Oglaf

Oglaf is an adult webcomic created by Trudy Cooper and Doug Bayne. It's really raunchy and sometime can be grotesque at times and very weird. The universe Oglaf is set is very sex focused and centered around the absurdities of it's world. The strips are mostly episodic in nature but still maintaining continuity and plot lines with reoccurring characters like Oglaf and the Mistress. 
It's extremely funny with some unexpected punchline. Once in a while it would even parody tropes found in fantasy setting like in the strips like The Glamazon Ways, Dimorphism, or Oriel. 
I like the humor and the characters in it, even one shots that bearly has anything to do the main character I find amusing. 
I don't read much web comics mostly because in the past I would get invested in a web comic only for the creator discontinue. One of my favorite web comics was Hanna's not a Boy's Name. I found it funny, creative and compelling. However it stopped updating and slowed until it stopped. 
Oglaf on the other had continues to update regularly for years. It make it easier to track and keep my interests in the comic. 

Pretty Deadly (Assessment)

1) After reading the first issue of Pretty Deadly I felt mostly confused. I really didn't know what was going on with the story or the premise of the comic. I didn't know if I was just not paying attention or if the comic needed to flesh out it self a bit more. It could be because there were poetic verses in the thought brackets and I misinterpreted it as being a literal description of what was happening in the story and as a result I lost track of what was being told/shown. I know that it's set in the Wild West, it's about a girl with two toned eyes and she has a blind man as her companion and there's possibly a man after her, then there is the man in the brothel who was shot for unknown reasons. I am intrigued in how it would all unfold, but for now I'm more frustrated after reading it than I am eager.

2) In the opener of the first issue it shows a flashback of a girl (possibly "Bunny") running through the fields as "Butterfly" asked her if she was afraid, in which she replied with yes before shooting a rabbit in the head. I feel like it was very symbolic (possibly meaning on that day she became a new person?) but either way it is effective in making a connection, at least with me. Even though I didn't understood the events well I still knew what the mood and the atmosphere was because of the excellent  art.

3) I would adapt this into live action movie possible make the metaphors more clear.

Diary of a Dominatrix

Diary of a Dominatrix by Molly Kiely is interesting in that it wasn't what I expected. The thought of pain and humiliation squeaks me out and while there's part that succeeded in getting that reaction out of me, I was mostly engaged in Zelda's work. Her character is peculiar in that she talks about her work as a dominatrix, her clients, outfits, what she does during sessions, and even where she does it, but you also see her outside of her role. You see that she's actually self conscious about what would her clients think once they realize she wasn't imposing in real life, she used to look like a stereotypical geek, she has a boyfriend, she has vanilla sex with him, and she enjoys cutsy things, and cut in between panels talking about her job. She talks about it so bluntly like she was analyzing a comic book rather than going through the steps of doing a vasectomy.

While I have some ideas of the types of things that goes on in BDSM like teacher fetish and bondage, I didn't really know how far it could go, and in the area where it did go that far were the one that I bailed out on quickly and went to the next page. 

At the beginning of the comic when Zelda described the various outfit she puts on it was  presented as  if it was one of those old school paper doll cut outs. Zelda is dressing up to whatever her clients desire be it a solid black outfit or a clown costume. Funny enough she said that there was only one client that wanted latex, but several wanted her to be in the teacher outfit. Seeing the ins and outs of BDSM through Zelda's eyes is pretty fascinating. 

Acme Novelty Library #1

Acme Novelty Library by Chris Ware is a strange comic about a man(boy?) named Jimmy Corrigan with a strained relationship with his mother. The way it's presented and utilize color throughout the issues changes. An example would be how the first strip was made to look like newspaper comic strip with similar colors and panel layout, but in later strips the panels become more dynamic and varied. My favorite page would be were Jimmy calling his mother and the panels deconstructs parts of the characters like the mother's hand or the telephone poll in smaller panels that would reconnect to the main panel creating a circle.
Jimmy's relationship with his mother is strange and mostly hostile. I could never tell if he loves her, if he hates her, or if he has a strange Oedipus complex. I thought the the comic was going to go on the route of "boy genius", but was surprised that it wasn't like that at all. Then I thought it was going to be more like "washed up kid actor", but that wasn't the case either. I still don't know what exactly is going on with Jimmy Corrigan. Sometime it bounces between young Jimmy and old, and genius Jimmy and normal kid Jimmy. All that is known is that Jimmy's father left him and his mother. It is worth noting that in the first strip you can clearly see the mother's face but in latter panels her face is obscured.

