Al's webcomics recommendation

Cucumber Quest:
Simply put, Cucumber Quest is a rpg style adventure about young bunny Cucumber who is forcibly pushed into being a hero when ancient evil returns to their land.  Cucumber, along side his sister and a group of friends begin to cross their land in order to defeat the evil Nightmare Knight.  But there maybe be more to this centuries old on conflict.

This comic is a beautiful fun silly mess of a comic.



It comes from soft, to loud to scary. The use of color is one of biggest pulls for me personally. It's just some fun work.
It's about to come off spring break so nows a prefect time to check it out. http://cucumber.gigidigi.com/


the Glass Scientists is basically a twist on the story of Jekyll and Hyde.  One of my favorite storyboard artist are behind this and it has so amazing art and some fun characters.


It just started it's third chapter so check it out!
http://www.theglassscientists.com/?comic=chapter-i

Authority

There are a lot of different prominent symbols in Authority which end up giving it this large scale quality.  There are a lot of specific places and counties mention, the comic starts out with Moscow, introduces character in New york and ends in London.  There seems to a worldly nature to  the story. But the ship that the hero use as a sort of base called the Carrier seems to a kind of futurist beak.
There is defiantly a strong connection to a sense of team, as the hero characters are introduced that seems to connection to them to the conflict as it affect the whole earth.  I feel like adapting this story in to a longer form T.V show would be the best idea.  A longer ford adaption would allow it time to spend which each character and the large conflict.  I may spend more time with the set of hero character to really introduced them or keep them very underfinded till the big fight scene they all have to together near the end of the first issue to use that as a good way of showing off their character. Either that or pick a character that is more of the main lead which in this case I would put as Jenny Sparks since I read her as having the most ideal as a main character or leader.


Honestly I don't think our current era of Superhero fandom would exist with out this era. These comic bought superheros into the space they needed to be in order to be taken seriously as a medium.

That being said I personally thinks this is the down fall as well.  These comic tones are  still affecting comics today; dark, serious and gritty. Which has turned out to be just a limiting as the camper stuff.  But I feel  Superhero comics are finding their medium between deep and fun.  Stuff like Ms Marvel and The unbeatable Squirrel Girl can balance the idea of story and fun.  I think the popular of characters like Deadpool proves that people like supers who have fun as well.

Lady Comics

If I'm honest for a minute, I had read a lot of these comic before and love them.   I'll fully admit I have a bias,  I spend a lot of time reading female centered stuff, it's usually just more my style and natural.

The One summer captures that bittersweet nosticlgic feelings. It's art style and storytelling has a ghostly feeling, sometimes dream like. But the plot and characters are all fully real, reminding me a lot of both people I knew or even myself at that age.

I love Fun Home. It's a well crafted story and even though the story can be strange to some, I think what it's saying is very relatable for our age group.


Lumberjanes is honestly one of my favorite comic.  I love the characters, the story and the art. It hits all the right notes.
   

Contemporary Literature as comic

I found this concept a little hard to understand when I first read it. Honestly that may because I never thought of comics were not literature.  But these is a sophistication to these stories that I understand is a little easier for people to call "literature". Asterios Polyp is an interesting take on the idea. I didn't like I'd like Asterios for the first few pages.  I tend to have a hard time reading sophisticated or wordly writing but I liked how figurative the drawing were.  As I read, I actually had a hard time stopping once I got started.  The combination of the interesting story and amazingly design art from the character design to the panel design. It's wonderful made book, a pleasure to read and look at.  The character despite being unliked to follow, you do want to figure what happens to him.  And I almost missed the great end because I thought it was an end page.

Manga's influence on me personally aka Mostly me talking about Magical Girls honestly

So much like a lot of people my age,  manga was my door to comic and comic making.  When I was some where between 10 and 11 I started reading them.  I was nuts over them. I often got one or two every few weeks, re-read the ones I had 10 or 15 times. In middle school there wasn't a day that went by that I didn't have at least one in my bookbag.

I was drawn to mostly shojo especially magical girls. One of the first manga I've ever read is still one of my favorite and biggest influence.




Most of the volumes I own of Clamps Cardcaptor Sakura are worn from a decade of loving reading.
In my opinion, Sakura stands as the "prefect and purest" idea of what it takes to make a good magical girl story.  A well written concept with set boundaries that leave lots of room from creative.  There isn't a villain or monster of the week to beat. The Cards Sakura must collect cause various issues that need different strategies to seal. This means the conflict turn more into a riddle of sorts.  How can Sakura fix this issues. There isn't one spell or weapon that defends every monster (I love Sailor Moon but these is a reason why I think Cardcaptor is superior.))  You have to think and understand. and sometimes just guess and hope for the best.

Sakura's character is a big pull for me. She's young even for manga, She's not even in middle school when the story starts. She's kind, helpful and caring.  I've actually grown to love her a lot more as I got older. She's a soft light of positive energy and even when things are against her you rarely seen her get down.  The special motto she's got is I'm sure I'll alright.

