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Has anyone ever accidentally ride a roller coaster.

I did,,,

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Blog Post 12

The Arrival is a book made by Shaun Tan, and this book is unique due to the fact that there is very little to no dialogue at all. Some people would think “how on earth do you read a book with no word in them?” and the answer to that question is telling a story through pictures. I recommend reading this book, it is pretty good, but I am going to say some spoilers in this post so if anyone is interested in reading The Arrival just ignore this post. The story of The Arrival is about an immigrant family moving out of their old home and moving into a different continent, where they moved to is left ambiguous, the whole book is about people trying to live in a world that feels alien-like. Even the written language is unreadable which adds to that feeling of alienation. Eventually the family gets used to living in their new home, even getting a pet that looks like a whale-rat combo, and they also help out other people trying to help out other immigrants trying to find their way around. I said that making good pictures can tell a story without dialogue, what I mean is that you can tell what the characters are thinking and saying with their body language and facial expression. On one page you can the father trying to understand what the person is saying to him, he shows visible confusion and frustration along with multiple hand gestures like cupping one hand near his ear as if he was trying to hear what the person was saying. On another page the father finds a man he hoped could help him find a place to rest and after some complications with communication the father draws a bed to show the man that he is trying to find somewhere to sleep. The man then does the ‘ah-ha’ gesture like he understood what he was trying to say ‘Oh ok I understand what you want now’ and he then leads the father to a hotel and then they gave each other a handshake to say ‘thank you’ and ‘you’re welcome.’ Because there are no dialogue in the book, the illustrator has portray the emotions in the scenery as well as the character’s body language. You can see that in the first scene when the family is leaving their old home there are some tendrils that look like dragon tails. This, I believe, is to portray that the family’s old home is going through some hard times and that they needed to move out of there. Once they arrive to the new world, I guess that is what I could call it, the buildings are not like any buildings I have ever seen in my life. Even the creatures look like something out of a very trippy dream, like the whale-mouse fusion, a cat that has grey-alien eyes, slugs with wings, and many other creatures. These creature pushed the sense of alienation even further.

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Blog Post 11

Manga can be easily described as Japanese comic books, and that is pretty much what they are with some other differences. A few of those differences is the way manga are read, Manga is meant to be read like you are read a traditional book backwards, because it follows how the Japanese reading style - which is right to left. While there are manga that reads from left to right the probability of coming across one of those kinds of manga is rather low. Also, that most of the manga comics are not in color. While color is used on the covers and spines the manga is normally in black and white. One manga I would like to talk about is a manga called Monomoke Restaurant, The reason why I want to talk about this manga is because of how they included the concepts of both Moe and Yokai. The Japanese word Moe, pronounced as Mo-Eh, is a word used to refer a strong affection towards something or someone primarily a female character from an anime, manga, video games, and other forms of media. A primary sign most “Moe Characters” have in common is that they have a pretty large head in comparison to the torso and limbs and that they have large stylized eyes. So in other words, the word Moe is used to described a character or object as cute. The way that Monomoke Restaurant uses the Moe style is that they apply it to characters who are a part of the primary cast of characters, and this is further amplifies when some of the background characters are Yokais. Yokai is a word that describes a group of monsters that originated from superstitions, like describing the noises of your house settling being caused by little creatures doing it just to mess with people. As time went on and technology advances people find the real reasons behind those superstitions the Yokai became less and less important and are only saved from being completely forgotten thanks to multi-media creators turning them into Pokémon-like creatures. One of the more recognizable Yokai is the Kasa-Obake, a broken umbrella  that gained a soul after one hundred years along with a single eye ball, two arms, some times a mouth with a long tongue, and one leg that acts as the stick you hold the umbrella with. The Kasa-Obake is one of the Yokai that are relatively harmless, only scaring people and licking them just for fun. While there are some Yokai that are harmless, there are just as much if not more Yokai that are very dangerous like the Shinigami who are ghosts of people who died from war, illness, and suicide and try to bring people to meet their end. While no dangerous Yokai appear in the manga Monomoke Restaurant, the more harmless Yokai can be seen in the manga as background characters that in habits this world and are designed to not scare people off whether they are young or old.

