Week 12: Women in Comics

For this week about Women in comics, I chose to read Lumberjanes.

Oh wow I didn’t realize I knew who the author was until the cover loaded. I have been following Gingerhaze (Noelle Stevenson) for a few years on social media but I never realized she was actually a published comic author. I first followed her for some silly lord of the rings fan art so I assumed her blog was filled with fan art.Occasionally I’d see something tagged as Lumberjanes, but I didn’t think she was the author.

This is making me realized I’ve created some weird bias to downplay artists I enjoy on the internet, mostly because they are usually young artists who do fan works as opposed to original content. This is proving to me the importance of women comic artists and authors because there is so much talent out on the internet. Young artists all across the country, most of who I believe are female, are so extremely talented and yet you rarely hear about them outside of small fandom circles. They all work so hard on their art for no profit. Its just seen as a hobby to express an interest in something they love. Its a hobby I actually share. I spend much of my free time drawing characters that aren’t my own, filling sketchbooks with them because when I’m juggling schoolwork, original ideas are stressful and I just want an escape. Seeing Noelle Stevenson be so successful while she’s still seen as a fan artist gives me home for the future.

I researched her further and saw not only did she work on more independent published comics like Lumberjanes, but she’s also writing for Marvel on their Runaways series as well as a recent issue of Thor. Considering she graduated from MICA only two years ago, she has a long list of accomplishments, especially since Fox started working on a live action adaptation of Lumberjanes. Seeing a young female artist be so successful so early on is a huge inspiration and I only hope more and more role models will start to rise up in the coming years.

The comic itself was great. It was nice to see something with an entirely female cast and no one seemed stereotyped. All the characters had distinct personalities and were all interesting. They also had different body types and interesting character designs, something that is often lacking within the comic medium. 

Week 11: Comics as Contemporary Literature

For this week on comics as contemporary literature, I read Daytripper. From the very first page until the last page of the final volume I was hooked. I went in knowing absolutely nothing about the comic, having chose to read it only because I found the cover art absolutely gorgeous. Sufficed to say I think that was the best way to approach this book.

The end of the first issue shocked me, as the protagonist who we had been introduced to was brutally shot and confirmed dead. What was even more shocking though, was the second issue, where the reader follows the same exact character but during what is an earlier point in his life. Yet, just as I was assuming this was a story that would be told backwards, Brás de Oliva Domingos, the protagonist, dies yet again.

It was only by the third issue that I realized a pattern was forming. All but the final two issues are snippets into various parts of Brás life. What make up the most significant events though the story of him become our ‘plot’ and yet the end of each issue, with again, the exception of the final two,  Brás dies with an obituary seemingly written by  Brás himself, but the following issue acts as if nothing happened. Its an interesting storytelling device and it was very refreshing to read something with this non-linear style. I feel telling stories in such a fashion always brings an extra layer of depth to the writing and has the reader on the edge of their seat waiting to see how it will all unfold.

Considering the format, Daytripper deals with very heavy topics. Despite a few of the ways  Brás dies and a plane crash, Daytripper isn’t exactly action packed. It mostly relies on the surreal way its telling what would otherwise be a very average story to be interesting.  Brás is an author, but he’s also the son of a very successful Brazilian author and he wants to be free from his father’s shadow. We learn of how he met the love of his life and the birth of his child and how he came to find success. But Daytripper isn’t about all of this. Every issue seeks to remind us that life is fleeting. Death could come at any time as it is just a natural inevitable part of life so enjoy life while you can.

Week 10: Manga

For this week on Japanese Manga, I read the first volume of Tezuka’s Buddah. I’ve always been very interested in Japanese manga, having spend many a long nights during middle and high school working my way through several hundred chapter series. Even in 9th and 10th grade I chose Japanese as a foreign language to learn, a choice that I am positive was inspired by my love of these comics and the culture behind them. I read everything I could get my hands on, from more ‘shojou’ titles such as Ranma 1/2 and Clamp series to action packed Shonen. I will even admit to having looked up a few yaoi comics out of curiosity. 

However, I never read any Tezuka before now. I was amazed by how I was sucked into the story and I definitely see why he is considered the father of manga. There were definitely distinct differences between Buddha and the more modern manga’s I have read, but that was expected considering the volume I read was released in the 1970s. The style was very different from the typical ‘manga’ style that developed in later years. This was actually more reminiscent of Disney or Comic strip styles. 

The artistic style was actually rather misleading to me. Here were these rather cutely drawn characters, but the story itself was very very violent and sad. The ending where both Chapra and his mother are killed together was completely shocking to me even if the book had already been full of death. Chapra and his mom had basically been the protagonist throughout the first volume but yet by the final chapter, they were slain together in a way that would have fit right at home in Game of Thrones.