Positivity rains over all of the story and it's god damn nice to feel and read.  Clamp beyond beautiful illustrations are also amazing to look at and their costume design not only influenced my art but also my own sense of fashion.

Seriously, what's better then being a magical girl with a ton of different outfit of different styles for different occasions? You won't catch me fighting evil in the same outfit every episode          

European comics

I think one of the most telling things about comics is that fact they never really went though a "just for kids" phase in it's history. Even the comic that were "For Kids" seemed to a connection to more adult readers. It's hard to say if this is connected more to just simply the different cultures from the US vs most of Europe or if it has something to with just how they view the media.

Comics are almost treated just as a normal book there, sold in the same places as novels or non-fiction which is kind crazy to think about when you think about how most book store simply have a rack or two labeled comics or graphic novels.    Most of the material we read was taken very seriously which maybe my biggest takeaway.   It's easy to see comics just being taken more seriously, or at least treated like a normal thing.

The fully loaded R-word

Oh boy, one of the big loaded topic of comics pretty much all media really representation.

It's hard for me personally to believe that stereotypes are "necessary" in media, comics other wise. It's always to me seems to be an easy and quick out into creating and writing a character.  Why spent countless hours trying to create a character when you can fill in a few mental blanks?  Need to have give your hero a best friend while also adding some minorities to your comic so you don't get called out for having no speaking characters of color, Add in "Cool but not cooler then the hero, Black best friend." Give him and few one lines and boom! Done.    Need a villain that isn't american or rich? Add vague Muslim terrorist,   Want to add a "Strong female lead" to your story, well just make her wore tight pants, carry a weapon,  and every once in while have her make some comment about she isn't like other woman, give her a tragic backstory about either losing her father, or if you want to go for the "mature edgy" look, give her a rape or abuse themed backstory

Easy, right?  Everyone has done it so it can't fail, right?

Okay, I mau have gone over board but I think one of the best things say in this week's class is that most stereotypes don't tell us anything about the person being stereotyped. It tells about how the person doing the stereotyping.  While becoming the biggest point.

If stereotype isn't telling us anything then why use it at all??

When people ask for  representation in media they aren't looking for you to mark off a checklist of minorities and special groups.  They asking for a well made characters who are refections of what our lives are.

It doesn't matter if you have female characters in your story, if you don't do anything with them but write them into romance drama. It doesn't matter if you have a black character in the story if they just there to fill a spot or give the "Urban point of view" and that's it.  It doesn't matter if you have a fat character, if all you do is use them as a joke.  It doesn't matter if you have a gay character, if you kill them off before you get to your first final.

Write character as people, not as puppets. 

Offering an totally new perspective

I've always thought of comics as an extremely special media.  They are able to communicate in a totally different way.  I alway felt that they were the prefect blend of the personal experience of reading novels and books and the feeling of the authors intent. The best way of putting this is often it's like in comics you're often on the trip though the story with the author or with them guiding you though it. It's an experience between you and the author.

So in that respect, comics can bring a totally new outlook or perspective.  As Maus is a prefect example of that.  It proves that comics can not only give a extremely new perspective that really hadn't been seen in comics but it also proved that comic could be a brand new way to present historic topic that may be easier to understand then a textbook. Because again, comics let you have a personal experience with both the author and the characters, it because easier for people especially students to read, understand and most importantly have feelings for.

Probably a predictable response

Yeah so underground comics, right...  I thought there was a rather uncomfortable silent though a lot of class today and I can't help but think maybe the creators of these comic would be proud of that fact.

By nature ComiZ aren't meant to be easy to shallow. There are mention to be a kind of middle figure to anything the creators didn't care for at the time.  Some of it may seem to be gross, unpleasant horror for the sake of being awful and in some case it was. But it was meant to go to place no one else was really going to at the time.  It needed to completely counterculture to work.

Okay so I knew a little about underground comics before hand so I kind of knew what we were getting into.  So I was expecting the graphic, "edgy high school boys notebook" kind of thing. So about three pdfs in I found myself feeling not being able to relate in the slights at all to any of this, so being an asexual panromantic I was hoping the "Gay comics" could give something I could enjoy on a little more personal level. And they didn't disappoint, not only did I find them nicer to look at with more relatable stories and but also for the most part simply more pleasant.  I'm not sure if everyone who looked that issue felt the same but I certainly did.

But that's probably prove that they were doing their job as underground comics.

"The Graphic Novel" the comic book for grown ups

Not sure if that's the right title for it, but that seems to be the sentiment I got from both the books we read as well as the stuff spoken about it.  

I'm not sure if I'd 100% agree on that, given that I don't feel like comics are "for kids" or "for adults"  but it's true back when graphic novel came out that was the way they sold it.  A longer, more mature story continued in a single novel in the style smilier to a comic book.  The word "mature"  comes to mind with especially Eisner's style in "Contact with God" and subject matter with Thompson's Blankets.   Again I feel like these two put together are a good started for what graphic novels would turn into later one.

