Week 14 – Ducks

When I first read it, I loved how simple the drawings were. Simple drawings always had a certain appeal to me because I gave me a break from the complicated things I see in life. The rough yet simple line work seems so direct that it really captures some of the essence of the feeling of these characters. I think my most favorite thing about the art style is the facial features and the whimsical feels of it.

The story basically revolves around the experience the author had at a mining site and what she had to share about it. In the end she felt that her experience working there was very mixed because she feels both sides of the environmental issues. It included information about a clean up of a pond where the ducks would be, hence the title “Ducks”. Also her overarching theme of the story is around environmental disaster caused by humans.

Week 12 - Women in Comics

This week, I’ve read about the Safari Honeymoon, which I thought was one of the weirdest comics I’ve read.  The story is basically about a couple that went out on a honeymoon in the safari where they encounter parasitic animals. The wife leaves her husband for a while and meets this strange person with a parasite for a tongue. The two had lunch together, but the husband comes back and it is revealed that there was a parasite that came into the husband from the butthole. In the end, the strange person saves the husband from the parasite.

From an artistic viewpoint, I think the green color of the comic is very nice as it helps give this feeling of something disgusting since the color green is sometimes associated with the feeling of disgust. The character designs also place heavy emphasis on the body over the head and face, which I think it, was meant to focus out attention to body movement over the expressions of the person. The background has a very detailed jungle like feel which adds to the safari-ness of the comic. Also the line drawing choices give this natural organic feeling to it which sometimes also enhances the parasite’s disgusting feel.

Week 11 – Contemporary Literature

I’ve read the comic called Asterios Polyp and what the comic is about is a professor with the same name as the title who teaches at Cornell University in Ithaca. What basically happened was that a lightning strike burns his home and he is forced to leave and take a job somewhere far away from where he originally lived. From there he had to deal with his past life and the troubles he had such as his childhood, marriage, and confrontation of his flawed nature.  

Overall, I like the art style of the comic with its purple and blue coloring

It also embarks on different drawing styles, which I thought was great for separating Polyp from the others. There was one scene where Polyp was arguing to his wife about his constant behavior of only thinking about himself. His wife was shaded in some sort of realistic shading which made her look like she was in the reality of things. This is in stark contrast with Polyp who is drawn very lightly with lines kind of like geometric shapes. This gives Polyp a feeling of someone who is not grounded in reality, but who is only in his head, which sends a great message about who he is at this time, and I think that was really interesting.

Week 10 Manga – Scott Pilgrim

At first I thought it was pretty weird that Scott Pilgrim is considered a manga under this assignment, but I’ve decided to read it anyway regardless. Actually I’ve went a little deeper into the history of Scott Pilgrim and found out that the author of the comic initially wanted to write a “Shonen” style comic, which I believe to be is some sort of manga and that he drew some influences from it. So, I’ve learned that Scott Pilgrim had some foreign influences that I never really would have thought of.

Some of the first things that really grabbed me were the amount of video game references the comic has. It really had some appeal to me because of this fact. I even thought the way the story was written is like a video game in itself. First off, the story is about a guy named Scott who has to defeat his girlfriend’s seven ex- boyfriends. They way he had to fight them was like an arena battle with each ex-boyfriend being harder than the last. He then has to fight a “final boss” and eventually save the damsel in distress, kind of like a Mario game.

Week 9 Persepolis

Basically, from what I understand form reading the comic; it was about a young girl named Satrapi and her childhood. From where the story took place was during a time where Iran and Iraq were at odds with each other in war.  She and her family wanted to get out of the situation in Muslim culture and the war they were having.

Overall, I loved the art style; I think it fits with the gritty feeling of the comic. What I mean by that is how the black and white reflects the life the girl was living in. Everything was almost gloomy and grim for them, which the black and white helps perfectly, because of the situation they were in.  

The way the characters are drawn makes it seem like ancient paintings and drawings on the wall, which gives it a nice feeling of like we are reading a story of a girl from somewhere foreign. Also because of how Islam is like a religion that focuses a lot on letters and symbols rather than imagery and icons like in other religions, the black and white coloration, which words and letters are like, has a nice connection with the two.

Week 8 Stereotypes

For this week, I've read the web comic online called “Lighten Up”. What I thought of the comic was very interesting because of the way they mainly used the comic box types. What I mean is that the way the artist who drew the comic didn’t use the standard type of comic boxes with black outlines. Instead he just put borderless boxes and stuck them together which creates an interesting artistic style that stood out to me. The very nice color of the piece helps illustrate the main point of the comic, which was to highlight the black and white stereotype issues.  

I particularly love the Photoshop references it made to highlight this skin color issue even more by putting in color numbers normally found in said programs. The cel-shaded appearance of the comic helps it to give a nice look as well as it emphasizes on the simplistic idea of color and tone, nothing else. Overall this all helps the main theme of the story which was how the artist felt when he had to change a particular character’s skin tone color from darker to lighter all because of what he believes to be skin tone color intolerance.