Junji Ito's work

The work of Junji Ito could be summed up in a handful of words: surreal, outrageous, fantastical, morbid, and most notable scary.
In terms of horror in comics very few, if any body could top Junji Ito. His first well known manga that cemented his reputation in horror was Tomie, but reading the manga I can tell he was in the growing pain stage of his career. The art was wonky, the story while interesting was surprisingly bland, and it lacked atmosphere, but even in his early work is sowed the seeds of what he would produced later in his works. As the series went on it becomes more twisted with more creative visuals and becoming more psychological. In the later chapter his style begins to develop.
His most well known manga "Uzumaki" would became a good representation of Ito as a creator. The story is literally about a town becoming obsessed with spirals to the point that it would envelop the town and lead to it's demise. It is such a far fetch idea, yet it works so well. You see the madness unfold and we don't know why. Why did the spiral curse happened? We don't know and quiet frankly it doesn't matter.
Ito's bibliography consists mainly of one shot that begins, takes us on a wild ride, and then ends without bothering to answer some questions. He takes ludicrous concepts like spirals, or head shaped balloon, or land walking sharks and somehow gives it weight. Some of my favorite stories would have to be "The Whispering Woman", "Scarecrows", "The Enigma of Amigara Fault", My Dear Ancestors", "Falling", and "The Red Turtleneck". I remember hearing someone once describing Ito's stories as ones that never have a happy ending, there are only people who never survived or survivors who are doomed to misery. It's depressing, strange, and can be too much for a lot of people, but anyone who is interested in horror should take a look at Ito.
There is a video created by Youtuber Eyepatchwolf who went over Junji Ito amazingly well and I highly recommend watching his analysis.

Stories from Heavy Metal-Moebius

This week I read Moebius' Heavy Metal. My first exposure to Heavy Metal was Nostalgia Critic's review of the film back in 2012. The majority of the criticism he had with it was the incomplete plots that starts and ends, lack of logic, and how little each story connects with one another. He had stated he like the range of style each story has and the creativity the film has.
Coming into the comic his review was in the back of my mind while I read it. After reading it I was given understanding about what it was trying to achieve.
Heavy Metal is very surreal and sporadic jumping shifts from story to story. In the first story the two characters were gunned down without explanation and the story ends. Another  has two naked women smoking something, one of them gets ill, the other leaves just when she grew, then ends. Then there was a story of a messenger for the gods witnessing the gods brutally murdering a man traumatizing the messenger and causing him to vow to stop the gods, then ends. The final story is about a guy making a sex robot then it turns on him-end.
Heavy Metal is definitely not a comic meant for stories but fleeting experiences, and surreal universes. and I feel like the film was trying to mimic that. The story bits seem to reflect that as well as it's emphasize on strange locations and visual aesthetics that different each story.  Moebius style changed heavily from each story.
I never really watch Heavy Metal in it entirety apart from segments with the taxi driver, the robot, and the zombie plane, however seeing Nostalgia Critic's review and other who share similar thoughts may be watching movie expecting it to be like a normal movie, rather than something that was entirely experimental.

