Let's Talk About Webcomics - OGLAF and etc.

Comics have been an interest of mine for as long as I remember. A lot of the stuff I read is either manga or spinoff comics from animated cartoons that help me cope with hiatuses, but nowadays it’s usually various little webcomics I come across.

From the list I read OGLAF, one I was slightly familiar with, mainly because of the one page of the spider sucking off a guy, which is well known to be shown to arachnophobes on the Internet. Aside from that one, however, I’ve come across a couple of the witty panels as well. My favourite thing about this webcomic is how stupidly hilarious it can get. I can understand some people not liking it because of how overly-sexual and inappropriate it is, but I personally think that’s a part of why it’s funny. Although, I personally have an inappropriate sense of humor. Looking past all the porn, OGLAF has a lot of cleverness in its humor and that’s pretty much enough to get me to read it.

One of my personal favourite webcomics is Extra Fabulous, which has a lot of its posts passed around the Internet. While the art is less NSFW, some of the jokes are terribly dark and seeing them mixed in with cute, white blob-like characters makes Extra Fabulous extremely charming. Other panels have lighter humor, but I’ve spent many hours clicking page after page and a majority of them made me chuckle. The art isn’t spectacular, but I think it adds onto the humor of it.

Another webcomic I’ve read is Romantically Apocalyptic. The humor in it is oddly twisted and weird, but I find it so interesting because the art is incredible for a webcomic of its length. The comic is written in a way that shows the characters interacting, but some of the dialogue and story is at the bottom of the page underneath the images and some of it is narrated with an audio file. For some reason I stopped reading this comic, but I’d like to take time to read it again from the beginning.

Ms. Marvel Review - Reconsidering the Superhero

This week I decided to take a look at a few volumes of Ms. Marvel, and I will say now that I might continue this series, because I absolutely enjoyed every bit of it! The first thing that brought me into this series is the art style. I’ve probably talked about this before, but I’m a huge sucker for that mix between cartoony and realistic in character designs with the slight inspiration from Japanese anime and such. The expressions are very well done and I found a lot of the characters cute and appealing.

The most interesting concept that stuck out to me the most was the fact that Kamala, the female protagonist of the series, is a minority, which is something I haven’t seen very much in superhero comics. She plays the role of a typical teenage girl, however, she lives in a strict and religious family, so she isn’t able to have a lot of fun with her cool friends, not to mention hang out with boys by herself at all. Of course, the result of this is a rebellious attitude, which is something I find a little different in a character who is supposed to be a superhero.

The thing that really confused me is how Kamala becomes Ms. Marvel though. Like the character Ms. Marvel already exists to everybody in this world, except like a comic book hero, but appears before Kamala in a haze, and turns Kamala into Ms. Marvel. That’s the best way I could word this, really. On the other hand, though, I think it’s a pretty creative way to turn a character into a superhero. I feel like how this happened is explained further into the series. Needless to say, I’m definitely going to make time to read all the Ms. Marvel comics.

Week 13 Assessment - The Killing Joke

1.     What is the reaction to the text you just read?

- The whole text made me feel rather emotional, but mostly sympathetic for the antagonist of the story: the Joker. I absolutely loved how the comic continuously flashes back into the Joker’s backstory because it shows you how human he was, before he became a villain. He had a wife he loved and cared for, he was a nervous little man with ambitions for the sake of his family’s future. My favourite thing about DC villains is how their story makes you come to understand them. The art style hooked me in a lot because of the interestingly dark atmosphere of it, as well as how serious it looks despite being slightly on the cartoony side. I thought that fit really well with a Batman comic, especially one centralized around a character like the Joker.

2.     What connections did you make with the story? Discuss the elements of the story with which you were able to connect.

- The biggest connection I noticed was the first transition between the Joker and his past self. It shows him holding his hat in one panel, and the next panel showing a man in the same position in a different scene with those flashback sepia colours. That immediately gave me context that this is about the Joker’s past without even having to show his face or any text telling me what just happened. Another connection I noticed was between Batman and the Joker on the final page. I found it very haunting seeing the Joker laugh during a point where he’s at his weakest, but I found it even more haunting seeing Batman laugh with him, choking his nemesis. It felt almost as if at this one point in the story, Batman and the Joker became the same person.