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Blog Post 10

The clear line style of art is described as using strong lines with the same width, no hatching, and very little contrast. An example, as well as the pioneer, of this art style is the early Adventure of Tintin comics created by Herge, also known as Georges Prosper Remi. There were plenty of old superhero tv shows and other cartoon show back in the old days when it was pretty obvious that they would loop the same background for chase scenes. This art style was also in shows like Scooby Doo, He-man the Masters of The Universe, She-ra Princess of Power, and some of the spin-off series of Scooby Doo like the one with Scrappy Doo. In fact, the Scooby Doo franchise as a whole had barely changed from their initial release to now in terms of art style with the exception of the live action movies. There were some shows and movies that changed the art style but was not much of big change. Much like how technology advances throughout the years so too does the art styles. This art style has adapted and evolved into the common art styles most cartoon tv shows and superhero comics have in modern day. TV shows like Steven Universe, Star vs The Forces of Evil, The Owl House, Amphibia, SpongeBob SquarePants, and much more cartoons of a similar art style have either been inspired by Tintin art style or the art style changed so much over the years that there was bound to be some alterations among creators. The Clear Line art style is more apparent in the superhero comics than in the cartoon tv show. This art style was even more apparent in very early superman comic, batman comics, the wonder woman comics, and many more. Obviously like the cartoon TV shows from the 80s, the design of these comics has changed over the years. Although with superheroes in any media, their art style have to be pretty consistent due to most of those superheroes have to interact with each other. While the art style has changed a great deal over the past few years the character design stayed mostly the same. I believe the clear line art style became so popular was because of how cost effective it was compared to other art styles around that time. You did not have to draw the background with as much detail as hatching, this leaves you with more ink or graphite to play with. Due to the character and background designs being so simplified you can make more of these comics or concepts designs in less time. You save money from using less supplies at the cost of being less detailed, but you can pump out more of these artwork more consistently and depending on how good the stories and characters are you can make a net profit that makes the loss of detail completely negligible. This was an interesting topic to research because I am currently in college majoring in art.

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Blog Post 9

In an interview with Sana Amanat, the co-creator of Marvel’s first solo series to include a Muslim female superhero, she has stated that the depiction of Muslim-American life in the Ms. Marvel comics tend to avoid political statement about Islam and focusing more on how is it being Muslim. Looking through the members of Ms. Marvel’s family shows that they represent the lifestyles and how they clash with the American people. While Ms. Marvel herself does not seem to care about Muslim lifestyle, her older siblings are at an age where they need to find who they are and what their purpose on this world is. Ms. Marvel’s older sister is shown wearing a headscarf. Muslim women wear headscarves to cover up as much skin as possible, expect for around the eyes, because the women would be pelted with stones if they showed too much skin. The parents have stated that the whole headscarf thing is just a phase, which is an understandable response given that headscarves are seen more as a fashion sense outside of Islam. The brother seems to take a liking to Muslim religion as he is first seen at the dinner table praying, and that point was driven further when the father jokingly states that his son prays so much that he thinks he might starve himself. The parents seemed to be the most balanced ones of the family, I say this because of how the parents act towards their son and daughters. While yes they don’t quite understand modern phrases and are the kind of ‘do your work and having fun is a waste of time’ type of parents but they try their best to tell their kids that they have done something morally wrong. The parents are understanding enough to let their kids do what they feel is right but will tell them when they go a little bit overboard with it. They understand how important their Muslim heritage is but also understand that they need to practice moderation when living in a country that has a shaky history with them. Now everyone has the right to have faith in their own religion, that is completely fine, but when people try to force others to think that their religion is the best and only religion they tend to not end so well. It is also wrong to actively hate an entire religion based on what a few members of that religion did that was completely and wrong. I understand that some actions done by members of a religious group can be traumatizing to people who were victims of it, for that is understandable to hate them then, but to absolutely despise an entire religion just because they are different than yours is pretty close minded. There are many reasons to dislike something, but somethings are less reasonable than the others. That aside, I like this take on Ms. Marvel. This interpretation could add variety into future superhero comic books like Mr. Question.