Sterotypes

I believe that for the most part stereotypes are outdated and mostly inaccurate. They are not made by observation but misconception and laziness. While I do understand the use as a visual short cut it could cause huge problems with the groups being stereotyped (like the "smart asian", "sassy black lady", "the greedy jew"). Not only being plain racist it causes the character to be one diminutional because all they will be is that stereotype. While there are real life people who fit the stereotype of their group, Art Spiegelman's father from Maus was described as such, they're usually people who happen to have some stereotypical aspect rather than being the stereotype.
It might be okay for inanimate objects or ideas to convey a message but it still might pose a problem with limiting what could be told. Sticking to stereotypes can limit creativity and could cause clichés to happen. There were times where stereotype did work well, but it's usually because it's a subversion or deconstruction of stereotypes or clichés.
As someone who is deeply invested in the safety and well being of animals it pains me whenever I see animals in cartoons or movies in awful conditions or see animals portrayed in in a bad light for the sake of making an easy and recognizable villain. Last year there was a huge debate surrounding "Secret Life of Pets" and it's use of stereotypes. You see fishes in fishbowls, birds in small cages, and other unsafe living conditions that could kill the pets in real life. While yes it is just a movie, the movie promotes the message that these living conditions are okay for pet. It's reinforced time and time again in every medium. People see these stereotypes and are shown that it's okay. It does not help that Petsmart heavily promoted Secret Life of Pets and slapped the logo everywhere.
Then there is the issue of stereotyping animals. There are several shorthand involving animals like the wise owl, childish monkey, honorable lion, or the immoral vulture. When 101 Dalmatian came out people went out and bought dalmatian dog because they wanted a dog just like in the movie not realizing dalmatians are not good family pets and need training, leaving many of them abandoned. While not an example of stereotyping it does show the power of media and how it could condition us to feel a certain way. In Will Eisner's "Contract with God" one of the characters has a vicious pitbull to show that the guy is tough. Pitbulls are heavily affected by these types of portrayals making them less desirable and even made the target of groups who wants to ban the breed and euthanize any in a shelter. Such portrayals are unfair. Snakes are not evil, they're snakes with no concepts of morality. Chimpanzee do not act like toddlers and will kill you if given the chance. Dogs do not live by who's "alpha"

Maus

My experience with reading Maus by Art Spiegelman was honestly really uncomfortable as it should be. It's a hard one to sit through and I found myself taking breaks when it got too intense. It's a biography about the author's parent's, Valdek and Anja, holocaust experience and the aftermath. The time jumps between past and present and and is sometimes non chronological. The present takes place after Art's mother had committed suicide and Valdek remarriage with Mala, another holocaust survivor, he is constantly discussing Valdek's life and recording them to use in the comic. He showed the strained relationship between Art and his father and depicts him as he was. He's cheap, confrontational, short-temperted, stubborn, and ironically racist despite all that happened to him. Art had even described him as being a "stereotypical jew" to Mala. He doesn't paint his family as being perfect. It's exactly how it was in real life.
The background of "Maus" and the political environment that it was created in had always fascinated me so much. It was the first comic to win a pulitzer prize and gained wide recognition, and while it wasn't the first comic to have a heavy subject, it did allow other comics to be recognized in a higher regard. During the time of it's release there was a rise of Holocaust Denial. 
It's absolutely insane that there would be people who would deny such a tragedy that took the lives of over 6 million people and irreparably damaged so many more ever existed, however that was exactly was was happening during the 80's. I believe Maus and books and other medias like it shows the viewer what the nazis did and combated anti-semitism and ignorance. It opened discussions and reminded the masses that, yes the Holocaust really happened, and people suffered and die, and the scars still remains. The massive success of Maus brought up the topic of the Holocaust and it's still popular today. I remembered going through the book fair's order catalogue back in middle school and Maus would always be at the best seller's list toping books like Twilight and Ergon. It's still attracting new readers and keeping the discussion fresh. But now I feel like it is more important than ever. With the rise of Nazi-ideals, antisemitism, and the new wave of holocaust deniers it's more vital than ever to raise awareness and remind the world of the danger that nazi ideology can lead to. 

