Week 11: Masterpiece Comics

For this week's reading I read Masterpiece Comics. This graphic novel is filled with several mini comics. The comics inside this graphic novel are mature parody comics of classics such as Garfield and Bazooka Joe. These comics got me cracking up right from the start with their intent to directly copy the characters and art style but change the text and appearances slightly to call it their own.

One of the mini comics I read was Mephistofield; a parody of Garfield. In this comic, the main character Jon is a simple man who wants some excitement and power in his life. He practices dark magic and conjures up a devil version of Garfield called Mephistofield; a demon from Hell. With Mephistofiled's help. Jon sold his soul to the Devil and was given power. This power he would use to pull pranks on others such as turning invisible so he could slap the pope in the face with a chicken leg. Jon even scammed a man for a $400 car that dissolves in water; even a simple puddle would destroy it. Jon could even bring people back from the dead and sleep with them like he did with Helen of towards the end of the comic before he was about to die.

These mini comic stories in Masterpiece Comics are hilarious. I love how the stories copy well-known beloved comic characters that all of us know and love and put a spicy twist on them. Something as kid-friendly and innocent as Garfield turned into a story of a satanic worshiping man with a pet devil cat demon from Hell that gives him powers to pull pranks on people and sleep with deceased historical figures. Something this funny and clever is truly a masterpiece comic!

Week 12: My Favorite Things is Monsters

For this week's reading I read My Favorite Things is Monsters by Emil Ferris. This story takes place in 1968 Chicago. The story is told in the first person of a middle school girl named Karen. In this story there is a death that happens in the neighborhood that is believed to be caused by suicide. However Karen isn't convinced and thinks that her neighbor was murdered! Karen decides to go all out Sherlock Holmes and solve the murder while at the same time documenting her findings in the journal.

What drew me to this comic was it's unique artistic style, it's something that I have never seen before. The book's illustrations look as if they were all drawn with ball point pen. On top of that the pages they were drawn on were lined notebook paper and the occasional math test. This really sold the gimmick of giving off the appearance and believe ability of the comic being the personal journal of the protagonist. It's something that I personally have never seen before and it drew me in because of how immersed it made me feel with the story. Knowing that the story is nothing but fiction, it still had a realistic and believable quality to it that had me completely immersed. I love sketchy, loose style of the line-work and on the medium it was drawn on. 

My Favorite Things is Monsters is something that is not so mundane like a regular Archie or Marvel comic. Both of those stories are works of fiction just like this one but with this story in particular, it has that certain quality to it that other books just don't have. The illustration style is both unique and immersive. The formatting of the book alone makes the story feel real; having looked like it was drawn by an actual middle school girl with a ball point pen on notebooks and tests. At times it made me feel part of the story. I mean I knew that the story was fake but for those split seconds of complete immersion, it was priceless. I hope to read more stories like these and will definitely be checking out the next My Favorite Things is Monsters graphic novel as I heard there is a sequel. I want there to be more books like this in the future and hopefully by this graphic novel's release we will potentially see more storytellers go with this stylistic approach.

Week 14: JL8 Web Comic

For this week’s reading I took a look at the web comic JL8 by Yale Stewart. This web comic is based off of the heroes of DC comics. However, this is no ordinary, generic superhero comic. In this story the heroes are little kids attending elementary school.

What I like about this web comic is that I was drawn to it immediately because the fact of it being a superhero comic. I am very fond of the super hero genre and it’s my favorite subject matter to read about when reading comics. It’s funny to see the DC characters in their adolescents and how they would interact with one another if they were kids. The story plays around with origins and iconic tropes of the super heroes. One example is that in the beginning of the comic Bruce Wayne was out of his dark bat suits and instead had to wear a more 60’s blue Batman suit. With the 66’ Batman, it was a common trope that Batman would have a utility belt filled with various replants for things such as shark replant. In this web comic series they played with this trope when Batman thought Superman got cooties from Wonder Woman. Batman, not wanting to get infected with cooties used a “cootie replant” to protect himself. This was hilarious as it played with the cliche elementary school idea of cooties while tying it in with a classic Batman trope.

If you are a fan of DC characters, super heroes, and humor then this web comic is just for you! I highly recommend everyone to read this series as it does not disappoint; it is quite the page turner. You can read JL8 here: https://goo.gl/N53xMt

"Killing Joke" Assessment

     My reaction to The Killing Joke is just plain out wow! I felt so bad for the Joker. I felt bad how he was just a simple man struggling to provide for his family and then all of a sudden his whole world came crashing down when his wife suddenly perished. Not to mention he was in too deep with some illegal business that he couldn't depart of. Life seemed to always be cruel and unjust to The Joker. He left his good-paying job as a lab assistant to pursue his life long goal of being a comedian. It is because of this that he had been struggling to find work. It is because of this that he got involved with crime to make money for his family. It is because of this that he loses his family. It is because of this that he ended up falling into a tub of chemicals that bleached his skin white, turned his hair green and made him looney. It is because of this, because of this one bad day that turned this simple man mad.

