Skip to main content

Week Five: Body Talk

A Contract With God
A powerful work of storytelling. Even with how little it visually showed and verbally explained about that time period, the simple yet effective storytelling techniques shed a powerful light into the world of the thirties.  The layout and information on each page stayed true to the essential items needed to convey the story at hand, while the expressions and designs of each character involved were perfectly fitted to that characters particular nature. The flow of the stories themselves was also really interesting. It starts off very regal and true, then gradually starts to slip down into degradation, whizzing past horrible defiling moments, building up into this final orgiastic climax, and then finally ending with one boy “Willie” standing on the edge of his balcony, pausing after being given his new set of family expectations, and reflecting on all that happened over the summer.

Blankets

I love how expressive and powerful Thompsons illustrations are, as well as the way he orchestrates his text, like when the whirring spurr of the furnace wraps itself around the room. Really powerful piece of work.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week Eight: Stereotypes and Ethics

It was definitely interesting learning about how far we’ve come as a culture when it comes to the stereotypical representations used in early comics and other forms of media, especially in terms of race, sexuality, gender and ethnicity. To me, despite the current cultural climate of dissatisfaction, I think that we’ve come pretty far as a culture in one lifetime. It actually seems like we’re probably pushing the limit for the amount of change and adjustment that some people can make to their worldview in one lifetime, without completely plunging them and the culture into a state of mass anxiety and hysteria. That being said, I wish we would have acknowledged that in class in a more positive way, and approached this topic in the lecture from a more reassuring perspective - especially in today’s current media-fueled maddening political climate. It would have been refreshing to hear about this topic from the perspective that the changes we need to make as a culture, have already happ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Week Eleven: Contemporary Comics

This week for comics as contemporary literature I read Transmetropolitain by Warren Ellis and The Bus by Paul Kirchner. I think it’s really refreshing to see contemporary comics grow up a little with their audiences and tackle more literary topics. I love the simple yet somewhat profound themes handled in The Bus, and really enjoy stories in general that create a space to break the rules, leaving one magic stationary place that you can count on, piloting through the madness with the regularity and drollness of a bus stop. I also thoroughly appreciated the subtle nods towards Hunter S Thompson in Transmetropolitain – although I hardly think the good doctor himself would have approved. In one of his documentaries, Thompson goes into a bloody rant in the middle of his kitchen when the first directors set to direct Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas try and turn his famous San Francisco “Wave” speech into a cartoon. Thompson hated being characterized, especially as a cart...
Post a Comment
Read more

Week Twelve: Comics by Women

I was really impressed by the comic Pretty Deadly, although I think the title could use some work. One of my friends from the Air Force used to be obsessed with Taylor Momsens band “Pretty Reckless” and I always used to give him a hard time about how teen-angst that name sounded.. In all seriousness the comic was awesome. I loved the art; the line work was expressive and detailed, charged with life and beautifully orchestrated. The colors were also phenomenal, and really added to the overall tone of the story. I also really liked how such non-traditional narrators were narrating the story almost like a fable. It seemed to allow for bending of the worlds rules – like having the vulture girl come in as an actual vulture in the first volume. I never would have questioned the legitimacy of a comic based on the sex of its creators, but its awesome to see such slam-dunk work out there in the name of equality.  
Post a Comment
Read more