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Blog Post 8

Hard-boiled detective stories and noir films are heavy influences on The Dark Knight Returns comic. These genres share some common themes with TDKR; the solitary investigative hero, a shadowy urban aesthetic, assumptions that everyone is either corrupt or readily corrupt, avoiding far-fetched methods of murder, strong female characters, and a tortured male protagonist. I believe that these themes persist through the modern Batman franchise along with comics, TV shows, video games, and movies. We have a two for one deal with batman fulfilling the role of both the solitary investigative hero and the tortured male protagonist. Batman is shown to be a detective to figure out his enemies’ motives, locations, and Batman’s origin story became an icon so powerful that all incarnations of Batman has to either include it or have a special twist to it. Gotham city is one of the most depressing locations in fictional history, so much so that in Batman: The Animated Series has the sky of Gotham city is always a dark red to further convey that intimidating atmosphere. Murder in the Batman franchise tries its best to have them be realistic and there are rarely any murders that stretches the validity to a thin layer. The Batman franchise is full of corruptible characters and how they became corrupt varies from series to series. One of those characters is Harvey Dent (AKA: Two-Face), a lawyer turned insane mob boss who has a problem deciding the fates of his victims and decides by flipping a coin. In some series he gets splashed with acid and becomes insane, and while the disfigurement is pretty consistent throughout the franchise some have added that Harvey has DID (AKA: Multiple Personality Disorder) and the disfigurement was only the catalyst for him to become the Two-Face we commonly know him as. While I did not find any notable strong female characters in TDKR, the Batman franchise as a whole has plenty of strong female characters. A few of these characters are Harleen Quinzel (AKA: Harley Quinn) who went from being the Joker’s girlfriend to a struggling person trying to recover from an abusive relationship, Pamela Isley (AKA: Poison Ivy) who went from a well-meaning scientist who wanted to save the plants from dying out into a super powered villain who sees humans as inferior to plants and needs to be exterminated, and Selina Kyle (AKA: Catwoman) whose origin has a few variations in her transition into becoming a literal cat themed burglar. While the early Batman franchise went through some changes, in some early comics they had batman wielding a gun while having no problem taking a life, but TDKR comic brought in themes that still remain in the franchise today. One of the most consistent themes, along with the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents, is the Joker’s obsession with Batman as we see that the mere mention of Batman sends a mentally recovering Joker right back into his old ways like an addict to a drug they haven’t taken since rehabilitation.

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Blog Post 7

John Lewis was one of the most influential leaders during the black rights movement who passed away in 2020, he was an invaluable member of society. Before he died John helped write the stories of the movement in a book series called March, releasing from 2013 to 2016. These book s depicted the black rights movement in a superhero, black-and-white comic book fashion that was illustrated by Nate Powell. There are some parallels when comparing these books with other superhero comics of this variety. One of the more common tropes of superhero comics is that some heroes are born from tragedy, the best examples are Batman, Daredevil, and to some extent The Punisher because he technically does not count as a hero he is more of an anti-hero but still. For the people who were a part of the black rights movement of the 1960s had nothing but tragedy, the explosion of the 16th street Baptist Church that killed those four black girls, the constant police brutality, not being able to vote, and especially Bloody Sunday. The story of a person overcoming their fear to achieve great things is a common trope but never hated. But the one thing that superhero comic cannot do that this book series does, create true realism. The reason I say this is because no matter how serious they make themselves, the very moment a superhero does something complete fictional the realism is killed. While yes that is partially a driving point of a superhero comic is to be fictional, but when it tries to be serious is like someone trying to portray a national disaster with finger puppets. Some people also compare this book series with horror comics. I think this is another case of what Steven Spielberg said about the horror genre, how the horror genre makes people be fascinated with the dark side of the human psyche. The horror genre despite intending to scare people, they still stick around to see more. What makes March potentially even more horrifying than some of the other horror themed media in the genre is the fact that all of the events in the book happened in real life. The one up that March has over other superhero comics is that it shows you the terror that black people had to face every day, the bomb at the church was terrible but to have the breaking news say that there was no casualties even though there was casualties just crossed the line. Black people were not even treated as humans at that point of history and was the driving point of the black rights movement. There were no jokes, no jabs at current politics, and especially no incorrect information in this book because John Lewis experienced all of it. There is something different when we are hearing about what happened during a national disaster from the news channel and from someone who was there and had experienced that disaster. You can hear the despair and trauma in their voice just talking about it.