Blankets

Blankets by Craig Thomson is one of those titles where it could illicit a variety of emotions from the viewer, or at least it got one from me, and depicts the harsh reality the protagonist live in and who was only spared a few comforts in his life.
There were certain parts of the story where the themes hit me to such a degree that it was uncomfortable to move forward in the reading, but a good majority of it left me with little to relate to. How Thomson depicted the themes and conflicts of bullying, neglect, loneliness, molestation, religion, artistic pursuit, and identity is so raw and unapologetic showing the crass ugliness of it all. And I feel like the art perfectly encapsulate that, with the heavy brushstrokes, the wild imagery, and the brilliant visual metaphors, and the excellent compositions in a lot of the panels. While the facial features are mostly dot eyes the body language conveyed the expression the characters are feeling.
It's very interesting how Craig grew up during the course of the book and how his views of people and his beliefs evolved. In the beginning he was a devout christian who's goal was to be good and go to heaven and live in eternal paradise, but as he grew older he was becoming disillusioned with the foundation of christianity and began to despise aspects of it such as the group hive mind and close mindedness, and by the end of it he basically divorced himself from the religion entirely but still retained the core ideas. He also develops an interest in the arts and science in ways that a much younger Craig would scoff at. Such as in an earlier panel Craig was telling his mother how outrageous it was that the school was teaching the theory of evolution with his mother agreeing, but later on he was discussing carbon dating with his brother's wife and was asking her questions about geology. It's interesting seeing how Craig progresses, and how the changes are small but frequent, unlike some other fictions where the character change happens in big revelations and plot twists. While it is dramatic, it's not really realistic or relatable.
However unfortunately I found myself bored through a good portion of it. Another major theme of the book is first love, a subject I'm mostly uninterested in. It was hard to keep my attention on the book when I wanted to know more about Raina's family and their issues more than her relationship with Craig. But I fully admit that it is a personal thing and not everyone is going to agree. There are people who very much enjoys the romantic portion of it and can relate heavily on the slow burn of a relationship fizzling out, but I'm not one of those people and that seriously effected my enjoyment of the book.

Calvin and Hobbes

I read Bill Watterson's comic strip series Calvin and Hobbes and it brought back a lot of memories. I remembered reading Calvin and Hobbes sporadically when I was in elementary school and while I don't remember anything from the strip I somehow still feel nostalgic when rereading years later.
When reading the strip it's easy to get really into and the next thing you know you end up reading the entire pdf file during your one of your classes. It's strangely addictive and calming in a way. It relives old childhood memories of when most of us would humanize our toys and go on adventures on our backyard, and explore our imagination without inhibition in the way.  But despite all this I do feel like this is a comic more aimed at adult rather than kids. While both demographics can certainly enjoy it on a surface level, I feel like adults would get the most out of it since much of the humor would go over little children's heads, and it taps in on nostalgia, something that would deeply resonate with grown up who looks back on their childhood with rose-tinted glasses. Throughout the series Calvin is constantly told how easy his life and how as a 6 year old he doesn't have problem like his parents does, and honestly he doesn't. He lives a very care free life with little things in his way.
The humor of strip is mostly dialogue driven humor but does occasionally have a shift in tone from the usual antics such as when Calvin asks Hobbes about the existence of god. Reading it now as an adult I feel like it resonate with me more than when I was Calvin's age.

The Arrival

The Arrival is a very peculiar comic in that it doesn't use dialogue or any recognizable words throughout the entire book. Every bit of information that has been relayed had done so visually. We know how a character is feeling by observing their facial expression and body gestures. We see close ups of their actions to indicate what they are doing. There's flashbacks to show the story of other immigrant's story and how they got to the same destination as the protagonist. Whenever there is a mood shift the temperature of the black and white pages changes.
An example of it happening was when the protagonist was working a factory and meet an old man who recounted his time in the army, in the beginning it was a warm sepia tone as the crowd of towns folk cheers for the troops but it soon transform into a much more cooler gray as the solider marches on and the and then it became a more murky blue-gray color when the end of the war drew near.
 Considering that The Arrival is about the immigrant experience it's fitting that the comic would not have dialogue, it forces the viewer to adopt the same point of view as the characters, almost all of them were immigrants coming into a new world and experiencing culture shock, language barriers, and loneliness. Since many of them do not know what anybody is saying or read anything they rely on what they're seeing.

