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.