3.     What changes would you make to adapt this story into another medium? What medium would you use? What changes would you make?

- If I had to choose, I think a short, thirty-minute animation would be a medium I would take this story into. I feel like the comic seems a little too short to make into a full-length movie, but I still think it could be possible if a little more content was added. In terms of changes, I would probably elaborate more on the two men in the Joker’s past, as well has the Red Hood incident. I was a little confused on how he suddenly turned into the Joker as soon as he takes off the red helmet the guys forced him to wear, so I feel like putting that in an animation, possibly showing how this transition happened, would clear it up.  It was understandable how his wife’s death caused him to go insane, but the green hair and everything threw me off.

This One Summer - Review - Women in Comics

This One Summer by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki seriously nails growing up perfectly. My absolute favourite thing about this comic is how nostalgic it feels. The comic takes place during a long lasting summer, paired with motifs of friendship and adolescence, as well as family and relationships, through Rose’s eyes. The thoughts, actions, and emotions of Rose and her friend Windy are very accurate to the nature of a young woman growing up. The way they react with adult situations is heavily relatable, and I have experienced similar feelings as them when I was around their age, so I believe both characters are wonderfully written within the story. At some points while reading this, I even thought to myself “Wow, I’ve been there too,” or “I would think the same way if I were in her shoes.”

Another thing I really loved about this comic was the art. Mariko Tamaki has a rather cute style that I found very charming and kept me hooked into the story. The way she draws expressions gives the people in the comic a lot of character and really makes them believable. I actually looked into more of her artwork and I felt it to be very inspiring. Her way of drawing people is a nice hybrid between realism and cartoon, a kind of technique that I admire very much and I actually draw people in a similar fashion.

This One Summer is a beautiful comic all around and I think it may be one of my top favourite comics I’ve read all year.

Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli - Review

David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp was a quite unique piece of literature to read, both visually and mentally. What I really loved about this comic is how much art style was explored in many different scenes. The alternating art style is showcased especially in the parts where Asterios and his wife Hana get into arguments and it shows their opposing emotions and thoughts between each other. Being a very linear and logical thinker, Asterios’s appearances changes into a geometric figure made up of blue rectangles and triangles. On the other hand, Hana is an artist with an open and creative sense of thinking, thus she appears pink with an abstract appearance that contrasts greatly from her husband’s. When their situation becomes settled and they both come back together in sync, they go back to the usual simple purple linework and become united with the constant art style of the main parts of the story. I found this concept interesting in the story because it gave me a different perspective on the way humans think. I feel like Mazzucchelli practically took psychology and turned it into a piece of artwork to make it easier to understand.

The ending was the most abrupt thing I have ever seen. So abrupt, that I didn’t even realize I was at the end of the comic until I got there. Which I find intriguing, because we actually don’t know what really happened after that single shot in the story. That basically leaves it to our imagination. Does it continue with a happy ending and the story goes on based on the conversation prior to the incident, or do we accept the implication of what happens as the true ending and leave it there? This whole comic makes you think about things in a totally different way from start to finish, it’s crazy.

Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka - Review - Manga!

As an avid manga reader, I felt like it was necessary for me to read the classic Astro Boy, but I also took time to explore a different form of manga with Buddha. While I thought Buddha was neat and I loved the American-influenced art style, something in the story really clicked with me.

Astro Boy is a well known and iconic character in manga and anime, partially because of his cute and appealing appearance. I did take more time to read volumes from this series compared to the other. Something I really liked about the Astro Boy manga is how Tezuka nonchalantly inserts a small characterized version of himself in the beginning of the manga. Sometimes he talks directly to Astro Boy and sometimes he talks about his feelings towards some relevant topics. What I love about this is that Tezuka establishes this friendly connection between him and his readers, as if he was holding a nice conversation with you. In addition to that, it takes me back to Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, where he talks about bringing in the reader to listen to what the comic has to say through the art style of the speaker. If Tezuka simply drew realistic pictures of himself, I feel like his appearances would have much less meaning to them. Nonetheless, it’s adorable that he makes himself interact with his own characters like they’re family.

