Week 9: A Wide World of Comics Response

An Analysis of Persepolis   

      What happened in Persepolis? This week I took a look at one of the alternative readings, Persepolis. This, I would say is a coming of age story. We are introduced to this young girl named Marji. She has to deal with the changes of growing up while at the same time has to live through a violence-infested world, pretending things are all normal. Marji lives in a major turning point in history for Iran. The country was in constant ruins and violence was everywhere. It became so bad that Marji had to leave to go live and grow-up somewhere else.

      A year after the Iranian Revolution, Marji attends an all girls school. The thing is, this school is no ordinary school. It is a private religious institution. Marji and her family never really practiced religion but Marji had no choice but to attend. You can imagine how hard it must have been for her to get used to that type of environment.

     There is constant violence in the streets. It became so bad to the point where Iraq started to bomb Tehran. Marji and her family had to take cover in a bomb shelter. A neighboring Jewish family was even blown up during the process. The thing is, growing up in your teens you are already dealing with a lot of emotional and physical stress. On top of trying to live like a normal girl Marji also had the issue of dealing with the violence that surrounded her everyday.

     Marji became rebellious and started listening to punk music and wearing American clothes. She did this as an out of her everyday life, a break from reality for just a little bit. Upset with her behavior, Marji’s parents sent her off to Austria to attend a new school all by herself. While she was there Marji begins to experiment with sex and starts to sell drugs. Her then boyfriend Markus cheats on her. As a result Marji goes to live on the streets. Only two months in, Marji winds up in the hospital, sick with bronchitis. After her parents find out about this they have Marji come back home to them.

     Having to re-adjust to a new life once more, it took a heavy emotional and psychological toll on Marji. She couldn’t handle what was happening to her and tried to commit suicide. Her attempt at suicide ended up in failure. Instead, Marji decided to re-invent herself. She got a new hair style, clothes, along with a new attitude. She got a job as an aerobics instructor and enrolled into art school. Marji realizes that this life of heres isn’t really meant for her. She makes the decision to leave once more and start fresh somewhere else. She says goodbye to her parents at the airport and leaves. This is just like how she left for Austria when she was a young girl, but now she has grown up. She is now a strong, independent woman.

     I thought Persepolis was a very interesting and unique take on a coming of age story. Growing up, I couldn’t imagine going through what Marji went through. Living every day not knowing if you were going to get blown up or not must have been a lot to deal with. Especially when you are a young girl already stressed with the reality of developing into a young woman. Having to move from one place to another must have been a lot for Marji as well. Trying to find that place where she could call home, to have a normal life for once must have been a very scary part in her life. If I were in her shoes I wouldn’t know what to do. I would just walk around aimlessly, all alone and constantly be scared of this new, foreign place that I’m living. I feel that being in Marji’s situation, as a young kid especially, you become very lost in the world. I’m sure that is what Marji was going through internally. Eventually she goes back home and finds out that life there isn’t meant for her, and so she leaves once more. It was a giant roller coaster to get to where Marji is at the end of the story. Everything she had to go through, she finally found out who she wants to be and where she belongs.

Understanding Comics Response

Understanding Comics Response

McCloud discusses how people should take comics more seriously and acceptable by adults. If
the art style was more sophisticated in comic books then people would appreciate them more. Years after McCloud's Understanding Comics, we now have more sophisticated artwork from comic artists working for DC and Marvel. Scott McCampbell, Jim Lee, Frank Miller, are just a few of the sophisticated comic artists in modern-day comics. These illustrators' works are appreciated by millions and have even been turned into blockbuster movie hits, video games, toys, underwear, you name it! I believe that McCloud's idea for a better future for comic books has been recognized.

I love the way McCloud illustrates his tellings of industry secrets, his opinion of the comic book industry and so forth. It's unlike other, more traditional "How to" or "Comic book this..." kinds of books. McCloud uses comics to talk about comics! How clever is that? Honestly it was one of the most interesting and fun ways to learn about an industry such as the comic book world. McCloud also talked about the cartoon vacuum and how we become part of that world when we are exposed to such media. For example, he drew himself as a simple cartoon but then in the next panel made himself into a more realistic style and said "Would you have listened to me if I looked like this?". This was a very clever way to have the reader react and understand McCloud's knowledge and insight into the creation of comic books that many people don't think of or simply overlook.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Understanding Comics. It was a fun and engaging way to go about the creation of comic books as well as Scott McCloud's own opinions and ideas of the medium. I agree tremendously with McCloud's idea of sophisticated artwork in comic books. I believe that people will appreciate comics more and have done so already. Given the fact of how huge pop culture is in our society today is a great indicator of that. The majority of pop culture is centered around cartoons and comic books. So much so that all of them have been adapted into other forms of media such and movies and video games.

