Week7) maus and the legitimization of the graphic novel

Maus, the first 'graphic novel' , was really great. Even with some pages, I already noticed the differences between the previous ones and this one.

The first thing I noticed that it is very long story compared to the others. It even takes some pages to start 'main' story of Maus. It was really like reading a book with many nice drawings. Maus's storyteller is the son, Artie, but the main story is not about him, his father,Vladek. His experience in the time period World War I and Nazi.

The story starts with the flash back, which made this book feel like someone is actually talking about their life next to you or you are reading a book of a person's life. In this book the readers could learn about the main characters more and more as you go through. Unlike jumping in the story, or big happening, it shows every details in the order. 

it was really great to see the past and the present at the same page. 

I also amazed by how the author made the each pages pretty also readable. The bubbles are even designed base on the place, other drawings within the same panel, which made me so glad by just seeing well designed and organized panels. 

This story dragged me into the story really well, and made me feel in the same way with the characters. 

Week 6) Underground Comics

Usually the words with 'underground' doesn't really sound good because there are the reason why majority poeple doesn't like it. So when I heard 'underground comics' i thought it would be really different comics compare to the previous comics.

First of all, the efforts on the underground comics were not heavy. The drawing style was the obvious differences that the artist used simple line works less details. With the simple story, i think it suit to the simple line works.  And with the simple storytelling, characters became more relatable unlike the hero or a person who like to travel around.

What I enjoyed the most was that since it was the 'underground' comic, which mean that less regulation. Im pretty sure that the artist who worked on underground comics had more freedom to express themselves and the character unlike the mainstream comics, since it was targeting as many people possible. It might be one of the advance underground comic artist would enjoy about. Sometimes the 'nice' words do not work at time at the certain circumstances.

but it could not avoid the fact that some authors overused their freedom. I do not know it accused the issue at that time too, but now their some sexual/ racism approaches might brought argument.

Week 5) Body talk : Eisnor & Thompson

As the description said, Eisnor and Thompson had more clarity and emotional content compared to a lot of the previous works. The action were the main resources to tell who is the character and the story itself. However on the Graphic novel area, the authors started to consider the importance of the emotions and the mood. 

As going through one of the Eisnor's work, the Spirit,  I noticed that not only he kept the style of the old storytelling, focusing on the character's motivation and the result, but also it was successful to see the clear characters' faces and their emotions. The surprising part was he did not make big changes from the old style. 

Look at their faces and how clearly we could see it. One is begging and one is questioning and not really concern about what the left said. With the text the drawings were wonderfully worked. Also Eisnor liked to show overacted poses, which I respected and amazed by the most because the each drawings were just like one frame of the animation with good poses. 

Craig Thompson's works so amazing. This is the early comic/ graphic novel similar to recent form of it. Like Eisnor, it is so much clear with the pose and the facial expression. But I personally believe he added more on this.  Unlike previous lined up and grouped together panels Thompson started to break up the things here. He knew that how to use the empty space, unlined box, and where he should emphasize with more drawings. I did not expect i would see someone using the empty space in this period. Also where I liked about was that with just bit more of the drawing of the situation, he could bring up the mood of the every shots too. 

Week4) Comic books

The comic book is the one of the best media of storytelling to me. I have read many stories through the comic book not only entertaining ones but also educational ones too. It is the most easy way to get to know the content of the book because comic books visually tell you.

As person who never read the American/ Western comic books before, the early comics were more focusing on the acting or story development without knowing who are the characters. Maybe we would learn as going through the story more, but the media i have consumed they introduce the characters or the concept in the early part of the stories. It was unusual to see that starting the story with just brief description like this; this is from the Superman, reason of choosing this that Superman is the one of American character I familiar with, which helped me understand who is the character, Clark, when I saw this. However, just imagining people back in the days, read it at first time and guess who is Clark would be hard to them. The Author just brought up the characters name without telling who has this name.  

Since the many stories were developed on the perspective of the author, not on the character's view, it was refreshing to see that the stories were actually feeling like someone is telling you the stories. And personally I really want to know why the comic script/ comic books are written in capital letters. It's hard to read..