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Blog Post 6

Horror is an interesting type of genre, even though people read or watch stories with horror themes and gets spooked by it they still continue to watch or read what happens next. Why does something that has creepy/disturbing content get so popular and gain so many sub-genres? In Stephen King’s essay on “Why we crave horror movies”, he noted that these horror movies/books allow us to explore the parts of our personality that is normally taboo, depicted as evil, or even repressed. With this in mind, I want to take a look at an author by the name of Emil Ferris who illustrated and wrote a book called My Favorite Thing is Monsters. For a quick summary of the comic, this book is about a girl named Karen who feels out of place in the world of Chicago in the year 1968. She feels this way so much so that she sees herself as a monster, a werewolf to be exact. She does this because she feels comfort in being a monster when facing the dark reality of the world. I can understand this type of behavior because I would see things in cartoons that are just better looking than the ones in real life, like stake, toys, and amusement parks. This story revolves around Karen solving the case of who murdered her upstairs neighbor and tackling the darker sides of humanity. When I read this book my art major senses were going off at some places, specifically when I see humans and other monsters on the same or adjacent pages. Monsters are usually drawn and depicted as grotesque and/or hideous as modern and pop culture would use them to represent the monstrous side of human society, but in this comic the human are drawn far more creepy than the literal monsters. I believe that since Karen uses monsters as a form of escape from the harsh reality of the world, the humans were drawn creepier on purpose to make us feel Karen is feeling. It is usually not explored much in horror movies that the main antagonist is a human but sometimes when movies and stories try to do that it would turn into a “Humans are awesome, we are the best” kind of morale. In a form of irony, the monsters were surprisingly more human than the humans. I know this is a tired morale lesson and all but keep getting the whole “the real monster is MAN” vibe from this comic. Things do not get better for Karen as she uncovers more of the murder mystery, she also uncovers her childhood which was not the greatest to say the least. I will not completely spoil the comic for those who are seriously interested in this book, though I will warn those who plan on purchasing the book that it is a big book, not in terms of long-winded word and overly detailed scenes but the physical size of the book is about the size of closed laptop.

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Blog Post 5

I believe it is safe to assume that a lot of people have at least heard of MAD, a magazine series that invented “snark” humor. Snarky humor is kind of hard to explain, but it is the kind of humor that pokes fun at someone in a sarcastic and/or cheeky way. MAD uses this type of humor to make fun of a ton of people ranging from teens, scientists, cavemen, and even political figure along with everything else under the sun. Some examples of this type of humor is a single panel comic that tells the set up and the punchline which is amazing how people can pull off something like this. The comic is about these two archeologists that have dug up a broken horn that they believe to be evidence of the fabled unicorn however, it was shown underground that the horn was a part of a long dead skeleton of a Oryx, a species of antelopes that have long, and skinny horns that could be mistaken as unicorn horns. This one is even funnier if you are familiar with the bone wars, the event that kick started the popularity of archeology but came with less than accurate skeletons of the dinosaurs. In fact, the brontosaurus was not fully constructed until these last few centuries because they use a different sauropod’s head because they could not find the real brontosaurus head. Another example of this kind of snarky humor is the comic of people from different time periods complaining on the computer about important events in their respected time periods. My personal favorite part of that comic was the caveman who was mad that people were happy about the wheel invention and the fire discovery, but nobody cared at all about his rock computer invention. For a short time, MAD had had a TV show on Cartoon Network that adapted some of the comic into animated shorts along with newer skits based on the main topics going around the 2010s. One of these new skits was in an episode that was monkey themed to be on topic on the Rise of The Planet of The Apes movie. The skit was a parody of the TV show called The Apprentice except it was monkey themed so the skit was about having the popular simians from multimedia taking over jobs that humans have left empty and needed to be done. A running gag of that skit was that Donkey Kong would not be given tasks he was best suited for and ends up getting fired before starting his task as a swim instructor. I was growing up during this time so when the topic of MAD would ever come up in any conversation, it would feel wrong to not talk about the TV show. Even though most TV show adaptations would usually not go down so well, the creators of the show made extra sure they would fit the feel and snarky humor the magazines had and I believe they succeeded in that aspect.

