Week 3

Though comic strips seemed really awesome for their time and were highly regarded in society, I feel like their early executions were very primitive compared to modern comic-making techniques.

Early comic strips appeared to be very experimental. So many of them posses intricate styles that have include a lot of detail and high production value, while others were simple and minimalist. With the more detailed comics, I noticed a reoccurring problem where the artists' would skew the written text, or barely try to fit it into text bubbles, as if they were not prepared ahead of time with how much text to include in a single bubble.
Another problem I saw with some comic strips was that the drawings in the panels were pretty descriptive and it was really easy to interpret what was happening in them, but the characters were saying exactly what they were doing, which real people obviously don't do. If a character is already doing something; raking some leaves, for example, he or she would not say out loud "Here I am raking the leaves." Instead, they should have dialogue to aid the image, maybe something along the lines of "wow, there sure are a lot of leaves to rake!"

Regardless, I really like seeing the variety of comic strips. It's really cool to see different artists have their own take on this art form, and what they come up with is very unique. It's amazing to see the most beautifully illustrated comics compared to something silly and minimalist. They're both comics, but I find it very interesting how different artists visualize.

Week 2

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

This comic was interesting because it described concepts that I'm familiar with, but went into detail as to how and why they are important to understanding comics. Concepts such as icons, simplification, and gutters are all things that are important to the art of graphic narrative, but I could never explain why, and Understanding Comics does just that. 

Icons are important because they are used to represent a person, place, thing, or idea. There are symbols that people naturally recognize as some "thing," and using said symbols in place of extremely descriptive drawing could get the same point across just as effectively, because the symbols are so "iconic" to people. 

Every storyteller wants their readers to connect with what they're reading. Simplification, especially of characters, is used to help the reader relate to the characters in the story. The more detail something has, the more distinct and descriptive it is, making it difficult for a viewer to connect with something that's so established already. If a character has a simple design, it's easier for the reader so see him or herself in the shoes of the character. 

In film, the passage of time is usually represented by a cross-fade or dissolve. In comics, time is represented by the gutters that divide the panels. When the panels are divided into separate sections, this indicates a pass of time. Everything that occurs in a single panel is a single event. I just find how time is portrayed in comics to be very interesting, especially since there's a concrete explanation for how it's executed as shown by Scott McCloud. 

Max Ernst Une Semaine de Bonte

There are graphic narratives: The Rooster's Laughter and Easter Island. Each of these sets of images seem to have their own separate meaning.

In The Rooster's Laughter, we see a series of illustrations that depict macabre events, mostly death and horrible things happening (such as the drawing of these beasts kidnapping women from a train). All of these illustrations include the image of a rooster somewhere in the scene. The acts of death or violence shown here include burial ceremonies, hangings, torture, gunfights, and what looks like murder. At the beginning of the sequence, there are two quotes from Marcel Schwob, that refer to people who hide their true face, and their capability to be happy at some times, and act cruel toward others at other times. The roosters in these images are never portrayed as the victims, only bystanders or the characters' that commit the horrific acts. Maybe the meaning of this series is about sociopaths and the lack of concern that some have for others, using a rooster as a metaphor. The roosters shown have no concern for the victims of the violence, or are actually doing said acts, and if they are bystanders, they're not doing anything, just staring blankly at the violence. It's very disturbing, but I think the story behind this is about the violent nature of people and their lack of concern for what they're doing, using the image of a rooster.

In Easter Island, the conflict becomes more specific. Unlike The Rooster's Laughter, the pictures aren't resulting in death. All of the men are depicted as Easter Island heads, and each drawing involves a conflict with a woman. Some of them look lustful, others are violent, some depict rape, and even a sense of longing, almost. Each Easter Island head is experiencing something different with women. This is possibly about the nature of men, or maybe even things hypothetical men have done, and regret, using the victimization of women.

Week 1

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

In this graphic narrative, I feel as though the immigration-themed undertones came across very clearly. The first and last pages show a huge display of many different people, all who seem to be of different races or ethnicities. This is the first indicator that the story deals with immigration, because why else would that many different people be shown? If the story was not metaphorical and was instead about the life of one man leaving his home to go to a new, foreign world, it would seem senseless to show the faces of all of the different foreign people. The two pages that show said foreign people imply that this is not just the story of one person, but instead, the stories of numerous people, immigrants, and their experiences with traveling to distant lands in hope for a new life better than the one they left at home. 

The actual world that this story takes place in is also a huge indicator of the immigration theme. Despite the locations looking whimsical and impractical to reality, there are subtle details in the drawings that tie the world into real life. The setting that stuck out to me the most included tall skyscrapers that overlooked a body of water, and it was very clear that this was supposed to represent New York. Ellis Island served as a gateway and immigrant inspection station in New York Bay that immigrants had to go through in order to enter the United States. 

Also in the story, we see the struggles of the man as he tries to adjust to this new world. He is unfamiliar with the area and has to ask locals for help, he doesn’t really know the native language too well, he struggles with finding and keeping a job, and so on. These are all problems that many immigrants faced in reality. Later on in the story after his wife and daughter find him and move back in with him, the daughter is found teaching the new ways of this country she’s learned to other immigrants. 

All of these things directly reference early immigration, and are easy to relate with the basic struggles that many real immigrants had to face in history.