Six weeks: the underground comics

For week six I've read "Mr. Natural". It wasn't disturbing at first, even it had a lot of racism, but I would consider myself used to hear racist comments because my country is really racist and homophobic. But then terrible things happened which lead to a necessity of using bleach on my eyes. A lot of sexual violence and a lot of really disturbing sexual "jokes" (?). Probably the style of comics was making everything even more disturbing for me because I associate this style with early Disney animations. I feel like that the style of cartoons that were made for kids should not be used in something so "eye-bleach requiring".


I want to make a point that when I read Eisner's "Contract with God", the fourth part of it was quite sexual, but I didn't think of it as something terrible or brain damaging. I don't have problem with reading something sexual as long as it's kind of more natural, not like in underground comics I've read (and really regret doing so), where I felt sad and quite concerned about humanity, knowing that there's a person who wrote this (later in class teacher told us that Robert Crumb was using LSD, which made little more sense) and that there are people who enjoyed reading something so disturbing and wrong.

week five - body talk - eisner and thompson

I've read "Contract with God" by Will Eisner. I noticed the concept he has in his stories. He shows how people make mistakes and pay for them. He shows people from a bad side. And some time ago something bad happened to my friend who works as a tennis coach. Girls from the team he was coaching went to administration and said he was being racist. I still don't know if I believe my friend, but he says he never told them anything like that.

Week Two Understanding Comics

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a graphic narrative that doesn't contain words or any kind of explanations, but the story is still totally clear and easy to read. I think it works so well because all the pictures show the same action, but unlike comic books with words, this comic book shows us parts of it in small details. All the pictures are like frames from a shot in the movie. As an example at the beginning we see frame standing on the wall, then someone picks it up and starts wrapping it in a paper, puts it in the suitcase and locks it. 

Another thing that makes everything clear is keeping the eye line. Comic contains a lot of great examples of eye line that helps a reader understand what is the character looking at. Also, I think the fact that pictures change from close up picture to a wider picture to show the whole picture, but at the same time make us aware of details. Like when the main character arrives at the city and there's somewhat like a crane shot type of composition used to show the main square. But the next page shows some people who work and mind their own business in some way it helps us understand that this world is different. But we don't know if it's normal to the main character because we don't know much about the world he is from. But then illustrator is showing us his reaction to this new world, he looks confused and he doesn't even know how to tell time using the local clock.


Another thing that I really like, is how illustrator uses a different frame of the picture to separate memories stories, citizens tell to the main character. He uses a picture frame, and, an interesting detail is that some of the pictures' edges are even fractured to create a feeling of an old paper picture is presented on. Which helps to create a feeling of the story or a memory

Week 3: Little Nemo and Krazy Kat

Originally I thought of making something with "Little Nemo". When we looked through the books in class I saw one of the strips had a Kat say a stupid joke, (probably not a joke, more that Kat is not as intelligent) And I thought how much I hate jokes like that and I also get feeling when I want to throw a brick at that person's head. So I got a stupid joke based on wordplay and used it in my comics imitation for Krazy Kat.