     The Killing Joke goes back and forth between flashbacks of the Joker before he went mad. The underlying theme of the graphic novel (at least what I got out of it) was that life is cruel and there is no such thing as a happy ending. How everything can be taken away from you in an instant and you end up losing your sanity. Prior to The Killing Joke we never looked at the Joker as a normal person with emotions and feelings of empathy. We see him killing people off for fun because he is just a crazy lunatic but underneath all that he is just like you and me. He had his hopes and dreams, a family, he had his life together. That is until one day where everything changed. Everything he loved in the world was taken from him and in an instant this simple man turned looney. Just like in the real world you could go out one night having a good time drinking with friends. Then the next thing you know you wake up in a hospital somewhere and the doctors tell you that you got into a serious accident. All your friends died in the crash except for you. To make it worse, you were the driver. Now you have to live with that guilt for the rest of your life. You just lost everything that night. This story of The Killing Joke though fictional is something that could easily reflect onto real life.

     It is hard to bring The Killing Joke into another form of media as there is already an animated film adaptation of this work. However I think that if it were to be brought into another form of media it could possibly be brought to virtual reality. With virtual reality things are much more immersive for the viewer that simply cannot be achieved through reading text off of a page. With virtual reality you can literally put yourself in a character's shoes and experience their life and world around them. If I were to bring this story to vr (virtual reality) I would change it so that the perspective is more so on the side of the Joker. Batman himself would just be a secondary character that you interact with in the vr experience. The user would put on the vr headset and actually become the Joker. You would start off in the past, living the normal life of the Joker as you slowly drift towards insanity. Everything the Joker does, when he hears about his wife's death, to falling into a tub of chemicals, to shooting Barbara Gordon. What was he feeling internally? Through vr I feel that we could dive deeper into the phycological aspect of the Joker.

Week 13: "The Killing Joke"

For this week’s reading I read Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke. This graphic novel tells one of the darkest (if not the darkest) Batman stories of all time. It is one of my favorite graphic novels that I tend to keep reading over and over again. I tend not to read something more than once unless. That however, isn’t the case with “The Killing Joke”.

This story focuses on Batman and Joker and how one of them is going to have to kill the other in the end, hence the name The Killing Joke. At the same time, The Killing Joke gives us a glimpse into the past through flashbacks of the Joker before he went all crazy. It’s nice to see an origin story for this infamous comic book villain as his origins, prior to this was shrouded in mystery.

The illustrations in The Killing Joke have a lot of interesting line work and coloring to them. It is very dark-lit and dramatic for such a story as this. The camera angles of each panel worked very well in the telling of the story. That combined with the beautiful illustrations made it very interesting to read. That is one of the main reasons, aside from the story of why I find The Killing Joke so enjoyable to consume. The drawings are quite detailed and have a sort of ominous feel to them which helps set the tone for the story.

If you haven’t read The Killing Joke I highly recommend that you should. It is one of the best Batman stories that I have ever read. The story sets itself up in a dramatic deathly tone. Aside from the story itself, the dramatic and detailed illustrations are very interesting to look at and are quite the page turner. We also learn about the Joker’s origins for the first time and how one bad day drove a simple man mad.

Week 10: Astro Boy

Astro Boy

      Astro Boy was one of the most popular anime’s when it first aired in 1963. The anime was adapted from a manga, based on the same name about 10 years earlier (Known as the “God of Manga”). Astro Boy was also the first anime to be broadcasted overseas and became a smashing success! In Japans alone it was watched by more than 40% of the population of people with TV’s.

      In the first episode of Astro Boy, a scientist loses his son in a car crash. He is devastated by this and as a result decides to make a robot in his son’s likeness. Realizing that he could never get his son back, and that this thing he created is not his son, it is a robot that could never age. The scientist, filled with anger sells the robot to the circus. The robot (Astro Boy) has to fight other robots in this circus.

      “Astro Boy” had a very clean-cut animation style to it. The show seemed to be heavily inspired by other, American animations at the time. This show would eventually set the standards for Japanese anime for years to come. This style of animation (anime) was used to caricature the American people. Anime heavily exaggerated the big, round eyes of Americans. At the same time the anime style is much more adult-oriented and realistically detailed than American animation.

      I was very pleased with Astro Boy. It was way ahead of it’s time, no wonder why it was such a smash hit when it first aired back in 1963. I was actually first exposed to “Astro Boy” when the 3D animated movie from 2009 was released. The movie itself seemed to be heavily based on the first episode of the original “Astro Boy” tv series. Of course in the movie, the robot runs away and the scientist spends the whole movie worrying about the robot instead of casting it away to the circus. It was interesting to see how true to the show the film was and how the differences to the characters from the show to the movie really change the feeling of the franchise.

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.