#sucks for them but at least i get to do a cool dramatic lineart

[ratfest]

eclipse

[heysawbones]

Watchmans

It is 2018. I have been reading comics for over 20 years, and making them for about ten. I have never read Watchmen. 

I even own the damn thing. I’m not sure when it got into my collection; it’s almost as if it was assigned to me when I started making comics where people fuck and say bad words. @beesmygod suggested that I ought to actually, you know, read the book. Assess how it’s aged. To make a long story short: it’s okay.

To make a short story long, I’ll break my assessment down into sections. People love that.

Art

It’s great. It’s not exciting, but it’s incredibly solid. It doesn’t feel “off”, while at the same time it never comes off as excessively referenced. The color palette can be jarring, and played a part in me not reading the book for a long time. I stopped noticing it after a while, and sometimes if you squint real hard and ignore the lineart, the colors look cool together in and of themselves. A notable exception: Nite Owl looks absolutely ridiculous without clothes on. It’s like Dave Gibbons got the script, read “chubby man” and thought, aw no, people hate looking at those. Nite Owl is the Ken Doll genitalia of Fat. It’s off-putting.

The comic makes great use of layouts, and pages always end on good narrative beats. Easy to follow (visually).

Story

Watchmen is what happens when a friend of yours tells you about some drama that’s clearly really exciting to them, but not to you. You don’t know the people involved. Your friend tells you everything that happened, and maybe even in the right order, but doesn’t tell you why you should care. That was the biggest issue for me, really: the story couldn’t convince me to invest in the characters. Is it because there are too many of them, so the focus is too broad? Is it that none of them are interesting people? The women in particular are boring in this comic, though at least the original Silk Spectre has a good line or two about Tijuana Bibles. I’d say that the women are less characters than props, but that would imply that the males had depth. Rorschach is the only character who, while not deep, has any weight to him at all. 

There are a lot of references to the Cold War and Mutually Assured Destruction in this comic. There’s even a somewhat obscure reference to Nixon’s “Mad Bomber” strategy, which impressed me. Even so, I don’t feel like the comic makes the best use of the material. The threat of nuclear annihilation feels like background noise, even as the world encounters a potential crisis over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This is more than a cosmetic issue, as the threat of annihilation is what drives the climax of the book. Going into Ozymandias’ big reveal, my initial response was, “Was this really necessary?” Things didn’t seem bad enough to warrant something so dramatic. Imagine what kind of shit he could’ve pulled if he was fully prepared for the Cuban missile crisis. What a drama queen. I assume this was an oversight; of all the criticism hurled at Ozymandias by the other characters, nobody tells him that he’s overreacting - just that they can’t believe he’s doing this “mad scientist shit”. When it’s done, they say, “All we did was fail to stop him from saving the world”. No, you failed to stop him from throwing a tanty. He didn’t save the world. It wasn’t in imminent danger in the first place.

All of that said, it’s not a terrible comic. It’s ambitious as all hell, which I respect. Is it a great comic? Well, we’ve collectively decided it is, so that means it is. Is it a great comic on its own merits, read in 2018? Not really. It has too much trouble with all of its moving parts, and knowing how to prioritize them properly to keep people focused. They even layer another comic in, a narrative-within-a-narrative. It’s an interesting affectation, but it doesn’t help with the impression of noise. It’s a real noisy comic.

On Rorschach

People have accused Watchmen of romanticizing the self-aggrandizing, tone-deaf attitude and behavior of Rorschach. A friend of mine believed he was an author insert. I think you’d have to assume the author really, really dislikes himself to believe that. Rorschach is not meant to be liked; he’s meant to set the book’s tone/thematic conflict, and he’s meant to be understood. In understanding him, you may find things about him that you do not hate. He isn’t even always wrong, which I think confuses some readers. 

Rorschach is incredibly obnoxious. I think the author was pretty open about that. If you have to be beat over the head with constant declarations of how shitty a person is to be satisfied that the author isn’t glorifying being shitty, I just don’t know what to tell you. 

On The Comedian

He’s like Dadaism if Dadaism was fascist, instead of the opposite of that. The shittiest nihilist. I don’t get him. Is he just there to suck? Why did anybody put up with this guy? Sure, he moves the plot along, but otherwise, man. Why are you here.

Moral relativism

The book’s thematic conflict seems to be “moral relativism versus absolutism”, but I can’t tell where the book ultimately lands in regard to that question. Perhaps that is the point, as we utterly fail to do that in real life, as well. Or, perhaps the book forgets about the thematic conflict partway through. It’s hard to tell. What the book does concretely do, is drive home how even moral absolutists can’t agree on what the correct absolute morals are. Just... like in real life. I wish the comic touched on this theme again near the end. It would have helped pull things together.