Astro Boy has definitely started a new age of manga art. The cute art style in this manga is hard to explain why it’s so appealing, but it shows how manga readers are drawn to this “ideal” appearance in characters. In manga today, most central characters are drawn to be attractive because it drives people to read or watch them act out their story. Could it be out of desire for an idealistically pleasing human to our eyes, or is it simply because they look cute and we want to know what they do and why they do it? Sometimes I feel like an aesthetically appealing character develops an emotional connection between us and them. As if they are pure and perfect to us, we don’t want them to get hurt, they’re a beautiful, human piece of artwork and we want to root for them because of that.

That’s kind of how I felt watching the movie Summer Wars. The concept of such an adorable and happy anime family fighting to save the world made me feel an emotional connection towards them and want to root for them. If the animation consisted of realistic-looking characters, I would feel a lot less drawn to every character individually and altogether, I would probably slightly care less if Love Machine nuked their house. Or not, who knows?

I’ll be honest, I would have cried if Uncle Wabiskue died from his own creation.

I guess I would compare it to how people tend cry more when an adorable dog dies in a book or movie, rather than a human!

Moebius - Review - Wide World of Comics

I took a look a lot of artwork by Moebius, especially his work in Blueberry. Moebius’s work in this comic has so much detail in it, I thought it was so bizarre. Every little panel has so much linework in the characters and background, all the way down to every little branch on a leafless tree, making every scene seem like a separate art piece. While the artwork is very realistic, the characters still have a little bit of caricature in their faces, especially around the eyes and nose, but it’s very subtle. This style fits very well with the serious atmosphere and story of Blueberry, because I feel it’s very adult and extremely immersive, yet unique in this way. Compared to this work, Moebius’s other illustrations are much different, specifically a lot of the surreal works that appear in his and Miyazaki’s joint exhibition catalogue, which I also took a look through. Moebius captures an entirely foreign atmosphere whether it’s realistic or extremely surreal, which I found the most intriguing about his work. It kind of reminds me of Shaun Tan’s concept in The Arrival, where unusual creatures and people give off the feeling of entering a new world.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi - Review

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi really showcases the innocence and purity of a girl growing up in a strictly Islamic country. What I really loved about this story is how it’s told through a 10-year-old, trying to understand her country and her religion. Like in the comic Maus, a story told through the one who has lived through it all really helps one understand the true struggle and conflict that happened in the past. What really stuck out to me is how bittersweet Marji’s attempts at understanding are, though. Her parents talk about how they go out in the street every day, risking their lives to protest, and she tries to join in and say things that shows she knows about all this adult business going on with her family. While it’s cute that she yearns to help and be with her family, I feel it’s sad that she’s like this in the first place. I just personally think it’s a little depressing when an innocent child experiences tragedy and danger in the place where they live, in comparison to a child living in a free and safe country. Marji, in this comic, pretty much becomes a representation of many children living in Iran at the time.

I have mixed feelings about the use of stereotype in media. The biggest concern I have about it is really how far they take the stereotype. Heavily stereotypical characters can be offensive, but sometimes writers can't help it, especially if their stereotypes are necessary to the story. Sometimes stereotyping could help establish a character's background, culture, or ethnicity. Personally, being half Filipino, I don't ever see much representation of my race. I have heard a few subtle jokes on their stereotypes, but I honestly thought they were funny because, well, they were kind of true.

Maus by Art Spiegelman - Review

Art Spiegelman's Maus was quite an entertaining and immersive read that focused on a widely historical concept. I think it was extremely interesting how cute and appealing anthropomorphized characters were used to tell a story about the life of being Jewish during the Holocaust. What I like about this is how it made reading the comic much more enjoyable, like how Scott McCloud talked about in Understanding Comics on the simplified cartoon style causing the reader to want to listen to the speaker in a comic, rather than detailed drawings of people. I feel like the cute characters also made me feel a lot more emotional towards their suffering, much like how a lot of people tend to cry more towards the death of a dog rather than a human.

Something that stuck out to me while reading the comic was the transition from the characters being mice with human bodies to humans having mouse masks. I noticed that Spiegelman changed the appearance to that when he was speaking from within himself, rather than telling the story. I see it as kind of an artistic intermission and I feel like it made the comic more engaging and refreshing from reading so much about Vladek's stories from being a captured prisoner.