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Blog Post 4

People usually see fantasy as place of make-believe, but Erik Rabkin defines fantasy as a style of narrative changes the ground rules over and over again. We see this definition throughout most of the popular works like Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, but I want to focus on the comics made by Winsor McCay. McCay’s comics follows Rabkin’s definition of fantasy by making his comics about people having dreams. These dreams are a perfect example of fantasy, how dreams are constantly changing every passing moment and how one action done in the dream is good but doing it again later is bad. These comics depicts the kind of dreams people can have, ranging from children to adults.  When I was reading McCay’s comics I was reminded of a dream I had once that kind of fits with this whole theme of fantasy. I had this dream right before I graduated from high school, this is important because the dream starts off with me going a futuristic looking college. I was walking through the campus until I saw an opening in the foliage from my years in elementary school. I went into the opening to find a path to an open space in the woods and found Marceline the vampire queen from a show called Adventure Time. Marceline and I were friends and started to have a flashback to a time we were younger. In this flashback, we were kids playing around until this child-sized old man wanted to take my tricycle. So, the old man and I made a bet that if I win I keep my tricycle and if he wins he takes it. We decide on a race to see who can reach the finish line first, but we had to use each other’s tricycle which I got the better part of that deal because my tricycle was a plain tricycle while the old man’s tricycle was really huge with spikes on the wheels and an engine with green flame spouting from the exhaust. We had our race and even though I won anyway Marceline decide to prank the old man to take a super long route to the finish line scaring him along the way. As the flashback ended the sun was already setting and I am a ghost now for some reason. Marceline then gives me a vial to cure me of my sudden ghost transformation, but she said that if I took it, we would no longer be able to see each other again. The dream ends as I look at the college from the forest with the vial in my hands. I like this dream because of how it follows the definition of fantasy given by Erik Rabkin and that this is one of the few dreams I have that I actually remember the whole thing instead of just bits and pieces. I also dislike this dream simply because that I could not have the dream of if I took the vial and what would happen after words.

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Blog Post 3

We all know that there are some people out there who refused to trust the vaccine treatment, so much so that an entire group of people, named Anti-Vaxxers, is hated for their misuse of information to try and justify not being vaccinated. Despite how mainstream this is now, this was not the first-time people tried to slander vaccination. That all started when the vaccine was invented in the early 1800s. For a little bit of background there was this process prior to vaccination called variolation, which would use scabs and fluids of a disease and apply them into sick patients. Although the patients who feel terrible for a few days, once they got better, they would be protected from the disease. However, there were some major drawbacks to this procedure, being very easy to screw up and even if the process were a success the patients would not always be protected. Since this was during the smallpox outbreak the procedure was a risky gamble. Edward Jenner, soon-to-be inventor of the vaccine, was curious of a rumor of people being immune to smallpox after contracting cowpox. This lead him down the road into creating the first vaccine, by making it and having a patient try to contract smallpox after being given the vaccine. It turned out to be a complete success and once he published his findings historians marked him as the “Father of Immunology.” However, most of the people were not so welcoming of this breakthrough, but to be fair humans have a natural fear of new things even if it was beneficial to human survival. Most of the skeptics were cautious if the vaccine would cause some sort of mutation to the human form, looking more cow-like due to how Jenner used strands of cowpox to make it. People then started to make political cartoons of how “dangerous” the vaccine was. One of which depicted Jenner and is associates being close to the devil by having horns/tails and feeding babies to a evil looking cow that turned the babies into demonic children. Another one has Jenner treating patients to his vaccine only to have them develop huge bumps that turns into miniature cows. I will say it again, this was a natural response for human to fear new things, but I have no clue what the current anti-vaxxers excuses are. Although the compounds that make up vaccines could be deadly to humans, but there is a saying for arguments like these “the dosage makes the poison.” The compounds in vaccines are too little to cause any harmful effects, especially not autism. Autism is a neurological disorder and it varies from person to person. To say that autism is bad is to say that they have no idea what they are talking about, and this coming for a person who is autistic. This makes me mad because people are saying that I am flawed, and I am about as flawed as any other person in the world. Makes you wonder.

