March another hard hitting and low blowing member of the autobiblography graphic novels.

Just like Maus March is nothing to sneeze at when it came to the media and storyline it portrayed. one of once again the racial prejudice of others and the transition from a life of one kind of grief to another. it was pretty intense seeing the feelings and emotion of the narrator play out as he talked about his transition into a man and the person he become today thanks to his trials and tribulation \

Maus

Maus is a graphic novel that I have yet to shake it comes to "graphic novels that keep popping up in my life"

Maus the graphic novel of the transcription of a man's fathers time in the confines of world war 2 europe is shaking to say the least. I first read maus when I was about 12 or 13 far before I was suppose to learn about world war 2 in school but seeing as comics are written off as childrens media for having pictures in it. it was somehow in the library and me being the ever curious child I was picked it up and asbolutely drowned in the test. I wasn't even sure what I was reading at first but the further I got into it the more I was enraptured by the realistic tale of suffering and life lost. I was maybe able to get through it alot better than I was say Anne frank's dairy just because I knew there was some kind of happy ending to it. although the main protagonist in maus was force to enfure horrific torture at the hands of the third reich he still managed to end up alive enough to sire a new life in america.

a graphic novel is the perfect blend of visual and physical narrative as your imagination is left to the numb choice of filling in the blanks. instead it's given the visual of suffering and expression that comes with a storyline such as this

Underground comics

Underground comics have always bee a subject of intense debate (as far as there reception in popular media)

comics about everything from sexual perversion to deep fatalistic dread. they stand as a complete outlier of what can and can be done with comics. under ground comics are what video games are to 3D media as in, they serve to show what's exceptable in art form and what isnt'. and even when it is unacceptable how it can be made into something that isn't just a grotesque display of "just because you can doesn't mean you should"

the comic "Gay comix" was the text I choose this week, one that was written by and about the life in times of gay people in america. it's not some particularly hedonistic display of balls to the walls sex most of the comics. it's done with poise and a lot of humor that doesn't come at the coast of the social group it's portraying. alot of the comic is about them being gay but it's also not. not all of it is a joke it's the story of different peoples lives and how their LGBTQ'ness has affected their lives.

Blankets

blankets is a coming-of-age autobiography, the book tells the story of Thompson's childhood in an Evangelical Christian family, his first love, and his early adulthood. The book was widely acclaimed, with Time magazine ranking it #1 in its 2003 Best Comics list, and #8 in its Best Comics of the Decade. Blankets is a step into the emergence of the graphic novel which is if it isn't clear enough by the name very different from juts your average comic book. 

comic books are written with a balance of words and actions but with a bit more focus on visuals and more simplistic concepts, graphic novels however are a complete step into the world of sequential art. playing around with panel structure and speech bubbles they become far more complicated in both art and story as they take on more of a bite of substance than just Comic books. Blanket takes this on in spades as the panels inside are very expressive of a far more illustrative style not stuck within the confines of panel structure and page limit but allowed to explore it self as an artistic medium. 

Super hero comics and more

Superhero comics are in a way the way we have most of the modern comics industry. finally a  mid ground of causal and intense story telling it a fair union of relaxed and intense plot points with action and intrigue but also comedy and general laxness to confrontation

In general comics around this time seem to be focusing more on the syndication of a general character rather than the more exploration indie comics. the industry was building it self as a business and comics like tales from the crypt, superman, and the disney comics show just that

 1970's comics are pretty iconic in their art style. there doesn't seem to be a very large middle ground of realistic versus a few abstract/cartoon style. so you've got comics like the peanuts where mostly everybody is made of a few simple shapes and than you have something like prince valient or flash gordon or dick tracy where everything's pretty realistic despite a few artistic choices here and there. the story telling differs greatly from each other as well.

peanuts tends to be very episodic with simple punch lines and jokes so there style lends to there need to an easy storyline



meanwhile a comic like dick tracy had over arching comic elements that  could last an entire issue. overall I appreicate both types of comic for there diversity in delivery and story.

Understanding comics has always been a point of contention for myself.

the comic on comics it self is a pretty down and grit commentary and instructional on the construction of comics them selves. it gives the information it self in various visual examples of how writers have been building comics since the media it self arose. it's pretty masterful in it's attempt to boil down the information it needs into a couple of panels per concept. my contention usually come with how western-centric the concepts of storytelling gets. that and how it tends to get pretty narrow minded when it comes to the concepts of comics in general.

Frank in the river

Wordless comics

the comic I chose to read this week was 'Frank in the river'

the comic in question is very surrealist in both it's art style execution and story telling. it goes deeper than just your average tale of some sort of woodland creature going about doing odd jobs. as seen by the fact the beaver goes from simple cleaning this temple of sorts to murdering a small group of terrifying animals. And this isn't your average every day cartoon violence it is very clear that the protagonist in question is hurting and extinguishing the life from these supposidly maleviolent creature. to all of the way of the beaver creating a small army of him self through the magical dwellings of some oddly cryptic barrel of water.