Considering the title of the book, it wasn’t surprising to see how much this book dealt with eastern cultures. Tezuka is Japanese, but Buddha is set in India. Buddism is the 2nd largest religion within Japan so it does make sense for a Japanese author to basically retell the origin of the religion even considering the geography distances. There are a lot of interesting parallels though with this story and the bible. The one that popped out the most was the swarm of locus. I also noticed Chapra asking Tatta to be his brother, just like in Barefoot Gen when Gen asks Ryuta to be his brother. I wonder if this is a common thing in Japanese culture.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book and will probably find time over Christmas break to sit down and read past just volume 1. Considering this isn’t even Tezuka’s most popular work too, I will definitely be reading other titles by him. Wasn’t what I expected, but I was pleasantly surprised. 

Week 9: Wide World of Comics (Tank Girl)

For this week on the wide world of comics, I read the British comic, Tank Girl. This was an easy choice for me to read as it had been on my to read list for years. One of my friends in high school absolutely loved it so I was familiar with the title and figured now would be a good time to read it. 

Sufficed to say, it was definitely not what I was expecting. I knew it was based in a post apocalyptic setting, but that lead me to expect a far more ‘serious’ story. This is not to say I didn’t enjoy it, because there was a definite delight I had in its absurdity, but the first few pages took some adjusting to. It had a strangely light hearted tone about what would normally be a very serious topic. Its full of sex, drugs and violence, but all of this is just treated as ‘part of the fun’. 

When I realized this was written in the late 80s and 90s I wasn’t surprised. Tank girl is practically a love letter to punk culture. Both the fashion and topics contained are very much reminiscent of punk. The punk movement was sweeping apparently leaking into Europe and comics were full of these ‘darker themes’. Characters like Lobo and Spawn were popping up and more and more comic characters were carrying huge guns. These dark themes were no longer ‘underground’ like they were in the 70s during the Underground Comix movement, and were now practically main stream. This punk movement was at its high wen comics were selling better than they ever have at any point in their history.  It was now ‘cool’ to be gritty. 

Tank Girl itself seemed to just have fun with the whole punk concept. The actual plot was practically nonexistent, events happening so randomly. Like one second she’s on the moon stopping an apocalypse and the next she’s giving birth to a half tank/ half baby child who has a mutant kangaroo for a father. The whole experience of reading it was really a wild ride like no other. 

Week 8: Stereotype and Representation

My opinion of stereotype is perhaps not as negative as many people’s, but I don’t see it as a positive either. How I view usage of stereotype is that it is simply lazy writing. It’s short hand so people don’t actually take the time and effort to actually work on developing characters. I however do think it is good to be aware of these stereotypes when creating a story so a writer can avoid falling into these pit falls.

I don’t actually think they are intentionally harmful though. For example, some feminists like to talk like there is a collective patriarchy that actively tries to put all women down. I don’t think this is true. Now it is true that there are some idiots on the internet who can’t seem to argue coherently when someone disagrees with them, but as far as actual creators of stories, I believe they just create the same stereotypical woman character designs because it has proven to be a financial success. Yes it isn’t good, but I highly doubt these writers are conspiring against all women kind. Granted as more varied and less stereotypical character designs are proven to be a success, writers in various media will be more willing to spread out.

For example, now Marvels main five characters, with the exception of Tony Stark, now feature a minority holding the identity. The role of Captain America is currently filled by Sam Wilson, a black man, and Thor is Jane Foster. Marvel has even gone further than this. The character of hulk in the new Hulk series is Amadeus Cho, a Korean American and after Marvel combined the ultimates verse with the 616 verse, there are two people as Spiderman, one of which is Miles Morales, a kid of Black Hispanic decent. Practically their entire team from the recent Young Avengers series falls somewhere in the LGBT spectrum. Marvel also had the Netflix tv show Jessica Jones come out recently. That one show is perhaps one of the most progressive pieces of television I have seen, featuring a very strong and un-stereotypical female protagonist, with a wide cast of minorities as secondary characters. The only major white male in that show is the villain and they even swapped the gender of a major male character, Hogarth, and made him a girl, while still keeping the relationships all the same, so it had three lesbian characters. Jessica Jones herself is in a relationship with Luke Cage, a black man, so it gives interracial couple. Yes, the movies are lacking, but in all other forms of media, they are trying hard to push representation.

Its only time before other writers pick up on the example Marvel is leading and follow in their footsteps. Captain Marvel is supposed to be Carol Danvers in that movie and Black Panther will be getting his own movie as well, so there is hope for them. 

