even though it was presented more as a non-fiction informative book rather than a “comic.”  I think McCloud gives a pretty good analysis of how he feels on the medium of comics, but the way he presents it, it starts to feel like he's trying to justify the medium against other art forms rather than analyzing the form and composition of comics.  It almost makes me think that he's trying to convince the reader that comics are worthy of merit in the world of expression rather than taking pride in the medium itself.  The section where McCloud pleads with the reader that comics can do certain things that no other form can for instance, seemed more like an argument for their validity than an important aspect of them, for instance.

I'm not saying that there wasn't any useful analysis however and I did enjoy the comic overall.  One of the most interesting and useful parts of Understanding Comics is when McCloud analyzes the different panel-to-panel transitions by putting them into six distinct categories, and explains how the mind uses them to understand what's going on in the comic.  McCloud further uses this information and puts it into charts marking the use of panel transitions in American, European, and Japanese comics and outlining the differences between them and the importance and they hold in each respective culture.

Another section that I found particularly interesting was the use of icons and how in certain situations and certain parts of the world styles and uses of rendering change drastically depending where they're from.  McCloud gives a nice illusion to the use of the masking effect (making the simple easy to read lines the main subject, and the more realistic background or effect in order to objectify them from the rest, but be accepted in the same frame) and how it was practically a “national style” in Japan.
Full immersive display, durable mutations, literally parallel story-lines.

Ultimately, I found it less about useful analysis and more about the author's stance on comics as a form of art, but I found it still enjoyable and for the information that it does present it's worth reading.

---I also, watched McCloud's presentation at the TED conference and it was interesting to see him in person explain some of the same ideas he outlined in his book that came out in '93 and to hear a little more about his personal life.  I especially enjoyed his thoughts on the future of comics and their place in the digital world.   His ideas about "durable mutations" had provoked several ideas in my own mind and sparked thoughts about how other forms of art could evolve with these mutations on the infinite digital canvas.

Wordless Translations

I'm not particularly sure what's occurring in the first panel, there's an obvious witch/genie type character perhaps casting a spell upon the rooster who's sitting on top of a crystal ball or giving into it or something; and what looks like another character bowing down in the background after having come down the stairs  or dead.

On the second one, it seems like an angel/gryphon person has come to meet a woman(possibly the one from the previous panel), presumably on her death bed, although where she rests looks more like a dinner table with a chandelier above her.

On the third panel it looks like this angel/gryphon type being is meeting a woman's soul/ghost as it leaves her recently deceased body that lies in her coffin at the bottom of the panel, while the night watchman has discovered that her cask has been open or tampered with.

Once again not really positive on what's occurring in the fourth panel, but it looks like the angel type character is proposing something to someone in greater authority while there are nude slave women or servants lounging in their presence, possibly for entertainment?

The fifth panel depicts a man having been most likely murdered after having been woken from sleep.  The man in the right doorway was either the murderer or a bystander that has walked in the room to discover the dead person.  I think the roosters have come to symbolize death in these works.  It may even be a precursor to the first 4 panels, and that isn't actually a man at all, maybe it's showing how the woman in the beginning panels came to her death.

In the last panel, it seems like a young couple of people are waking from a rest or possibly just interacting in their home, and this rooster/gryphon of death is creeping upon them both and I think this is even a prequel to the panel even before it... she may have committed some sort of sin with the male and it isn't "their" house at all.  This would tie everything else together in a way.

The Arrival

I've never been a comic fanatic by any means, but I've always been quite entertained by graphic novels in all different forms since a very young age and that certainly hasn't faded as I've matured.  When I was younger I read mostly x-men, spiderman, batman, and other standard american comics; as I grew older I preferred manga and some more mature-themed american comics but, I've never been too far away from my superheroes. 

This first week, we were given the assignment to read Shaun Tan's, The Arrival, a wordless graphic novel, the first of which I've ever experienced.  Tan's graphic novel shows a seemingly normal gentleman immigrating to a bizarre fantasy world, one that he doesn't understand  their speech or some of their customs.  The world is certainly whimsical in a sense but many of it's inhabitants are seen doing every “normal” things such as playing with fireworks, working in a factory, and mailing letters.

Tan uses a number of different techniques in The Arrival, to move the reader effortlessly through the immigrant's tale without the use of a single written word.  Often times the novel employs “moment-to-moment” panel transitions most of the time giving the graphic novel more of a film reel quality, than the transitions that we're used to in a standard comic.  Shaun Tan's excellent use of facial expressions and hand gestures definitely play a key role in the comprehension of The Arrival, because they can depict thought and mood in a much more natural way than words ever could.  I don't think the expressions have to  be depicted as “realistically” as they were here in order for a wordless comic to be “read-able,” but I think it was more of a stylistic choice reminiscent of the immigrants of Ellis Island that everyone is familiar with.  Though The Arrival is presented in a mostly monochromatic scheme, but Tan thoughtfully implements different tones.  This can be observed in one of my favorite scenes of the book, when our protagonist hears the story of an old man; the scene starts in a happy vivid extremely warm tone, and slowly as his thoughts become darker and the imagery shifts, the tone becomes darker and unsaturated.  An other example of this is seen in a page which shows the passing of seasons through a nice “scene-to-scene” transition, with each season having it's own tone it's commonly associated with.

Through the use of familiar expressions, symbols, tones, moods, and thoughtful transitions, graphic novels are able to tell a complex tale without the use of words, which becomes evident after having come across a graphic novel such as, The Arrival.  Overall, I think this was a great experience both as an introduction to  wordless graphic novels and just as a nice “read” overall, and I'm looking forward to this upcoming semester.