Mice In Pig Mask

(Shame Mask)

Personally I felt that Maus is more of a novel than a comic, and its drawings are there to help the words. It can be a good novel without picture, but it can’t be a good comic without those narrations. The use of animal as real character and “Human” as cartoon character in the story is really interesting, as it totally take away the individual out of the nation and race. The goal and perspective of each race is therefore clear and reasonable to the reader. We don’t question why the cat is trying to get the mice, because that’s what cat does, and this can be apply and explain why the Nazi is out to get the Jews.

The use of animal also makes a horrible tale of massive murders more light hearted, and enjoyable to read. Seeing lots dead animal is easier than seeing lots dead people, and perhaps that’s one of the reason this is a comic that even a child can enjoy reading. I wonder why the polish is portrayed as the pig in the story…

It shows a realistic take on the event, and there is no hero in this horrible tale. The use of father and son conversation helps to bring some perspective to “us” as the reader  to relate the story, and perhaps the reaction from the son is close what most of the people nowadays will feel. Just like the son, we as the reader are reading this story in a point of view of an outsider, and it is good that the story is not forcing us to read it and experience it as we are there…as we can never understand how it actually feel like to be in the Holocaust.

The story brings us in and out of the past and present, and this helps the viewer to take a break from the intense story that’s going on during the holocaust. This is good for the story to progress some discussion and reflection on what we just experience, and that some time to process those events in our head. The art style also changes from the past and the present, as the past is always somewhat chaotic and the present is nice and quit…peaceful. The past is about action and the present is about reflection.

I love the ending most of all, and the best part is how we can totally see the emotion and thought between the two. The father is sorry for what he did and hoping the son can forgive him and still be around him, but the son is totally sicken by his father’s past action and now is walking away …it’s really sad and a create a strong emotional contrast and shows how things in the past can affect things in the present.

Okay...

I am going to start this blog by saying “Someone actually spent time to create this?!!!” I just can’t believe that there are artists that were willing to sit down and thought “ok, I am gona draw Mickey Mouse porn.” I read the Mickey Mouse Meets the Air Pirates Funnies, and first of all it is not funny, and secondly the drawings aren’t good at all. Some of the pages feel like some high school kid’s work, and sometime it makes me question about the artist’s ability to draw. I understand that underground comic is something that doesn’t get pay well, and no people really take it seriously but I think there is a line of “quick drawing” and “bad drawing”. The underground comic may had bring the adult to the comic book world, but reading a mouse have sex with another mouse isn’t a nice picture. In a way I wonder why would any normal adult that actually want to buy this. I am fine with reading drug use or sexual content in any media, but reading about a mouse having sex with a butterfly is nothing that makes you have nightmare for the rest of your life.

Maybe I had complained too much already, and there are many underground comics that cover strange themes, but this is by far the worst. I also take a look at some other underground comic like the Tijuana Bibles, which is basically short porn with no storyline. However what make the Tijuana Bibles ok is the fact that is about human, and the drawing is good enough so we can see what is what.

In the Air Pirates Funnies it brings realistic human characters in to those cartoon characters, and most of them are either whore or pervert. They all have clear story to tell, and most of the time the “bad” guy lose in the end. Beside the nudity, animal sex, drug use and what not, it still holds the basic idea of a comic at the time. It also has some dark adult humor in it, such as when Mickey is crying about why won’t anybody fuck him…I am sure that will be funny if you bring that in to a casual conversation with someone:   

    Older Brother: Hey Lucy what are you watching?

                Younger Sister: I am watching Mickey Mouse!

                OB: Oh really? I never like that character that much…

                YS: Why? Don’t you think Mickey is cute?

                OB: No.

                YS: I think Mickey is cute.

                OB: Oh yea? If he is so cute why won’t anyone fuck him?

                YS: ….

I am not sure if that is a good joke, but I am sure whoever came up with that joke must thought that’s the funniest thing ever.

The Hero with no superpower!?