On women

Alan Moore’s depiction of women in this comic is just a dang bummer. It really is. Every living woman in the comic is defined in some way by her relationship to sex: a prostitute, a woman who falls for her would-be rapist, a woman largely kept as a consort to the human stand-in for nuclear weapons. A woman who loathes her husband’s work because it keeps her from getting the sex she wants. Two women get in a fight about being gay and having sex. Neither of the living female heroes gave much of an actual shit about fighting crime, and even seem annoyed to be dragged along. Rorschach has problems with everyone, but women in particular, he doesn’t see as people. None of these things in and of themselves are necessarily indicative of an author’s narrow view of women - this might be controversial, but I think even “a woman who falls for her would-be rapist” could theoretically be done well. When nearly all of your references to women are like this, it’s a pattern. It would be one thing if this pattern only showed up when viewed through Rorschach’s narrative lens, but that isn’t the case. This is normative. Sucks.

2/5 arbitrary stars. Historically important, interesting in that context. Not that interesting, otherwise.

edit: @gunwildversuseverything , thanks for the heads up

[dotzines]

Artist spotlight: Sam Howard!

✿ Instagram ✿

Header source: [X]  

Introduce yourself Hello! I am a university student studying geeky drawings and how to make them, sometimes including doodles of games like Night in the Woods, Stardew Valley, and, more recently, Maplestory 2. I love drawing cute beasts and other humanoid-monsters and their individual melodrama with routine. Also I worship chocolate covered raisins and hope that doesn't negate any cool thoughts you might've had about me until this sentence. When did you start drawing? Are you a digital or traditional artist? I started drawing about 3 years ago when I decided I wanted to pursue art as a career (and worked mad hard to build skills to feel "worthy"). I work mostly digitally, but I adore doing traditional work for sketches and conceptualizing. Do you use any traditional mediums? If so, which are your favorites? I'm very simple, I mostly just use graphite and the occasional markers and ink pens. I love cartoony looks, so it works well for me!

Why do you prefer traditional over digital? (or viceversa) I get a lot cleaner colors for digital and overall the crisper look I yearn for. I prefer to sketch things out traditionally sometimes, but digitally allows me to save multiple renditions of sketches for me to compare to very easily within the same file without mess or struggle with color picking/matching! I also adore the ranges of doing more dramatic lighting and comparing which I like better haha. What do you think is the most challenging part about being a traditional/digital artist? With digital art, it is harder to maintain loose sketches or lines. I hate using smoothing in Photoshop because of the inherent (and purposeful) lag that comes with it, but with the tablet I've got it's necessary or else the lines jitter insanely due to the nibs for the tablet not exactly working (especially since this isn't exactly a drawing tablet). On that same note, having your medium being expensive but durable (as opposed to traditional being over time) isn't the most convenient or adaptable. What inspires your pieces? Goofy mishaps in day-to-day life. When I or other friends tell silly, seemingly small stories about their day or my day I feel a melodramatic urge to be romantically artsy with their/my entertaining 5  to 20 seconds!

image source: [X]   Explain your "everyday" drawing process My first thoughts are usually "What would be bouncy fun" or "What's something this character would do odd in a normal situation" to at least get the ball rolling. If neither of those work for my goal then I ask what has happened to me or someone else similarly that I can draw from, and then I make 3 thumbnails. Do you have an artist you admire (or more than one)?

Saira Vargas (https://www.instagram.com/sairasays/) is a huge inspiration to me due to the fluidity of all of her character drawings. They all swoop the viewer in and follow them out of their form with amazing line-less grace I wish to have! Jewel Suan (https://www.instagram.com/swansgarden/) also has stunning art that conveys human body motion in such dramatic and silhouette-perfect ways, it's like feeling a good stretch! Is there an artwork you are most proud of? Why? I was in my first zine recently and I finished this piece https://www.instagram.com/p/BxHeJLUlfWq/ for it. I feel like I colored it exactly the way I want to continue doing so, and as something that matches my style. I was also really proud of the lineart being crisp, since I had struggled to find a brush that I was comfortable enough with the maintain a look like this. I did it within a couple of weeks, and though I'm disappointed I didn't try shading it very much, I love the overall mood and movement of it!

Do you listen to music (or tv shows/films/anything else) when drawing? I often listen to Jenna Marbles podcasts or video game soundtracks, such as Night in the Woods or Pokemon Colosseum!

image source: [X]   What makes art interesting for you? The fact I can make silly thoughts comprehensible in an organized way! Sometimes in a goof-infused organized way. What do you do when art block strikes? It's not often, but when this happens I try and take breaks so I can focus on my surroundings and genuinely absorb all the things I appreciate in life. This knocks me out of my funk, but I always take an extra minute to realize my art is from people whose hearts I love and remember it's not all for the art, but for those who watch/look at it, so I can make sure I don't forget the reason I make it. What’s the most valuable art advice you’ve ever received?

Make multiple iterations of everything you do! Your first idea will always suck, your second will have already been thought of, and your third can be the rock ready for polish.