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Blog Post 2

Everybody has heard of the Charlie Brown football gag. I love them as much as the next guy, but I started seeing how repetitive these comics get after reading a handful in a row. But despite the simplicity of this gag they always seem to get a chuckle out of everyone. So much so that many forms of media have referenced this timeless joke, from the tv show adaptations to the recent cartoons. I asked myself why this simple gag is so memorable that people still laugh at it to this day, and then I realized that this joke has more to it at first glance. There is this technique that comic artists use that is overlooked to the audience, thinking the artists do this to make the pages look nicer, but is super important to the whole industry. The size of the panels are indispensable in making a comic carry an emotion the reader is having. The length of the panels is equal to the amount of time passing in the comic, in other words, the longer the panel the longer time as passed in the comic. For example, in the football gag comics, the longer panels are typically the ones where Charlie is contemplating kicking the ball and doing the run up. In addition, the shorter panels are used to have the dialogue flow from panel to panel and to emphasize the slap stick of Charlie falling onto his back. Though the panels help keep the joke moving, the joke itself is still similar across multiple comics but with varying degrees of changes. Even still, its simplicity is more of a strength rather then a weakness. Each comic has a different approach to the gag, and each one has a different feel because of it. For example, one of the comics shows how dedicated Lucy is to dupe Charlie. It starts of the same way, Lucy wants Charlie to hit the ball, but Charlie is fed up with her tricks and goes inside to just ignore her. Night falls and she is still holding the ball for Charlie to kick even though she is asleep. Charlie takes this as his chance to kick the ball and Lucy moves the ball at the last second yet again. Personally, I love the comics where they change the formula just enough to make it unique. One of which is when Lucy has to eat dinner and her brother is the one who holds the ball in her place. The comic end with Lucy asking her brother if he moved the ball only for her brother to say, “you’ll never know.” I love this change because we never know if Charlie hit the ball or not, the fact of not knowing what happened drives Lucy crazy. Another one of my favorites is when Charlie is actually fed up with Lucy’s trick and leaves. But he jinxed it by saying that she the only one who thinks he’s dumb enough to fall for it again. But in the last panel he is just staring at his other friends and dog with a football.

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Blog Post for Class

Bill Watterson was one of the most famous comic artists, creator of the Calvin & Hobbes comics. Calvin & Hobbes is a comic series that follows the life of a boy and his imaginary tiger on their adventures a kid would have. Although some of the comics have rather adult topics like politics, philosophy, and war. But they are mostly used for the sake of comedy. I remember this one comic strip I read in middle school where Calvin’s mom tells him to go to bed, Calvin refuses because they “live in a free country,” and the very next panel he is already in bed with the lights off and a stunned expression on his face. The comic ends with Calvin still in bed, in a similar frame from the previous panel, and called her mom a communist. Another example of adult topic being used for comedy is when Calvin wanting to hit this other character named Susie but Hobbes states that “some philosophers say that true happiness comes from a life of virtue.” After that Calvin took is advice and do productive things like taking out the garbage, cleaning his room, doing his homework, set up the table for dinner, giving his mom a card, and shoveling the sidewalk for his dad. However, once he was done, he had nothing else to do and hits Susie with a snowball anyway. After word, Calvin states that he wants to write his own philosophy book and Hobbes comment on how virtue needs some cheaper thrills. One of the interesting charms of Calvin & Hobbes is that in some comics the art style either alters the look of the characters slightly or does a complete 180. For example, in one comic shows these two characters that look like they were from a silver age Batman comic having an argument about their baby being a rabbit. The father is confused on why their baby is a rabbit and the mother acting like the baby is not a rabbit. But in the last panel it is revealed that the two characters are just Calvin and Susie playing “house” and it end with Calvin being frustrated and leaves Susie who ask how Calvin can play pretend with his stuffed tiger and not her stuffed rabbit. What I like about this comic in particular is how determined Watterson was to drastically change his art style, make an odd story, and keeping it up until the last panel just for joke. I also how realistic the characters are even though they are cartoons. In some comics Calvin and Hobbes discuss some serious topics like the fragility of life and how people can take it for granted. But in other comics Calvin and Hobbes are just playing pretend or Calvin is just doing silly faces. Calvin is acting like a kid, because it is true that kids do stupid stuff because they do not know better, but kid are also smarter than most people would think.