Week13) Reconsidering the SuperHero

I would say, the superhero comics are only for who like the superhero characters. if you are not interested in Superhero characters and their stories, the contents of the comics are quite hard to understand. I tried to understand Savage Dragon by Hellboy and it was even hard to define who is who.
However, I could see right away that in this period the artist develops the styles and designs of the each characters also their stories. It have really clear beginning and the ending compared to early SuperHero comics. I don't know the early designs of Hellboy and Dragon, but they look interesting in the aspect of design. The most impressed part of the character design was the shape language of the each Characters. I really enjoyed this amazing art.

I could see why people still want to bring back the SuperHero characters into comics and the movies, they are really attractive figures although they are not even human. 

Week13) Changing Landscape of Licensed Characters - Class writing

As the person who is not familiar to the American SuperHero comics( Even with the movies) this comic was quite refreshing that licensed characters' comic could be done well. When Batman mentioned the 'relationship' of him and Jocker at the beginning of the story, it immediately remind me very recent batman lego movie because it made good comedy about their 'relationship'. It quite seemed romantic in the movie because Jocker acts like 'why don't you love me as I love you' but it made me laugh. Jocker and Batman, their relationship is really famous. (think about I don't know any story about Batman, no matter it's comics or movies) They are 'fatal' rival and try so hard to 'reach' to each other although their purposes are different. 

 I don't know this is based on the original Batman story, the character developments were nice, especially i liked that part that there is reasonable backstory to push the motivation of Joker's behavior. I always wanted to know how Jocker became like that and what is motivation of his feeling against the society. It was nice to see the flashback of Joker rather than Batman. Only Batman I know is Batman of series of Dark Knight(which I didn't even finish watching it), and I feel this comic was quite closed to the movie. This comic showed every details of the story, it almost feel like movie storyboard. I could feel the mood, character's movement and what they are thinking. My favorite part was that at the very end of the comic, Batman showed his thought about Jocker that he cares about him. He might be only one who deeply cares about him by now. It is totally different from people who Jocker used to called friends, and if you think about Jocker and Batman don't know real identity each other I could see why people see them as 'destiny'. They creates their own world, and only they understand each other. 

It sounds really odd, but I'd like to see Musical base on Batman story. This version of Batman has really good drama in the story and also the plot seems fit to Musical. The duet of Batman and Jocker would be nice because their emotion toward each other is quite deep. The only thing I worried about is what Batman usually do is 'chasing' and super 'action' movement to beat the bad guys. The small stage of the theater might be the limit of their movement but it also would be depends on how the stage is designed. 

week12) Comics by Women

I was excited to see the comics by women artist because it is about woman artists! The first impression about 'This One Summer' was that the artist has really nice style.

It seemed drawn in some computer program with nice brushes. The artist might used the charcoal brush and these kinds of brushes tend to have traditional qualities but in digital world so you could feel the roughness of the strokes. Personally I am fan of these brush settings and also this comics made me feel to buy the brush. The mood of the comics and the characters' body shapes and the gestures were great overall. The story of this comic focused a girl who visited her family's summer house near by beach and happenings around her including her family and with other girls. The story plot seemed quite flat, this is not the story which has up and down story plot. I think the main girl is going through puberty and experiencing many emotional changes. Something like you will never be same as before.

The mood of 'This One Summer' reminded me Mushishi byYuki Urushibara although they shares nothing in common. But the overall calm, odd sometimes quite cold (in my opinion) many nature drawings made me think of Mushishi.



I really like the story and the style of this comic. Although it's black and white, it showed good atmosphere changes. Actually I think her choice drawing without colors was good because it provided more imagination of colors and mood.

week11) Comics as contemporary literature

I have never seen this great storytelling graphic novel. To be honest his art style is not my taste, although I enjoyed his shape language of characters. If you see only the cover, you might think the colors were too simple compared other artist who painted the drawings with rich colors, it's not well-described drawing with details.. you might be lost where you should find great thing in this book.  However, in terms of visual storytelling, I am sure he could be the one of the tops. 

Especially the part of Asteios and his wife's fist meeting blew my mind. How David showed that they influence each other and how Hana thought the 'spot light' is moving on to her was beautifully illustrated. The reason of simple colors were to show visually to the readers how the characters' thought develops.

Also I liked the part the drawings and text were placed unexpected places. He also developed the the form of square panel so that the drawings could be free in a way to express his aesthetics.