Spirit is a character created by Will Eisner back in the 1940s, he can’t fly like superman (or leaps) and he doesn’t have super-human strength. Spirit is one of those characters that connect to everyday people, and because he is so “normal” it allow the readers to believe that they can do it too. We can’t connect to things we don’t understand or not familiar with, and that’s why Spirit as a character can raise alone with Superman and Batman at the time. Spirit had way deeper story lines and thought than most of the comic at the time, as its hero can’t just fly to the criminal and solve the crime with his laser eyes. The story goes through the process of thinking and mistakes before the hero can reach success, and most of the time it ends with the hero making a joke. The spirit defiantly brings the comic in to another level of narrative storytelling, and many others soon fallow its style. As a reader reading it today I won’t say the Spirit is a comic with deep thought and ideas, but I am sure it is compare to the other comics back in the day. 

Eisner believed that we need to show the emotion using every parts of the character in order to connect that emotion to the reader, and not only using the face but the clothes he is wearing as well. However, how do we show emotion using clothes, or a hat? I think what we can use is the expression of the lines and shapes of the objects to farther enhance the character’s emotion, and everything must be seem as a whole not as separated objects. That means what’s important is the shape, lines and colors of the character instead of his facial expression, and what the face is doing is just enhancing the emotion that’s already in the character. A good drawing should be able to show emotion without facial expression or words, as the body language and lines connect to people in a deeper way.   

Superman leaps in to the sky...?!

 I never had a chance to read the original superman comic or even the latest superman comic, but in my mind superman’s most iconic power is the ability to fly…and I find it shocking that I was wrong. In fact Superman can only leap for about 1/8^th mile according to the net, and is to my understanding that not before may 1943 that people can say that superman can fly without being questioned. While flying is surely a cooler super power than leaping everywhere, the history and reason behind it is even more interesting than this super power.

There are many funny and interesting things that I want to point out when superman first come out, and many of them has change since then. The “thinking” bobbles is almost the same as a “speech” bobbles back in the time, and no wonder why they had changed that in to the cloud shape that we see today…it was really confusing sometime.

The first superman only has thirteen pages, and it’s really hard to tell the epic origin story of an original superhero in so few pages. The artist therefore made the story move as fast as possible, and took great advantage use of the narrator, as half of the story was told in those words. I think is really funny how they shows example of superman’s power can be “real” by showing us the ants and the grasshoppers…so why is superman call superman? Not Antman or Hopperman? Sure superman sounds much cooler.

The style of narrative change due to the limited pages, and almost every character feel extremely aggressive. Superman feels a little crazy to me because he keeps leaping around and punches people for some not very developed reason. I also realize there are a lot of yellow in the comic, I don’t know if that’s a popular color in that time or if the technology of printing had something to do with it, but lots novel cover art in the old days also use lots yellow.

In the end I have to say that it’s always nice to learn something in a comic, and as most of the reader are children its good for the parent to know their kids are learning something such as when Superman said: ”Birds site on the telephone wires and they aren’t electrocuted…so human can walk on it too, unless we touch a telephone-pole and are grounded…OOPS!”

Peanuts

To be honest, I was never a big fan of the American comic, comic strips. As I was never expose to them in my childhood. Ever since living in America I started to read here and there some superhero or game related comic book, but mostly due to artistic reference. I never really get use to American comic, especially those deeper comic that makes you think. This is actually the first time ever I read peanuts, but I always know about it, and simple just didn’t have time or chance to read it. I like the simplistic art style allow me to realize. I love how every single characters are children and still they told like some old high class educated people. A comic with such simple style and literally no story progression laid its power on the dialogs of the characters. To be honest I don’t get most of the joke or point that they are trying to make, and yet most of them maybe connect deeply in to the American culture that I had not yet understand.

I also watch some animation of the Peanuts, but I feel that totally destroy the uniqueness of a comic which allow you the time to think or realize during each farm. I think that’s why people enjoy reading it besides its interesting or funny, I think another reason comic strip is appealing to people is the time during each picture and each dialogue.

Peanuts is famous back at my home too, but mostly not about the strip itself but more about the iconic character of snoopy. As I always know when I see snoopy but I never really know where he came from. I think the reason it’s so famous is because it’s a dog that dream and imagine thing like flying. However I still don't understand why it is so famous and known as the best story ever told in the american comic strips...perhaps I just don't get it?

