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week 13: Watchmen

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Watchmen was a real treat for me and after finishing it, I think that it is the pinnacle of graphic novels. The super hero genre is twisted and turned into something that is incredibly dark but also true to what makes a great super hero story. It involves an incredibly engaging insight into the way we, as common people, would integrate, influence and be influenced by super heroes/vigilantes in our society. How are we supposed to deal with good people who commit horrible crimes? Is killing mass amounts of people ok if it can mean saving an even greater number? How can a man become a god? These are just a few of the major questions, from personal to cosmic, that Watchmen presents to the reader which completely blew my mind. Of course, like most good stories, clear answers to these questions are left for the reader to come up with, yet the story is never left so open ended that it feels unsatisfying. On top of all this we have great artwork that depicts some of the most interesting
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Week 12: Fun Home

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Fun Home is an interesting graphic Novel which i would not really describe as my "cup of tea". However, by the end of reading it, I respected it for how deeply personal it was. Even when compared to stories like March and Persepolis, Fun Home give you an insight into the world of the writer like few other pieces of literature have. The whole novel has a "Dear Diary," sort of tone to it, to the point where you realize this is Bechdel's way of getting out some personal demons, troubles and questions... many of these questions never having a clear answer presented the reader. I think this need to get it off her chest is what makes this read engaging, hard to swallow and even unsatisfying (in a weird satisfying way... If that makes any sense). The story is filled with characters (most obviously Bechdel's dad) that are confusing and hard to understand. This works tot eh novels benefit because that same sort of confusion is exactly the way Bechdel feels about
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Week 11: Black Hole

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Black Hole was a graphic novel that was not what I was expecting. As I looked through the recommended reading for this week, its name stood out to me so I picked it. What I got was something far more grotesque than what I was expecting. However it used its grotesque depictions of venereal disease in a very effective way. By the end, the message/point of the story was quit clear. The first thing that jumps out at you int he novel is the extremely bold and graphical artwork. This is apparent right from seeing the cover. There is a lot of confidence in the artwork and we can see how effective this style is used when you begin to see people undergoing the horrible mutations brought on by a sexually transmitted disease. However, the more mutations are depicted, the more you begin to realize that they aren't really medical in nature but instead border on something more surreal. By the end of the novel I realized that the transformations are really a metaphor for the awkward, uncomfo
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Week 8: March

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The story of the Civil Rights movement is always a powerful and important one, so I think adapting it to any medium could make for something engaging and thought-provoking to the audience. March is unique however, in that we see it from the perspective of John Lewis, who was shaped and influence by it in some incredible ways that eventually led to him pursuing a career as a U.S. Representative. The raw, energetic and often rough (in an appealing way) nature of the art in the novel lends an incredible human aspects when telling the stories and depicting intense events like Bloody Sunday. There is not a focus on creating realism, or traditionally dynamic character. Instead the loose, and rushes feeling pen strokes lend to the energy and life that was present in the civil rights movement. This "energy" is what led to the violence and change that would define that period. When I noticed this, I started to realize that a graphic novel format for this kind of autobiography see
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Week 10: Astro Boy

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What I found most interesting about Astro Boy was the fact that it is an early example of Japan's love and embrace of robotics and robotic culture into their popular culture. It's interesting to see what is probably the first example of this, when all my life robots have been engrained into their pop culture, especially within anime and manga media. What is even more interesting about Astro Boy (and something I wasn't expecting) was how human Astro Boy is as a character. He feels less cold and less, ironically, less robotic than some of the robotic characters I am used to from anime/ manga I love like Ghost in the Shell. Rather than getting the intense, cold and dark sci-fi feeling i got from Ghost in the Shell, I instead felt something more akin to the feeling I get watching a classic Disney movie.
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Week 9: Persepolis

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To me, Persepolis was a a biography through in through in the vein of so many classic, coming-of-age stories. Technically it is a auto-biography which makes the coming of age aspect of the story even more authentic and personal. One thing that immediately stood out to me about the novel is the blending of personal and historical elements in a very engaging way. We see her own upbringing, as recounted by her, but we also learn the historical event and importance of the Islamic revolution, which we learn, along with her. As a white westerner, this is valuable insight into a culture and series of events I am not at all familiar with and the personal aspect allowed me to latch on to Marji, who is an incredibly likable character. When we are given the opportunity to slip into Marji's shoes and discover her family's past, historical past (of the place she lives) and personal lives (reconnecting with family in a new way and discovering love) we are really able to feel like we are
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Week 7: Maus

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I really enjoyed and respected Maus in both a comic book and literary sense. Art has an interesting way of telling a deeply personal story about his dad and blending that into all kinds of historical setting, elements and scenarios that help shed light on the atrocities and realities of the holocaust. One thing I really enjoyed were and the animal representations of the different races and nationalities in the story. I realize the problems that could come with that and I don't think that it is always successful (case in point, the Polish people represented as pigs), however I do think that the over all idea is successful as it "boils" it down in an easy to digest way. When you want to represent the holocaust in a basic way, showing the Germans as cat's and the Jews as Mice helps drive home the point that the Germans were literally preying on the Jews since the cat is a natural predator of mice. What I really enjoyed though was the character of Vladek, Art's
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