Vinny's Literature of Comics and the Graphic Narrative

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...

Maus was one of the most memorable graphic novels I've read so far in this class, and the heaviness of the subject matter is off put slightly by the use of animals. I had heard previously of Maus, but hadn't picked up on the series until now. The Personification of people as animals was one of the most interesting aspects, and it created a sense of cat and mouse for the main protagonist of the story and the other jewish folk trying to escape the clutches of the germans. I found the motif to be a bit insensitive overall, but the use of "masks" to disguise themselves in the crowds had an added weight of symbolism for me. While the masks were not actually there in the true portrayal of events, the duplicitous nature of them typically would be used to hide the actions of an antagonist, but serve to ensure the safety of the protagonist in this increasingly antagonist world. On an interesting note, looking at the main Protagonist himself, he is not squeaky clean. He himse...

In class film- "Yellow Submarine" Late 1960's (1968), Stylized artwork, very illustrative style with simplified shapes and vibrant colors. Shape Language is reminiscent of the art of the late sixties and early seventies, Scenery/ backgrounds hold a vibrant, watercolor styled background. Collage, mise-mash of different elements, from animated panels to colage. Reminiscient of Monty Python animated collage. Museum of comic characters, saw our old friend the phantom. Juxtoposition of elements like Monty Python. Story based around some of their most famous songs, using the songs as a basis for events and introduction of charachers (Nowhere man). An interesting movie told through the various songs of the beatles, using different arrangements of elements for each song. - European pshychodelic art movement -its not about story arks, very child-like story, episodic, psychology, experience, -Pschyedelic art, rotoscope -Predigital, all analog means -not really for ...

 Unfortunately I had been absent this week and missed important class content, so i will do my best to write what i can based on the reading. Both artists persist in altering the panel fit style. Eisner works in doing this by creating large panel-less pages that have large images and panel-shapes created with architecture.Thompson worked with altering the shapes of the boxes and used the line surface definition to indicate emotion, such as extra scraggly lines indicating strong negative emotion. For me, Thompson's Use of line caught my eye, as he would delve into angrier emotion, the smoother line quality would take up a jagged characteristic, creating an angry tone. While i lack the ski trips his story/biography in blankets hit me close to home, I haven't been bullied like the main character but Ive been pushed to the fringe and honestly, misfits make the best friends. He goes so far as to cut chunks of the boxes, when Raine talks about missing Craig she physically separates f...

Ah, the traditional Comic book. I've always had a special place in my heart for this section, as this is where i got my start drawing. I was young and had no idea what i was doing, but i would try to mimic some of the comic art and juxtaposition i saw in the scenes into my own art, with very fail-filled success. Fro This week i delved headfirst into Batman #600 first, as I got a start in the comic book world via batman. I found the story to be quite interesting, the cascading arrangement of the comic boxes helped to guide the eye down while breaking up the traditional box form, but also adding to the motion of the page by page motion. On top of this, i found the effect of Batman and night wing's fight, it reminded me of Scott Cloud's talk of the progression of frames across the room, as they tumbled downward in their downward spiraling argument. It almost felt like the effect of stimmering, as the imbalanced downward tumbling of character frames created an immense amount of...

Interpretation: Peanuts I had red an assortment of peanuts comics from the varying decades. I noticed an interesting change in the art style, it experiences a drastic evolution of its style from 1950 to 1959. While the characters and the quality of the line work remain the same, its interesting to note that the profile of the characters changes and begins to resemble their more icon to form look. By 1959 they haven't fully reached their iconic look, but their well on their way of stable appearance that can be observed for the next few decades. I prefer the the simple comic strips of the peanuts, they can be enjoyed one by one or in massive sections (as I have done as of ten O' Clock tonight). The style is simple and fluid, the penmanship allows for the easy conveyance of emotion and motion within the scenes. They follow a chronological formula, traversing from the the leftmost panel to the right and use the same assortment of characters from its initial run in 1950 to the late...