Vinny's Literature of Comics and the Graphic Narrative

 RESPONSE: Batman: the killing joke. For this week, I had read Batman: the killing joke. I had remembered reading the original version of this print some fifteen years ago and being a younger kid at the time, a lot of the context had been lost. However, with a more matured view and a brilliant recoloring, i felt that this story is a very humanizing and symbolic graphic novel. With the batman stylized in his classic attire and driving a very 1940's themed bat-mobile, i felt that the play on the original era of batman was a nice twist and helped to root it in the classical detective era of pop culture. The characters seem gritty, and hard boiled, almost like the characters and detectives of the film noir world. While batman is flawed in his own ways, his attempted prevention of fate killing off him or the joker is his code of honor trying to do whats right. Reading Response in class: Batman: The Killing Joke. Questions: 1. What is your reaction to the text you just read? I wa...

For this week, I had read My friend Irma as well as Diary of a Dominatrix. For Irma, I found the comic to be pretty sexist. Irma shares a resemblance to the reworked Archie comics of the 1950’s, with the character design and color palate choice. Looking at the 1950's, the culture was more conservative to say the least and women weren't treated as fairly at that time. Dominatrix was disturbing but also comedic, it blew my mind as to what some of these guys wanted to go through. She was a smart gal that knew the ropes of her trade and damn, whatever I had been expecting for this was so much tamer than what was portrayed in the comic. Something I had found funny after reading both stories was the fact that the cardboard doll was used more in a joking sort of manner in the story of the dominatrix. It was a moment where the comic became self-aware, and made fun of that self-awareness. The contrast in color was noticeable as well, Irma had the traditional coloring techniques of the...

For this week, I'd sat down and read the series of strips knows as The Bus. I was both pleased and confused by it at first, it touched upon a form of existentialism that i was not prepared for. The linear loop of the comics made them feel complete, albeit a strange repeat of the loop. Using the Imagery of the bus from scene to scene worked to give a continuity of subject matter, but using different techniques and short cuts to create the strange array of loops and bounds. It reminds me of the earlier subject matter in the class where we had created continuity where there hadn't been with the chicken men, I felt the same sense of continuity and confusion from strip to strip. The strip about the big questions had me rethink the whole comic after viewing it, leading me to re-read the grouping altogether. What is our existence, do we occupy the same space as ourselves in other planes of existence? Do we feel deja vu because we've experienced an event in one of our extra l...

For this week, I read the first installment of Alita: Battle Angel. I was first caught by the sci-fi style of this particular manga. I couldn't tell when it was created, the style of vehicle and armor of the enemy soldiers reminded me of the military design in the Fifth Element, with the usage of non-linear storytelling painting a complicated picture of Alita. I'd found the crazed professor funny, seeing his reaction to the flan with such fervor made me realize i was a bit hungry myself. It was almost like a pheonix, rising from the ashes so to speak. The faded memory backstory with the slow rebuild of the protagonist makes this a building climax of an character builder. With a newly built body, a cluttering of memories, and an unburdened free will, it leaves you wanting to know what is going to happen in the next edition of the series! One thing I feel has transferred well for some manga to their anime forms is the dramatic reveal, with alita there was a massive amount of buil...

For this week I'd read Blueberry: Chihuahua pearl. It is a comic by Charlier Moebius, and I quickly fell into reigns of this cowboy comic. Following the story of Lieutenant Blueberry as he finds himself on a secret mission trying to locate the mysterious reappearance of a civil war money Stache. It was a moderate read, with 100 action packed pages. The arrangement of panels and action reminded me of the Phantom once again, with its linear and uniform pattern to the arrangement of the panels. The Comic itself derives from some of the motifs of the cowboy western, including the long, beautiful shots of the scenery and environments, the gun slinging fights on horseback, and the central plot racked with danger. This comic felt like the spaghetti western herded into a collection of pages, with the galloping lines further lengthening the mystery at its start. The color pallet was relatively simple yet effective, with the line work creating a sense of comic realism. This would be a ...

For this week, I delved into the graphic novel My Friend Dahmer. I had previously heard of this work from a Crime documentary id watched a few years back. Im familiar with the crime as well, and with the disturbed Nature of Dahmer, I wasn't sure what to expect once I began reading this graphic novel. The novel works to show the distrubed teenage years of the notorious serial killer, Jeffery Dahmer, but does so with a sense of empathy for who he was before the crimes. He was a broken man, day drinking at school trying to forget everything going on around him while trying to escape his inner demons as well. The art style has this wonk to it, like a distortion of the world. I feel this was done intentionally, to distort the world as much as dahmer was distorted. One can feel pity for the demoralizing upbringing, but one also has to agree with the artists' personal feelings on everything that happens after high school. Looking back on my own experience in high school, i think we al...