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.