In terms of the movie Barefoot Gen, I think both stories really nailed the personal experience of war through a character's eyes. Gen Nakaoka experienced himself the bombing of Hiroshima and the movie emphasized the solemn struggles of the time period, much like how Vladek told his stories of his and others' imprisonment. Some points of both stories showed very harsh scenes happening to innocent characters, which really caused a heavy emotional response from me. In Barefoot Gen, when the bomb hits, there's just a whole montage of watching peoples' bodies melt and burn from the impact of the bomb, showing some disturbing images that could really impact some viewers. The animation of it was also helpful in showing the effects of the bomb, since there was so much detailed included. The same goes in Maus, but a bit less disturbing, as you see the mice characters take off their clothes in a shower soon before you see a scene of them being gassed by the Germans. In comparison to a movie, it feels less emotional since it isn't animated, but I still understand the message it gave off. War stories are experiences that should be told to everyone, even today, because of how powerful their messages are, and I think using artistic media is a good way to accomplish that.

Mr. Natural by Robert Crumb - Review

Reading the Mr. Natural comics at first felt very anti-climactic with the idea of the underground comics being supposedly very offensive. For the first few strips, I thought they were simple little comics that just touched on a lot of young adult humor, that is, until I continued reading. Eventually I get to some parts where that cute little Mr. Natural has his penis hanging out like it's nothing, such as one part where a large, adult-like baby starts blowing him. I thought of it as pretty odd, but it honestly wasn't as surprising as I thought it would be. Today, there's plenty of adult comics that have well-known cartoon characters doing inappropriate things like in Mr. Natural. Most of them are all over the Internet now, so I can see these comics being released in print as an issue, but it's nothing really new to me. What I found rather especially interesting was the page in the middle of the comic that showcased the winners of the Mr. Natural drawing contest. Most of the entries were from a younger audience, one of the drawing I recall being submitted by a 13-year-old boy. I'm sure nowadays, a lot of parents would be complaining and causing hell over something like this. In summary, Mr. Natural was pretty open about being extremely inappropriate and offensive, but to be honest, I have definitely seen worse.

Contract With God by Will Eisner - Review

Will Eisner's Contract With God certainly took me on an interesting ride through such complex, yet simple short stories of the people living in the tenements. The first thing that hit me while reading this is how overall depressing and tragic each of the stories are. I believe three of the four stories ended up with the main character dead. Parts of the comic almost brought me to tears because of how sympathetic I felt for these characters. What made them feel so real perhaps is how human they act; the way they show their feelings is terrifyingly relatable. None of the characters were perfect, and the way Eisner drew them especially reflects that part of them. There was the young, thin, and beautiful flapper woman who had an unquenchable thirst for sex and money. There was the chubby, nagging housewife that lived with a grumpy cheater of a husband planning to leave his children for his mistress. So many characters were cheating on one another's lovers and so many of them had no other feelings other than the want for more in their life. The first story followed a good man who slowly turned corrupt with money. Another story followed a landlord who gave money to get a peek at a little girl, who stole all his money and killed his dog, his only best friend in such a dark world, which only resulted in his suicide when he was confronted by the police. What really hits hard the most is how all of these stories were claimed to be true. This comic displays the people as animals living in the dark zoo of the tenements.

Tintin by Hergé - Review

What I loved about Tintin in Tibet by Hergé was how filled with plot the comic was. It was very long, but the story was so interesting to me that I didn't want to stop reading. This comic follows Tintin on his long journey to find his friend Chang, who supposedly died in an plane crash in a very dangerous place in the mountains. Reading this comic felt like like an adventure from beginning to end, I almost felt like I was watching a movie. Even though every panel simply has the characters interacting with each other, there was a good amount of intensity sprinkled onto their situations in their journey that heavily develops the world building and the characters' personalities. In terms of art, what I found very odd was how cartoony Tintin looks compared to a lot of the other characters in the comic. Many background and side characters have more humanlike features like various noses and hairstyles, and then you see little Tintin with his cute round face, dotted eyes, rosy cheeks, and orange tuft of hair. A part of me feels like he was drawn this way to put emphasis on him, or perhaps create an attractive main character so you can't help but root for him during his adventures. The latter is definitely one main reason why I thoroughly enjoyed reading the comic. Seeing him surrounded by seemingly normal human beings almost makes me think of him as a foreign character to them, or everyone else is foreign to Tintin, but I may be overthinking it a little bit.