Maus Reading Response

Maus Reading Response

            Maus is one of those stories that just tugs at your heart strings. I can’t imagine being this character, Vladek and have so many horrible things happen to you. Even though I did not go through the troubles and hardships like Vladek did I still felt a lot of empathy towards him and the other people in this story. If you aren’t familiar with Maus, it was the first graphic novel to really get the graphic novel genre popular. It is so sophisticated in it’s writing that it feels like you are reading a serious novel but it’s merely a comic book. When people think comic book they think of silly looking characters and a bunch of gags or people with superpowers in tights. Maus is unlike any of these stories as it is a story based in reality.

            What I like visually about this story is that the illustrator plays with the idea of cat and mice. They turn the innocent people into mice and have them running away and hiding from the evil Nazi cats. What I like about that decision was that this is exactly how cats and mice interact in real life as well as other works of media. It is staying true to the whole feel of being based in reality which is what this story is so much about.

            Maus was extremely difficult to read. Reminded that these events, of WWII actually happened. It made the story that much more of a depressing narrative to consume. The entire time I was reading I just sat there and thought to myself; "wow, I couldn’t imagine being in Vladek’s shoes." With all the destruction in the world, having your business destroyed, being thrown in concentration camps, separated from your family and losing all of your loved ones. We sometimes forget that stuff like this has happened, because we didn't live through it. This story really hits you in the head, reminding us about the harsh and cruel reality of humanity.

            I had a family member who grew up in Poland during World War 2. Joe was his name. He was about 5 years old when the Nazis took him and his family to concentration camps. The worst part of it all though was that the Nazis separated him from the rest of his family. Joe was all alone, 5 years old at this camp. He was forced to work on an assembly line, making wallets for the Nazi soldiers. Joe lived a full life until he recently passed away, last year at the age of 89. In all that time of his life, Joe never found out what happened to his family nor ever reunited with them. Maus is a story that makes you stop and think that something as far fetched as a story like this has to be fake, it has to be made up. It can’t be real, but it is. This story stands as a reminder of humanities horrific past during World War 2 and of how many families were destroyed during this time in our history.

Fat Freddy's Cat Reading Response

Fat Freddy's Cat Reading Response

Fat Freddy’s Cat was definitely something I wasn’t expecting to enjoy. Knowing that the material I would be reading had nudity, violence, and drugs; didn’t really make me that excited. In the first few panels of the story we are introduced to this cat; Fat Freddy’s Cat. This cat destroys everything in his path, picks fights with random cats and ruins people’s days. Immediately I thought, ok this is going to be a crude parody version of Garfield. Also why is he named Fat Freddy’s Cat? Who is Fat Freddy? Nobody knows. The entire story focuses on this one character; Fat Freddy’s Cat who remains himself a mystery.

All of a sudden the story goes from normal cat shenanigans to a completely different direction. The cat tells us that he wasn’t always Fat Freddy’s Cat. He told this story through a flashback of how he was a spy for the White House. During his mission, the cat had to go stop a group of invaders from polluting the United State’s water supply with Hee Hee Hee juice. It was a drug which made whoever drank it turn queer. Talk about coming out of left field! The story just keeps on going. The cat finds a colony of nudists who he thinks are actually the invaders but in disguise. He then proceeds to kill all of them, then finds out that he killed the wrong people. He then goes off to another location where he finds a man who is holding a big barrel. Thinking the contents of the barrel was the Hee Hee Hee juice; the cat shot and killed the man. However it turns out that the man was innocent and was just taking out the trash.

Fat Freddy’s Cat fails his mission after finding out the invaders had already poisoned the nation’s coffee supply. He goes back to the White House and sees the President drinking out of a cup of coffee. Thinking that the coffee had already been filled with the Hee Hee Hee juice the cat shoots the President in the back of the head, the end. What a crazy humorous comic! After reading the story I could not believe how stupid this cat was and his personality kind of reminded me of Marvel Comics’ Deadpool. We started off with a cliche cat, Garfield-esk story and end up reading something completely unexpected. Ultimately I really enjoyed reading Fat Freddy’s Cat and I encourage everyone to read it if they haven’t done so already.