Literature of Comics and the Graphic Narrative Course

Week Thirteen: Changing Landscape of Licensed Characters I decided to read the first Marvel comic, it was about 'the Human Torch', the Angel', 'Submariner', and the 'Masked Raider' – I could only think by first glance that this could be about Fantastic Four. Also, it was really strange, the first page of the comic was like a silly black and white random comic called 'Now I'll Tell One', that I wouldn't have expected to be in this comic like I would in Archie's comics for example. When reading the comics I realized that this was comprised of 4 different heros and they weren't in the same story. I know that the human torch told me that this was probably going to be a Fantastic Four comic, but the other 3 characters I have no idea who they are. The Angel actually looks like Superman in a cheap way. The Submariner is like a blue Avatar mixed with Aquaman, and the Masker Raider is a cowboy with a mask on his face. Those characters wou

Week Twelve: Comics by Women  For this week I read the article by BuzzFeed titled '16 Comics By Women Only Other Women Will Find Fucking Hilarious'. It was comprised  of some comics and short stories by women. Now, these comics and stories weren't created for artistic merit or quality – they were just created for the content. But, I was able to relate to these because I am a women, and they all deal with scenarios that I think all women deal with such as periods. So, these are all relatable to women, I wouldn't see a man being relatable to this other than the cranberry strip where the girl thinks the other girl is drinking a cranberry vodka or something – it could be a gay friend. They're cool because they're very personal and about internal thoughts of a women that we don't like to talk about necessarily . Like self conflicting themes. It's a lot like the other comic that I read, also written and created by a woman author  Marjane Satrapi. It's a

The Killing Joke what was your reaction to the text you just read? It really reminded me of watching the movie ‘The Dark Night’, with the man who acted like the joker died during the middle of their filming. It was like I could hear the sound effects and it felt like I was watching the live action movie, it felt a lot more realistic than the classic Batman comics or compared to the movie that we watched in the beginning of class that I think was made in the 60s. I felt like I was actually getting into it, the characters had a scarier and more surreal factor to them that made me feel a bit creeped out. I didn’t feel like I was really reading a graphic novel, I felt like I was watching the movie, especially with the flashbacks, and how they transitioned the panels between one another and contrasting the colors. It really felt like it was the way it would have been filmed. 2. What connections did you make with the story? Discuss the elements of the story with which you were

Victor & Yasmina  Optic Nerve So, this comic was very similar in style to the video clip that we saw at the beginning of class - in the way that it is very simple and it is very analytical of life. It reminded me of the new Netfilx series, 'You', where there is a guy who's kind of like a 'loser' and works at a library - similar tot his where he works at a boring job. In a way it is similar because they are both invested in creeping, or even stalking this one girl that they think they can change. There is love and death involved, very extreme events. This graphic novel is in black and white, goes well with the story because it gives it a sort of nostalgic mystery in a way. Asterios Polyp This graphic novel is very different from the first one, in the sense of it being very analytical of self rather than analytical of outsiders/ others. In this graphic novel it is very simple yet it deals a lot with different compositions as well as shapes (geomet

Tonkaradani Mongatari Manga It's very interesting, I never really thought about manga and anime, other than them both being Japanese cartoons or something. But with some research I realized that manga and anime have a lot of overlap whenever talking about them. I always thought that mangas and animes could be comic books as well as movies/ series but the only difference between them were that one was more realistic than the other. Obviously in the West we see manga and anime as very generic terms when we refer to Japanese art in general; at least that's how I saw it from others when growing up. But when I actually researched about anime and manga it appeared that they were really similar to how cartoons are made in the US, or in the west generally. When I looked up the term anime it literally means 'animation' in Japanese which refers to the Japanese animated cartoon videos/ movies/ series. The term anime and manga can get confused because there are stories that

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi Persepolis is about a girl's childhood and adulthood of growing up in Iran during the Islamic revolution which came out in France. I didn't read the novel first, it's interesting, I actually watched the animation of it about three years ago. It's interesting because the graphic novel is non-fiction and brings out the life of how the author's childhood was – especially being in black and white, I thought that it gave the book the essence of the time of when she was a kid, as well as the environment and the event that was taking place during that time. I linked with this because although I did not personally go through it, I had family members and people I knew who went through the same things the author went through at this time. Such as, repression, warfare and loss. Because I grew up in the Middle East, but in a country that did not go through such tough circumstances such as Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Libya and Oman. There ha