Peanuts by Charles Schulz - Review

For as long as I can remember, Peanuts has landed a huge impact on my life, as well as many other kids in my generation, and hopefully more to come. I've grown up reading the strips in the newspaper and it's a tradition for me and my dad to sit down and watch the holiday specials. Schulz really nails the experience of childhood in his strips with such relatable characters with how they interact with each other, even down to the deeper thoughts that kids would have, such as being afraid to grow old or worrying about what other people think of them. Peanuts is one of the only comic strips that I can truly understand because it has a simple sense of humor that I could get in on, even if I was still a kid. It has this sort of strong nostalgic charm to it that really brings me in and wanting to read all the strips for hours. The essence of childhood causes me, as a young adult, to reflect and think about how pleasant and carefree, yet how terrifying growing up is. What makes these strips so successful in that concept is how Schulz implements a part of his childhood life into his comics. Childhood is something that a lot of people share, and it can be such a sweet thing to talk about. And that's one big word I can describe Peanuts with. There's something sweet about the comics and that's what makes them so lovable to me. They're like a small slice of life that everyone can connect to.

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud - Review

As someone who spent a lot of my time reading comics and graphic novels since forever, I never would have looked at reading them in a different perspective if I never read this book. Would it even be considered a book? Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud took me through such an entertaining form of education by discussing so many in-depth concepts hidden between the panels of comics. What I loved so much about this book is how it uses visuals in the style of comics to provide clear and concise information. The topic the book talks about that really stood out to me the most is when it starts to dig deep into the idea of pareidolia in comics. In other words, how every reader is capable of identifying faces and expressions despite them not really being there. I honestly thought it was mind-blowing when I noticed that we see two dots and a line in a circle and immediately see it as a human face, despite it having no nose or intricate details that imply that it is a human face. It's incredible how comic artists have took thought into a psychological phenomenon just to tell a story for entertainment. It's almost as if art has turned itself into a type of science. Another thing that I found interesting in this book is how the author explains how cartoon styles cause the viewer to see themselves in the characters they see. It's because of how we see other people in realistic faces and our childhood fascination with cartoons that people see characters this way. The author really nails this explanation by showing a side-by-side comparison of his cartoon persona and a realistic portrait of himself, asking the reader if they would listen to what he's saying if he looked real and less stylized. I love how the author really gets in on the psychological aspects of comics and the book as a whole is extremely self-aware since it's drawn as a comic itself. After reading it, I feel like I have a whole different perspective on comics and graphic novels other than them being a form of visual entertainment.

"The Arrival" by Shaun Tan - Review

I feel “The Arrival” by Shaun Tan really sent me through an immersive experience with so much detail in every panel in this wordless comic. The comic has a very mysterious and whimsical environment around the main character that his story almost felt haunting, yet at the same time nostalgic. Many full page panels have surreal landscapes that thoroughly establish the emotion the main character is feeling as he travels throughout an unfamiliar land as an immigrant. Looking at these different environments makes me feel like I’m reading an old children’s book. With such symbolic scenes and unreal creatures, I felt so lost in this world building and leaves me wanting more out of the story. The imagery in every panel is fantastic and fills me with tons of curiosity of what is really going on in this foreign city that Tan illustrates without any context at all. I think the comic having no words especially adds to this experience of wonder because it leaves so many questions in the best possible way. Imagining this “untold” story with written words would take away so much; the world is supposed to be confusing and unfamiliar, and I feel like context would result in the comic losing its charm. What makes this comic especially beautiful is the use of body language between characters in this story, because it creates a kind of movement that develops character relationships and absolutely no dialogue is needed. It almost feels like Tan is tapping into the concept of human nature and illustrating people’s actions that we are familiar with. Body language is the biggest point in this comic because it is something anyone can understand without words.