week 13: reconsidering the superhero
In class

I liked the story because in a way it explains why Joker is the way he is. I like this type of stories where the person, who it seems you would never feel any remorse to, has their story told and you can see a big difference between what they were and what they are now. I've read the part where he shoots the woman and then we don't really know what happened except for injury, and I don't think anything happens, I believe that he just took pictures of her. But I don't know enough about the Joker to judge. I read about this part previously in an article discussing reasons why Joker is the scariest enemy of Batman.

The only mediums that can be used for this story I can think of are film and animation. I like comics because it's kind of like a storyboard. And I know that for example on the set of “the walking dead” they use comics as a storyboard for some moment. I don't really know about making any changes to the story because I feel like it's very cinematic already by itself. It even looks like it has been made to make a film out of it. For example when batman says “where is he?” and then next frame there's a guy who says “you are here”. I feel like it's a really good connection between the scenes in the movie.

week seven: maus and the legitimization of the graphic novel

I have finally finished this comics. It was important to me to make it right. This topic is very important to me personally because it's my family's story.

Week 11 Literary Graphic Novels

When I read "Asterios Polyp" by David Mazzucchelli. And I really liked the pages where he has a bunch of different memories. "Asterios Polyp" was a really about feeling for me. I have felt a lot of stress lately and it has resulted in some sleeping issues. I tried to show the feeling I have every night and present some thoughts that have been going through my head lately.

week eight: stereotype and the ethics of representation

I think using stereotypes in comics, animation and gaming narrative is okay as long as these stereotypes are not separating differ from each other. As an example, I hate how cartoons used to represent African-American people. They would make all the white people look normal, and black people would look more like monkeys.

I don't think that offensive stereotypes should be used in the narrative. At the same time, stereotypes can be used as a joke. I feel like the necessity of stereotypes in narrative depends on who is the audience. For kids, it's easier to explain something using stereotypes. There are things like we say that watermelons are round, but not all watermelons are round. (I guess this is a very stupid example). What I mean by that is that you learn about the world and life on stereotypes, and as you get older you learn that stereotypes are not everything. So stereotypes are good to use when you need to be easily understood because stereotypes are something everyone understands. Human's mind and how it comprehends things is really complicated, even the way we see the same color is different, so I think that if we have something that gives us a similar image of the character, it makes things easier to comprehend.
Myself I have never really been affected by stereotypes. Usually, men think I'm weaker that I actually am, because of my gender. They think they need to help me carry something, but I can't say it's a bad thing. In other ways, I don't know what people think of me, when we meet for the first time, as I can't read minds. So I guess, as a conclusion, I say that stereotypes can be used as long as they are not too much, and are not offensive.

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