Notes from class The Authority

Lit of Comics The Authority analysis:

1. The most prominent symbol in the story that I received was the idea of making a better choice than the opponent. Each side believes that they're right in their own ways of bettering the world and they want to show that side to the others because they believe it will enhance their future, so they fight to the bitter end to make that happen. This idea of evolution relates to how almost everyone feels about the world, which is finding some way to make things different. 
2. The connections that I made in the story were connections to the real world versus the world in The Authority. There is always someone in the real world who is considered to have more political power. People tend to handle politics in a way of them being right and the opponent being wrong. This seems to be a significant thing in the whole work, somebody has to be the wrong one. Another thing that seemed to be a connection to this story was the idea of death, and the idea of apocalypse in 1999. This was around the time of a strange Y2K scare, and the sort of apocalyptic feel could reflect that as well. 
3. I would add more scene changes and transitions to the story to make it a more animated piece. I would also choose certain parts of the script to be edited to be less forward in order to show that the action could speak much louder than words. 

Week 14

The future of comics is almost purely reliant on the internet now. As of now, if you want to make a comic, odds are you're going to publish it on the internet in some way. Many times you see an IP that started out as a web comic. Things like One Punch Man start from just pure online hype that builds into a lot more in the future.

The hope of young artists when they create these webcomics is that they will be able to make it into something more as they progress with it, which doesn't always happen. There are a couple of articles that show how to not get your hopes up or how to create a good webcomic. Some are linked here:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-biggest-mistakes-people-make-when-they-start-a-webc-1614779817

The comic I read was Girl Genius, which was fun because it was a steampunk comic that had a fun art style and had a quirky style of writing. Newer web comics tend to be more fun for me when they offer something that it's more raw and unrefined.

Week 11

I decided to go back to reading Asterios Polyp this week because of how people seemed to enjoy it quite a bit from the class. Overall the art style was fun except for the japanese girl, but it the overall look was charming. I just didn't care for the whole anime eyed look for only one character.

I know it's strange, but I always love to see mean characters because I feel like many times the tend to have more depth to them. I always enjoy characters that are either villains or almost like fallen heroes, so the fact that this guy wasn't the number one gentleman didn't bother me at all.

Overall, Aterios Polyp was ok. Interesting, fun to look at, but not my cup of tea.

Week 10

For this weeks reading I decided to read a piece that was from one of the illustrators mentioned in the suggested readings, but the manga that I enjoyed wasn't listed. Regardless I decided to read Hikaru No Go. The basic idea of Hikaru No Go is that it's about a boy named Hikaru who get's possessed by a spirit that was a Go master and all he's wanted to keep doing is play Go. So now they both play Go and Hikaru becomes insanely great at the game because of his spirit named Sai.

The story that Yumi Hotta wrote for this is compelling and fun even though it's just about a kid, a spirit and a board game that is extremely old. It takes some pretty great writing to make a board game seem interesting, and I believe that Hotta did it well.

As far as the illustrations go, it's really hard to compare to Takeshi Obata. Personally he is one of my favorite modern manga illustrators. His perspective and backgrounds are always on point and the way that he choses his shots for the well drawn characters is pretty phenomenal. Overall a highly recommended read due to the fact that this team is just that good.

week 9

I read Persepolis this week, and I decided to re-read both volumes to get myself completely re-introduced to the whole reading. The thing that Persepolis always did well was how Marjane Satrapi gave the perception of the world based on the views of a very smart young girl. In the mind of a young girl, the first volume really digs into concepts of religion, death, love, everything that could make a comic take a turn for the worst, but in the way that it's perceived with our young Marjane, the content isn't so heavy.

As concepts got clearer to her, they get clearer to the reader as well. I personally enjoy reading things with the intention of losing myself and becoming the character, so in that sense as a writer Marjane was successful. As a piece of entertainment, when I read this while I was younger I enjoyed it, but now reading it with a different purpose I can appreciate it even more.

Week 8

This week we were supposed to talk about the idea of a stereotype in not only comics, but other forms of literature and entertainment. I personally have an issue with it that I have expressed in class due to the examples that were shown. We were looking at some of the ways that Eisner represented his stereotypes and how most races are considered easy to stereotype with certain features. When Eisner did these stereotypes, his reasoning was to keep his work simple enough to focus on the story he wanted to tell. He was able to focus on writing, posing, and camera movement. That being said, the weakest part about everything that Eisner and most people who use stereotypes is that they have no inherent sense of design.

If you're a good designer, whether it's for characters, games, comics, environments, etc. a lot of times you can pick and choose what it is that you should consider for your work that may fit into a "stereotype." For instance, the example that was brought up in class was the character Lara Croft. In the older iterations of Lara Croft, she was none other than this badass long legged, big chested woman who represented a male's interpretation of a sexualized badass that looked hot while she beat people up.



This was during a time when the concept artists/designers didn't do their job correctly and reverted to stereotypical "hot shallow badass girl" tropes. Now with the new design, there is a reason to care for her. She has personality, power, charm, and is overall a better character without the use of stereotypes to cheapen the effect.

Week 7

This week we were told to read Maus by Art Spiegelman, which was for us to get to understand how comics are now not only becoming a legitimate source of entertainment, but they've also become a legitimate source of art and literature as well. If Maus was written almost any other way besides a graphic novel, I don't believe that it would have gotten nearly as popular as it already had become during it's time and even today. 

First take the subject matter. Even when you're looking at the cover of the comic, you can see that the ties to the holocaust are apparent. Immediately the subject matter is considered intense, but it could be too intense if not handled correctly. Spiegelman handles it correctly because it is literally depicted by mice/other animals. 

Also, the way that the story is told, with going back and forth in the present time sinks you in to the way that the storytelling is played out. 

week 5

For the blog topic, we were supposed to create some sort of comparative analysis to Will Eisner's and Craig Thompson's approach to storytelling. Now personally I have to say that I have a biased opinion on the matter because I have openly admitted how much I care for Thompson's work. I think that Blankets is charming and wonderful in many ways, but I also know that Eisner can create just as compelling of a story and make it open to understand for almost everyone. If you look at an Eisner comic, you see almost a "cookie cutter" format for how he draws his characters, because he follows a formula to get his poses to work and that formula works. This is why his series The Blue Spirit became popular. Overall, I can see the comparison as legitimate even past my bias.

Week 4

This week we studied actual comic books! Everything that we were looking at previously lead up to us finally being able to look at comic books for the rest of the semester (mostly). Starting off from the beginning though we see that Marvel and Action Comics are where the standards are pretty much set. These are the moments where we start to see superheroes that have passed through generations and are now continuing to influence others in multiple media outlets.

But regardless of those media outlets, these original comic books pretty much started everything out in terms of what we consider the modern graphic novel. Out of the comics that were presented for this week, I chose to read Marvel Comics. This comic introduces us to popular superheroes like the Human Torch and Superman. Both are still well known today which can be considered a big deal to people just starting out during this time in the comics industry. Judging the work artistically, you could tell that the artists were passionate, but limited as to what they could do with this medium. Graphic novels were cheap and color was expensive so in order to cut costs they had to limit their palette. This caused certain panels to look more rough and unrefined like the underwater panels. The drawings themselves aren't terrible, they just don't have as much punch because there aren't any real star graphic novel illustrators yet.