Girl Fight

I've read "Girl Fight Comics"as my readings. I chose to read that title because it sounded like an exploitation film and it was exactly what I expected. The story that mostly stuck out was the first one starring "Fox" a woman with amnesia trying to come home to Africa.
It's interesting that there were themes of lesbianism, feminism, sexual abuse, and neo imperialism within the writings.  It's still framed in a hyper-sexual and very violent way, but it's there and prominent. It's also worth mentioning that there is racist stereotypes in the comics despite it having a black protagonist and the comic talking about the exploitation of Africans. There was even a part where Fox was running around in a leopard skin bikini and would later decide to abandon civilization and live in the jungle. Later in a different story the group of feminist ganged up on a abusive black man and shouted racial slurs at him. The africans the tribe was described as primitive by the americans.
A lot of it even comes across as misandric in a way. I think the only positive male character was Fox's father and the scientist in a later story. Most men are written as violent blow hards who abuse and rape women who get their come uppens, usually in the form of a knife in the back.
Reading this it was interesting seeing how the ideas are tackled. It's not tame and it's not apologetic about what it is. The comic knows what it wants to be and it has a specific audience.  The average person wouldn't be the type to pick this comic up. The comic was written by a woman named Trina Robbins and I do wonder as to what her intent and her thought process when writing Girl Fight Comics.

Understanding Comics

The section I found most intriguing was when McCloud discussed comic transitions and how they are used in chapter three entitled "Blood in the Gutters". He first talked about the "gutters" themselves and its power to imply events not shown to the audience by providing the them with closure. This naturally segue into panel transitions and forms.
The first transition mentioned was "Moment-to-Moment", it's when the panel focuses on the moment and it creates little closure. Next was "Action-to-Action", when the panels focuses on a particular action shown. Then there was "Subject-to-Subject", where the focus is within a scene or idea and requires higher degree of reader involvement and closure and without these factors the panels would not be as meaningful to the viewer. After that is "Scene-to-Scene", it is a transition that shows time and distance. In those panel deductive reasoning is needed to understand it.
He compared western comics to each other and noticed similarities with the about of the types of transitions used and the fondness of the action-to-action transitions. Even something as wildly different as Tin Tin and Fantastic Four that differs in both aesthetics and writing share similarities with transition trends. It gets even more interesting when McCloud compare comics with manga. The trend remains mostly similar except with the addition with aspect-to aspect transition. It shows the very eastern style of mangas and it ties with feudal era Japanese artworks such as Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Maple Viewing at Takao by Kanō Hideyori, and 13th Station: Hara by Utagawa Hiroshige. That style of showing pieces of the surrounding gives it an atmospheric and cinematic feel and slows down the pace. 
I find it interesting that despite media such as mangas that is meant to be consumed quickly it still takes it's time with these aspect-to-aspect and moment-to-moment panels. It takes advantage of the fact that tankōbons have hundreds of pages in each volume in comparison to western comics having around 10-30 pages for each issue.

Une Semaine de Bonte by Max Ernst

1) A woman showing her sick moves to a rooster balanced on a ball. Obviously the rooster is shook by the sheer skills. There is a plate full of tiny eggs and what seems to dead body near the stair well.

2) A half-bird man is creeping on a woman pulling an exorcist. His rooster buddy is next to him like the good bro he is.

3) Pretty-naked lady is over seeing a funeral and various animal creatures are also around the coffin. They didn't have the heart to inform her of the wardrobe malfunction.

4) It seems like pretty-naked lady is on the ground writhing in pain already regretting her fashion choice in the dead of winter while the animal creatures look over a scroll.

5) A woman is murdered and the killer left rosters on her bed as some sick prank. The rooster man is not pleased.

6) It goes full circle as the woman is now showing her sick moves this time on a woman, while the rooster man is creeping on her.