Week 7 Maus

I took the Holocaust class a few semesters back and we briefly talked about Maus, i had heard of it before then but never really wanted to read it until after the class. I thought overall it was very interesting storytelling wise, i've read a lot of book about the Holocaust and survives tales so im familiar with the names of camps and the timeline of the war and other peoples perspectives from the camps. I liked the set up of how it was him talking to his dad and it would skip to the present to show what hes like now and his problems now and how Art Spiegelman reacts to his father. I thought that made it more personal for not only his dad but for him as the artist of this book and putting himself in it too. I also thought it was neat that he actually put the comic he made about his mom into it he didnt just talk about and move on, we got to actually see it.
I thought it was ironic that his dad was treating the black hitchhiker like the Nazis treated him but didn't really understand it. Or when Art brought up that his dad was basically one of those caricatures of old Jewish men, because he wanted to save money i thought was also ironic. I liked that it told what he did to survive what he traded and what stuff was worth, and what he remembered happening to the people he knew in the camps. I thought it was selfish of the dad to remarry and not actually like the person but demand she stay with him, even if she did just want money.
I thought it was interesting what animals he picked to represent what people. i thought it was funny that his girlfriend is french so he wanted to make her a frog but because she converted he made her a mouse, and how he wanted to portray that in the story to his dad.
Overall i liked it and it was interesting, the art style was simple and i could tell what was going on most of the time and i could read the font so that makes it very accessible. The storytelling was good and i really enjoyed all the little details. I was sad that his mothers diaries were destroyed i thought that would have really added something to the book and given it another good perspective. i liked that it showed the father son relationship between them also and the relationships of everyone made it more real. I also really liked that it focused on the camps and survivors and not just Germany and Hitler, in a lot of books it focuses on Hitler or hate of Germany and Hitler and it was nice to see something more focused on the survivors in the camps and how they got there and their timeline and how they felt.

Week 6 part 2 films

We were asked to watch Two films by Sally Cruikshank, Quasi at the Quackadero and Make Me Psychic. I found it in the library.
Quasi at the Quackadero was interesting, the art style and animation style immediately reminded me of the cartoon Super Jail, and in a way the writing did too. I could follow the plot of the story well and  i overall enjoyed it and actually found it funny at parts; when they looked into mirrors and when they pushed Quasi into the time exhibit.
Make Me Psychic was fun too, though i hate when things end with they were just dreaming and it was never real. I didnt like it as much as the first one but it was still charming. It still reminds me of Super Jail in almost every way. though i think unlike Super Jail i dont think i would have watched these on my own.
I definitely enjoyed these animations more than the comics i read for this section. While the art style was still on par with what i didnt like about the comics im always more forging with the art style of animation because of the movement, i have high standards for things that dont move. If its moving im not constantky looking at the same image its always changing as opposed to a crudely drawn comic panel i have to stare at that doesnt change, its hard to explain.  overall they are both very abstract, i prefer the animation style wise, writing wise, and overall it was just more enjoyable to me.

Week 6 part 1 comics

For the "Underground Comix" section of the course i choose to read some of Robert Crumbs The book of Mr. Natural and Aline Kominsky Crumb Need more love a graphic memoir. First i read the Mr. Natural. I absolutely hated it, The writing was boring, not funny, misogynistic, and overall just not my taste. I didn't get very far into because i couldn't stomach it but its just not my thing. The character designs are also bland and i dont really like the shading technique or art style in general which also made it a hard read. 
Next i read some of Need More Love, Aline Kominsky Crumb; I hated the art style much more than i did when i read Mr. Natural. It made it really distracting and hard to read just because the overall abstractness. I did like that i got to see some of them in color because i really like to see color in things but the drawings really took away for me. this is a memoir book so its part actual book with some comics thrown in, which kind of threw me off at first because i wasn't expecting that. It was also really hard to read the comics because of the type, its very small and close together and overall sloppy but does give it a hand lettered look which i assume it was just written in like that by hand. I dont think if i would say the writing was "funny" again it was hard for me to read because of the hand lettering but it was more ok for me to read than Mr. Natural. It was just stories about her life, I remember liking the one where someone cooked good spaghetti sauce and that they were watching a gangster movie and see recalls some shady business partners her dad had. 
overall for both of them i definitely wouldn't read either on my own time. one was definitely more likable than the other for me personally, one i couldn't stomach and one was just hard for me to physically look at and read. 
I also skimmed some of the Girl Fights comic from the resource page and  i read some of it but mostly skimmed over the pictures. while i dont necessarily like how the girls are drawn i thought the first part when she stabbed that guy was funny but overall i dont think i would like it at all. it mostly just made me uncomfortable. which is understandable since the first two comics made me uncomfortable too but all in different ways. 

Week 5

The first thing i noticed about a contract with god was that for the first while there are no speech bubbles until a while in. i though that was really interesting. the contract with god story i also thought was interesting, im not sure what kind of statement it was trying to make or what will eisners beliefs are but it was an interesting read. i liked that there wasnt speech bubbles for a while. when i was reading the part after the guy gets rich and hes with that girl i pictured the girls voice as Harley Quinn from the animated batman and that made it fun. i guess its irony he died after making the new contract? or that the boy at the end was kind of like him when he was little, helping people then making the same contract.
Blankets also dealt with god and both mention a pact with god or a spiritual pact. i liked the line quality of the work that the more cartoony than realistic approach more than what will eisner was doing in a contract with god.  Blankets also felt a lot more abstract, art wise, more organic and flow-y, less angular the majority of the time. both also dealt with rejection and rejecting or being rejected from religion. Blankets also switched back and forth a lot between them being young and then teenagers then adults. it was very non-linear but contract with god i thought was very linear.
I like the storytelling of a contract with god more than blankets but i liked reading blankets more visually. blankets for me was just more appealing to look at but it was long and not that interesting. the story of a contract with god was simple and just more interesting to read.
overall i like aspects of both visually and storytelling wise.

Week 4 Comic Book

This week I started out with Tin Tin, Explorers on the moon. I use to watch Tin Tin when I was little on TV; I haven’t seen the newish movie though. The panels are the normal square and rectangles that I normally see in comics. The colors are saturated but not too saturated. I don’t remember the show enough to compare writing but overall I thought it was good.

Tales from the Crypt is something I loved to watch as a kid but ive never extensively read the comics. I got some of the DVD seasons a few years ago and the behind the scenes with the comics, was really cool and hearing about the censorship stuff. It also had normal panels that I would expect as well as very saturated colors. The colors add creepy-ness and excitement I think and normally when I think of comics this is the kind I think about with really saturated colors. Tales from the Crypt is a lot more graphic style than Tin Tin with darker shading and brighter colors. I like the little short stories they do instead of one overarching plot thing; it reminds me of a Twilight Zone type thing. Overall I really liked what I read of it.

For my Carl Barks reading I read some Donald Duck, he first thing I noticed right away was that the panels are really wacky shapes and not like the other comics I had just read. The colors were saturated but not to the degree of Tales from the Crypt I think. I think that the panel layout is really nice and dynamic with the different shapes it uses, I really like that its more than just boxes, its funnier to look at. I really like Donald Duck so I really enjoyed reading it.

I also read some Bugs Bunny just because it was under week 4 with the course resources, it was interesting not as colorful and box panels but it was good.

Overall I like comic books being an all at once thing rather than having to wait a week for the news paper, its super convenient. I also really like when colors is comics are more saturated like in Tales from the crypt but I like the non box panels from Donald Duck.