You have the serious gritty dramas in both style and story that Eisner seems to be starting, maybe even some of the historical fiction added on it. This is seems later on as gritty does became more of the marketed term for comics.


Meanwhile Thompson's "Blankets' is always a "How to" on writing autobio comics that have become super popular in the last few years. Even down to the simple style matched with a lot of emotional storytelling along with the use of a lot figurative dreamlike images.  

They are both very different but give a lot the same ideas for continuing the ideas of comics could be.  

The comic book appears

I found all of the still on the history of the comic book interesting but I found the stuff about the Comics code and the history after particularly interesting. The code starts this issues in my head about censorship vs quality control.  The whole thing seemed to turn in a huge mess. Most of which may be fuel simply not allowing adult comic and kids comic to exist separately thus dooming them stuck together, pretty much forever.  It’s funny now there is still a struggle to get more kids into comic and create more all age stories. Somewhere along the line comics just seemed to get confused and in way started to overcompensate.  If I believe after the code is lifted comic become super adult, pushing out a lot of all ages stuff.   Which is why it’s funny that the Disney Ducks comic were super popular, Funny, but not surprising. Comics and cartoons share lot history and issues. One could say they are siblings in a way.  Similarly cartoon were often not given an thought but also heavily censored  because they were “for kids”.  But in a way that’s backfired because now children’s cartoons are becoming some of the best show and tv and compare to “adult cartoons” are often better written and handling much deeper topics. This is sort of where I find Disney Duck plays in. They are simple but well written stories that are fun.  And good story telling is something that is felt by both adults and children  

The comic strip

I found the most interesting thing about the sample of comic strips we looked at were no only diverse in style, format but also storytelling.  A lot of this beginning comics seemed to paving the way for later types of comics so to speak.  While Little Nemo and Gasoline Alley concentrated more on environment and atmosphere, using clean uniform panel combined with brilliant composition created a real sense of a world.  I feel like this might have laid it’s way for comics that are very world heavy and the idea of really using the panel composition in neat way. Meanwhile things like Krazy Kat seemed lay the way for messier odder stranger stuff later on.  Then later comics like Peanuts and Clavin and Hobbes  which started a more character based storytelling, things that are not sickly sweet or super wacky but are somewhere in between both of these seemed to have given way to more different, more sublet kinds of jokes and storytelling. I think a lot entrainment,  not just comics has to take a bow to these early strips as path builder to many many different kinds of visual storytelling .

  

Understanding Comics-Scott McCloud Post

So I was pretty familiar with Scott McCloud's work,  I have a copy of "Making Comics" that he wrote after "Understanding Comics". I've had that book since late middle school so I've read it though a few times at different points of my life. while a lot of it went over my 14 year old head at the time, I still consider it a good read now.

  Now "Understanding Comic" is a little different since it's more understanding how comics work as a concept rather that how to they "work" per say.  It seemed to me, to be very wordy and hard to understand at times. A lot of this stuff to my brain comes as second nature as someone who has read comics though most of my life.  So it took me back to read some of the stuff about things like panel to panel transitions. The fact that things happen in between panels or that they change seemed obvious but seeing it laid out some helpful and got me to think about how panels work and how people viewed it without a lifetime of comic reading.  The part about the idea of "cartooning" as a way of seeing or as presenting an idea or concept. At first read I founded this kind of hard to comprehend. Of course the lines and shape made by ink and pencil are simply abstracts of reality but I'm not sure if our connection with them are compactly self made, if that makes sense. The panels about how if you look at the realist drawing of a face you see another face but when you see a cartoon face you see yourself made sense to me but I have a hard time figuring why that made sense to me.
 

The Arrival

This may be a tad bias consisting that I enjoy wordless storytelling especially in comic form. The Arrival does a fantastic job at telling a deep and full story with any words.  The Arrival has a specific format that goes from many small square panels on a page to large full spare illustration. The square panels usually don’t feature much. Often times the action in limited from panel to panel. Sometimes it can just be small intimate things like hand gestures or a short conversation. This gets us as the reader up close and personal with our main character as they immigrate and learn to live in a strange new place. The small illustrations give a close look at his life, mannerism and day-to-day life.  Now the beautiful large sweeping spares depicting the cityscape do an amazing job showing us what this strange and new world is like. The drawings are extremely well done with a lot of details and atmosphere. The fantasy city our main character travels to is almost like a dream, everything is big and new and other worldly.  In fact they can be a little overwhelming at times.  The fantasy like quality to the city the man moves to help us feel as blown away and unfamiliar as the man, just as he is taking in and learning about all the new things around this world, so are we.  This works so much better then setting it in a somewhere readers would recognize things that we know. In this would everything to us is just as new as it is from the man. The format does a great job at letting us feel as the character is feeling, from small moments with other people to big overwhelming feelings of wonder and loneliness.   All the clear images, the passage of times, the big shots of the city create a beautiful story all without the need of a single word.