As far as if I believe if I have been affected by stereotype, the answer is mostly no. The only time I feel as if I have been pressured by a ‘girl stereotype’ is from my family and mostly that is only from the very conservative side and I feel that stems from more of society expectations as a whole rather than specific stereotypes. As far as outsider expectation, I never have felt pressure to act a certain way based on stereotype. I’ve even spent a lot of time in male dominated areas, via card game tournaments, gaming stores, and of course comic book stores. I’ve never gotten the impression people expect me to act a certain way based on a stereotypical representation.

Transmetropolitan questions

1. Are there any prominent symbols in the story?
        If so, what are they and how are the used?

A prominent  symbol I have noticed is the use of weapons. Though I just barely scratched the surface of the book, I noticed a large amount of usage from the main character, and he seemed to be the only one who used them. Even guards were weapon free. I think this is to really enforce how outside of society the protagonist feels. He hates the world around him and the guns he carries are a physical symbol of his anger.


2. What connections did you make with the story?
         Discuss the elements of the work with which you were able to connect.

I guess with being an artist, and thus a story teller, I was slightly able to connect to the main character. I was not a fan of the main character, but even so I've had that feeling that I'd just like to run away from everything and hide away because my craft isn't flowing. Being forced to create when suffering writers block or burnout is one of the most frustrating feelings. I too channel it into an "I don't care" attitude, though granted mine is less violent.

3. What changes would you make to adapt this story to another medium? What medium would you use? What changes would you make?

I would adapt this series into a television show. With how unlikable the main character is, I feel like a stretched out show would give the viewer more time to actually grow attached to the main character without being forced to like them and give the viewer time to really try and understand this crazy urban world. Changes I would make would be to more gradually pull the character into the city. In the comic, the viewer is just thrown in and while the jarring feeling may be intentional for the comic, I feel that more slowly revealing what is 'off and futuristic' about this city could be beneficial.

Week 7: Maus

I, like many people, have had to read Maus prior to taking this class, but I find myself getting so much more out of it in this second reading. I had grown up in a house that comics were definitely seen as legitimate media especially considering we had just as many comics on our shelves as we did 'ordinary' books, but even then I found it odd that we were covering a comic in an English class. The moment we started discussing the novel though, we didn't treat it much different than any other book. Honestly I'm not surprised that Maus is considered  to be the graphic novel that really legitimized the medium.

The non-fictional nature of the story has a lot to do with how accepted it was amongst general audiences. The subject matter, being a holocaust survivor's tale, is probably about as serious as you can get as far as literary topics. It would be much harder for people to dismiss Maus as being 'a thing for kids' or as 'just a cartoon' since everything written in it is an actual account of one of the most terrible events to occur in human history. The only thing that really 'softens' the account too is the fact that the people are drawn as animals. Interestingly, anthropomorphic characters is very common amongst 'cartoons' but even so its practically impossible to confuse Maus for a cartoon.

While the words of Maus would easily be enough to tell the story and get the mood across, the art adds an extra level of understanding to the mood Art is trying to get across. By casting the groups of people as animals, it helps to express how these people were seen as. Cats are predators so its not a stretch to see why Art portrays Nazis as them. Mice are the usual prey of Cats so the Jewish people as Mice makes sense as well. The Americans rescued the Jewish people from camps so they are Dogs which are usually portrayed as being the enemies of Cats. Pigs are outside this food chain so they represent the Polish people who were overall neutral aside from Germany invading them. Some could see this animal comparison as offensive, but I believe the visual difference of having each 'race' as being a different animal helps to show exactly how they were seen during the time all of these events were going on. Other books have used animals in a similar way, the novel Animal Farm coming to mind, but in Maus it feels more metaphorical.

The way the story is told is also odd. It's not an auto biography at least not in the usual sense. The history in Poland is not Art's but a large portion of the story is just Art talking to his dad, giving the reader a feeling of practically being in the room as Vladek is talking. It's told in the style of an interview but Vladek keeps breaking away the story as he does things like drop his pill bottle and complain. I heard that Art took audio recordings as he talked to his dad. Its interesting that he would keep these distractions and actually illustrate them. These even evolve into an odd 'side plot' that deals with the relationship between Art and his father.

Despite it being a Holocaust survival tale, in the 'modern' story, Art doesn't particularly portray his dad in the best light. He constantly complains and is generally unpleasant to Mala. This is all understandable why he acts this way since Art opens the graphic novel saying how his mother committed suicide and Valdek has suffered two heart attacks.

All this together makes Maus a very raw tale. It has great literary and historical merit while also being a very raw, amazing comic.