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: