literature and comics

1. What is my reaction to what I just read? So I'm going to admit, I saw the animated adaption of this comic beforehand, and frankly I think it pales in comparison to the comic. Correct me if I'm wrong, they also threw in Barbara having a thing for Batman in the movie too right? Ew, they didn't have to do that, it wasn't even in the comic. No one liked that part! So overall, my ain take away from this comic is that, I inferred some things form the joker that I've never thought of before. This might just be my opinion, but here's what I took from it: When the joker is running away from batman once the robbing heist goes wrong, he tries to escape him in that rinky dinky red costume. When he finally makes the choice to evade batman and jump off the platform into some toxic waste, I feel like that was symbolic of suicide. When the joker came out, his skin was white, and he was more insane than he ever was before. With the build up of loosing his wife and being

Reconsidering the superhero, along with reading Watchmen for this week, I decided to revisit one of my own comic, Wonder Woman '77. the '77 comic is really beautiful and I am never going to regret buying it. When we were watching the old school Batman tv show with Adam West, I remembered how ridiculous comics used to be back then. The sarcasm and ridiculousness of the show impressed me. I felt the show was going to be outdated in a bad way, but it held up amazingly. Honestly I'm going to try and find more tv shows like that from the 70s. But back to the comics, I like how Batman above any other character has been able to be molded and repurposed for any given time in pop culture. He can be serious or silly and no one will question it. I especially love LEGO Batman. I think Batman has done a masterful job with keeping up with the times and learning to adapt, but not loose himself entirely.

Women's comics For this class, I read "This One Summer", and I absolutely loved it. I mentioned in class that I loved how subtle the book was as the story went on. In comics, I feel that we all expect grand gestures and big, dramatic sequences. "This One Summer" was very much realistic, relatable, and hard hitting. The way that the book was organized was masterful as well, some spreads had a great deal of breasting space, while the aritst,  Jillian Tamaki,  could work in beautiful realistic nature landscapes. It depicted the two girls, Rose and Windy, as real pre-teens. This might be a simple comment to make, but I also loved how they went with a white/purple color palette for the line art. It made the book a lot more light hearted and playful, if it was all black and white, I feel it would've lost some of its energy and life.

For this week I have read through Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. This graphic novel is unlike any other I have read so far. Mostly because there is such a range in artistic matter, from dynamic panels and "shots", to well drawn houses. All of which were done by the same person. I'd expect this versatility from the average comic book like Spiderman, but they usually have a large team to produce all of the comic book's content. I was amazed at how vulnerable Alsion was able to be when making this novel, and how in depth she was able to tell her story. My main critique for the novel, although its very trivial, is that there was a great deal of reading. I wished there was more visual symbolism throughout the novel. Overall I was very moved by her work of art.

My only real experience with Manga was Ouran High School Host Club, I got the manga after I rewatched the series a couple of times. Other than that, I only saw manga from screenshots on tumblr, I never got into reading them. There's many titles that I've meant to read, but I never had the time and they are a little difficult to obtain. I also felt like if I was reading manga in high school people would've labeled me a weeb, and I did feel embarrassed to a point to even want to read manga. Nonetheless I did watch a few different anime shows, the last one I think I watched was "Free!". I did go back and read "Barefoot Gen" after we watched it in class, arguably the manga is much more violent than the movie.

A wide world of comics I haven't read many comics that didn't originate in the US. The only one I really knew existed was Tin Tin, but even then I only really heard about the Tin Tin movie that came out years ago. I enjoye today's film "the triplets of belleville" for many reasons. I can't say I've seen anything like it before. The sharp animations and the odd pacing was wild. At times the film just made me anxious and uncomfortable, especially when the dog was on the floor depressed while it rained outside. I would love to show this to my sister, as she hasn't seen much adult/foreign animation. I guess I didn't realize how many comics I pay attention to are only American comics.