Understanding Comics: Scott McCloud

I was shocked after reading Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, as there are so many things that’s going on a piece of paper…Time, icon, motion, emotion, motion, sound, space...etc. I can’t really point out ONE thing that I am most interest in, as all of them have some really deep thinking and skill behind them for me to learn and study. However one of the thing that makes we think about the most is how he talked about how art is born because people sometime has nothing to do. He pointed out that art is basically self expression, and the reason we do art is because we can’t read each other’s mind. I think it’s interesting that he literally pointed out that art is basically everything we do to express our thought and emotion including bicycle style, signature…etc, and for who says that he or she did it for nothing but art is basically saying “MY ART HAS NO PRACTICLE VALUE WHATSOEVER!” . He also said that the “Pure” art is essentially tied to the question of PURPOSE and what you want to achieve with what you do or create. I take every artist should have something in mind before creating something, or maybe there is no meaningless art as we all have something in mind when we do it.

After reading the book as I am more interested on the topic I did some research on him and found a talk he gave on TED. The talk is basically about the future of comic and a little background history of where he came from. He was from a family full of scientist like his father who was blamed, and this effect the way he sees things and the way he sees comic as a media. During the talk he pointed out that the comic media is always there ever since Stone Age, and not much has change including reading from left to right, up to down, or the time is always going forward as you go through them. However there is one thing that modern comic is different them the ancient one...the “unbreakable line”. The unbreakable line is a line that your eyes fallowing the images either on paper, animal skin or stone, and most of the time in the ancient “comic” the line is never broken. Modern comic on paper is breaking the line by page, and he believes the flow of the comic is therefore lost because of that. He pointed out that the TIME is being broken because the panels are being broken by the edge of the page, and the time is broken. He believes this can be fixing by using modern technology, like the PC.  He believe that if we see PC as a window and draw the comic in a continues way, the time will not be broken.  (Isn’t this just like traditional animation?)

“All Medias provide us a window back to the world we are living”

Imagine a comic created in a multiple time line, multiple ending, and multiple choices and yet connected to either other like a web. This almost sounds like an information map, but how big of a page do we need for that? We can solve the problem with the modern technology to allow us to have a endless amount of pages and the story can have endless amount of choice which he believe is the future of comic.

In the end those are four things he pointed out that’s important to everyone:

• Learn from everyone
• Follow no one
• Look for patterns
• Work like hell

The Arrival

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The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a really interesting and visually beautiful silent graphic novel. It takes us with the main character’s (the father) adventure in to a new world, where everything is magical and different. The language is different, words are different and it even has strange creatures that we had never seen before. The whole story was done with illustration only; there are no dialogs or words to describe the story. 

Because there are no words and dialogs, it actually makes the reader feel more personal to each character’s emotion, and the situation that the main character is in. As we are put on the same page as the main character we can totally feel more connect to him, because we are learning this new world while he is doing the same. The use of body language and facial motion really show off the creator’s attention to detail and to human gesture. There are also some funny moments there when the main character is trying really hard to ask a simple question, and that really make me relate to myself when I first arrive to America. 

Almost everyone has a strange creature as their companion, they all look animal like, some are big some looks like papers. I really like this idea because it makes me think about many other film, book or video game that put the character on the same position. The character is in a strange world, and there is his trustful companion, sidekick or a soccer ball with a face like in Cast Away. The introduction of this companion allow the writer/creator to show some really in depth personal feeling that the main character won’t normally show, and therefore brings the reader closer and care more about the main character.

This whole companion thing reminds me the game of Portal. In the game Portal, the game puts the player in a strange experimental lab where the whole point of the lab is to kill the player. Player will later get a “Companion Cube” which is basically a metal cube and allows the player to solve puzzle and therefore survive in the lab. As the game progress the player will emotionally grow a relationship with the only thing in the game that’s not trying to kill him, and therefore become its friend. When the metal cube was destroyed later on in the game, most of the players actually feel sad and lost just like Tom Hanks did when that soccer ball died.