Blankets (re-visited)

The graphic novel "Blankets," done by Craig Thompson, is a memoir that shows the reader a very deep look into his life, starting with childhood. Exactly how true some of the events in the book are is not exactly clear, but part of making a great story is exaggeration. The story goes through Craig's life as he grows up and has to make some life changing decisions. We also get a very close look into his character by the way he thinks about things and the situations he's thrown into. Being an indy comic, there is not an element of fantasy or extreme adventure in Blankets that many other comics have, but what it lacks in that aspect the reader gets back in the form of a very deep and moving story of someone's life. We see a guy who is pouring everything out to us through magnificent artwork, and he does a great job of transferring that emotions to us.

Starting off, Craig shows us how he grew up in a religious household, and some of the things he and his brother went through. He even goes all out and shows us how he and his brother were apparently molested by a babysitter, something that could not have been easy to illustrate, let alone tell the world, especially with how much guilt he seems to carry. Its hard to say how much of that scene was true, but the fact that he tells us that it actually happened says a lot about his character. The religious upbringing eventually leads him to meet Raina, a girl he meets at a religion camp and eventually goes out with. Without giving too much of the story's details away, he visits her at home after the camp and sees her lifestyle, which is just as complicated as his, if not more. The story goes on and he grows up and moves on with his life. While growing up however, he seems to carry around this guilt, probably brought on by the oppressing views that religion can carry, not to mention his stubborn attitude. We see later on in the story that his brother grew up and started a family, and must have gotten over whatever guilt he himself held, unless he didn't hold any at all.

The story overall is an amazing piece of art that stirs up emotions and makes you almost feel what the he feels. The way the story ends is somewhat of a mixed emotion itself. It is definitely not a stereotypical happy ending and in fact made me hate the main character for a while. To me, if a story can get that much emotion out of me, then it is definitely a great story.

Watchmen

The Watchmen, by Alan Moore, is a story about a group of people who sought to do good, so they decided to fight crime while wearing masks. The original group called themselves the minute men, and when time took its toll on that group, new individuals took up the position, or had it handed down to them. The story starts out by showing us the dying days of this new group, the Watchmen, and how some of them still hold on to what they once had. What the story lacks in the action that most stories involving masked heroes holds, it definitely makes up for it with showing the reader just how real the lives of these people are. Many of the heroes in Watchmen reflect pre-existing super heroes from other popular comics such as superman and batman. The movie rendition does a pretty good job of bridging the graphic novel to film, but some things are undoubtedly lost in the translation. The ending for instance is significantly different, but still holds a powerful impact. There is also a side story that they only briefly show in the movie.

I really enjoyed reading Watchmen because it was such a different way to look at masked heroes. Sure most superheroes in comics show the reader their personal life, and what they do when they aren't fighting crime or evil, but the characters in Watchmen have such a reality about them. Not only what they do outside of fighting crime, but how they came to be masked heroes in the first place really stands out as a strong part of this story. Some took up the role of a friend, while others decided to fight crime because the effects of it directly effected them. Some didn't even want the job in the first place. Another thing I really liked about the story was the reaction everyone had when John became Dr. Manhattan. The appearance of an actual super hero made the others feel pretty much inferior, and some of the characters even held a good amount of resent towards them. All in all, a very good story that showed the truth behind masked heroes. The movie does a great job of showing this and I would definitely recommend both, but the graphic novel shows so much more.

Women's Comics

Being a big fan of Manga for a long time now, I have inevitably stumbled across cases of American artists emulating the manga style. Amerimanga, as its sometimes called, is a fun mix of cultures. Drawn in the manga style, these stories usually hold more of an american or other cultural feel. Back when I would collect manga frequently, I would sometimes see a featured artist and their work at the end of a manga. Tokyopop did this sometimes. Checking out amerimanga from time to time is how I learned about an artist named Chynna Clugston. One of her most notable works is called Blue Monday, and it follows the life of a group of friends as they go through high school together. Set back in the 1980's, Chynna does a great job of giving it that 80's punk feel, mixing in a bit of european and japanese culture for flavor.

Blue Monday along with Scooter Girl, another popular work of hers, are centered around a female main character. This is common in works produced by women artists. I find that more often than not, the love element seems to be stronger in works produced by women. This is a nice break now and then quite honestly. I find it a nice break from popular action hero comics, which is what a lot of people probably immediately think of when they think of comics.

In the pursuit of reading manga, and even amerimanga, I have developed a love for learning about the Japanese culture. Ultimately, this has led me to wanting to know more and more about many more cultures. I find different cultures very fascinating, and when somebody uses different cultures in a work of art like Chynna does in Blue Monday, I will most likely immediately fall in love with it.

Persepolis

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is the author's personal memoir about her life growing up in Iran during the Iranian revolution. The story starts off showing her as an innocent child, not understanding a lot of the things going on around her and being very devoted to god and a good cause. As it progresses, she learns more about what is happening and ultimately takes the side of her radical parents as she sees them rebelling against the corrupt political leaders. As things start to get better, they just as quickly get worse again when the new political powers turn out to be just as bad as the old. With Marjane's attitude getting more and more rebellious as she grows up, the reader gets a really good look at what growing up in that setting can do to a person. Even these days, she holds a very rebellious attitude and definitely takes after her mother in the Fine Arts aspect. With such a serious story being told, you would think the style it is drawn in to be a little rougher than it is. The way Marjane draws her characters and backgrounds is very stylized and simplified.

