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.