For me, reading through Persepolis was very enjoyable. I loved following Marjane's exploits and it was very interesting to watch her change and see the direct effects such a violent setting can have on someone. I feel she didn't leave any aspect of that out and did not try to sugar coat it in any way. I also felt more emotion to this story than I did with any other emotional story I've read so far in this course. Maus was a very powerful story and the Holocaust, for most, is always something emotional to hear about, but I felt more for the events told in Persepolis.

While the Movie and graphic memoir are very similar, almost word for word, I preferred the book much better. I liked to take in certain parts of the story bit by bit, sometimes re-reading parts as I went through. This led me to connect better with the story, something I don't think the movie could have done as well had I watched only the movie.

Tezuka VS. Takahashi..FIGHT!

Manga, a comic form I know all too well. For this section of class, I decided to read Rumiko Takahashi's “Ranma ½” and a bit of Osamu Tezuka's “Buddha.” “Ranma ½” is a fun story about a boy named Ranma who travels to China with his father Genma, in order to complete martial arts training. While there, they stumble upon an area with many “cursed” springs. Legend has it that anyone who falls into one of these particular springs will be cursed to turn into the form of whatever died tragically there whenever they are hit with cold water. Warm water, of course, turns them back. While fighting, Ranma and his father fall into different springs. Ranma lands in one where a girl tragically drown, and his father into one where a panda drown. Throughout the story, crazy adventures unfold and of course water is always a big threat. On the other hand, “Buddha” tells the story of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. This story does a good job of mashing together a pretty serious story line while also throwing in some elements of comedy and craziness, something I find a lot of manga does very well. Sure some comics other than manga can pull this off, but I find that manga really takes the cake when it boils down to it.

Having seen and read “Ranma ½” a long time ago, while reading through it again I thought long and hard about where my love for manga started. I can point it back to when my cousin showed me a few episodes of “Ranma ½” a very long time ago. I immediately fell in love with how crazy it was, and also quickly learned how addicting it could be. I can easily say that because of discovering manga, I have the appreciation of comics that I do today. Manga opened up a floodgate for me, and it always helps to have an older family member who has all the resources to lots of comics.

Maus

Volumes 1 and 2 of Art Spiegelman's Maus tell of a very moving tale. Art Spiegelman presents to us the story of how his father, Vladek, survived the holocaust and the many trials he had to undertake. Written as almost a memoir of his father, he frequently jumps back and forth from the past to the present, giving us a glimpse of how he deals with his father. Spiegelman portrays the characters of the tale in a clever way. The jewish are portrayed as mice, or vermin, while the polish are pigs. The nazis are shown to the reader as frightening looking cats. In this almost cute way of showing different racial groups, it gives a lot of powerful impact to the story.

While the story does do a wonderful job of pulling at the reader's heartstrings, there are certain elements that spark question. One of the most important would be how Vladek, after dealing with the events of the holocaust and all the anti-semitism that led up to it, could be such a racist man. Spiegelman shows this in a very good way and even shows the reader how he dealt with it himself. Another difficulty I ran into while reading Maus was a lack of impact for me. Having just taken a course dedicated to the history of the holocaust last semester, I found this story almost hard to care about. This is not to say while learning about the holocaust I didn't give a shit about what happened. In fact its quite the opposite. I feel that if I had read Maus a few months, later than when I did, it would have had a much greater impact on me.

A short film we watched in class around the time we read Maus was “Barefoot Gen.” This was a work by Keiji Nakazawa that started out as a graphic novel, and was later turned into a work of animation. The story is loosely based off Nakazawa's personal experience of surviving the Hiroshima bombing. Spiegelman even compared this work to his own, and even though the Hiroshima bombing was not a genocide, the effects of it are just as devastating and frightening.

Mr. Natural, Girl Fight, and Gay Comix

Mr. Natural, by R. Crumb, was essentially a biography about a man known as Mr. Natural. Seemingly immortal, he's been seen through time as many different faces. After he became popular and rich, he blew all his money and thus became poor. He seems to stumble upon circumstances by wandering around as a nomad, and they way he deals with them almost feels absent minded and naive. For instance, when a mother abandon's her rather large baby on a train, Mr. Natural decides to take care of it and has a very erotic dream about the baby while next to it. Wandering through the desert, he "feeds" the baby by having it suck on his penis, and the rest you can imagine yourself. Mr. Natural doesn't see anything wrong with this. The concepts behind this comic are dirty and controversial, but that seems to be something Crumb does well.

The issue of Girl Fight I read was about a black woman who has amnesia and calls herself Fox. She wakes up next to a man and after a brief conversation stabs him in the chest. Fox goes on to find a female army in the streets and requests they send her back to Africa to meet up with her father's tribe. Before honoring her request, Fox and Captain X engage in lesbian sex. After reading this and then clearly by the name, these comics have a strong sense of feminism. I couldn't help but also notice a bit of racism in this particular comic, seeing as after Fox met up with her father, she decided to live in the jungle, but not after killing a cheetah and making a bikini out of its skin.

The issues of Gay Comix I browsed through, by various artists, were a diverse mixture of stories. They seemed to be what I expected them to be. There were issues of exaggerated elements of the homosexual community, of course, but there were also issues that many homosexuals have to deal with, such as confronting people about your sexuality. The case of religion was also brought up in some of them. The comic Billy Goes Out, for example, covered a few of these issues pretty well.