Literature of Comics and the Graphic Narrative

  A strip that I found interesting and innovative from the Smithsonian Collection was Frank King’s Gasoline Alley. The selected strips from the comic focus on the daily lives of Uncle Walt and his curious adopted kid, Skeezix. It is a very relaxing and meditative slice of life. I thought the selected strips were interesting as they explored dreams and dream like sequences on pg.108-109 and pg.111, much like McCay’s Little Nemo. On pg.108-109 they enter a painting, while making rather amusing statements on the world of the art. It is interesting to see the disconnect of the two different styles of the simple characters and the modernist environment. On pg.111, it explores Skeezix dreams, and how they are influenced by the world around him. His orange and black striped bed sheets become a tiger that transforms into elephant, that then turns into a hot air balloon, and finally into a tub. In the panel where Skeezix wakes up, the reader sees Walt in orange pajamas, and Corky sleeping ...

  I found a lot of what McCloud discussed in this comic quite intriguing and well thought out. An aspect of the reading I thought was particularly important is when he discusses the six steps in creating comics and art in general: idea/purpose, form, idiom, structure, craft, and surface. I thought it was important because I think every creative focuses on one of these stages at least once in their development. Although illustration is another form than comics, I resonated a lot with the examples he provided of different stages in growth a creator can be in. I liked how he made it clear that there isn’t a clear order to them, and that different steps can be skipped and revisited at different times. I feel like while in school I’ve gone through stages of being too overly concerned with figuring out craft and structure, which has gotten in the way of creating something that actually means something to me. Not that it has to be some grand self-important statement or something. It's jus...

  I found a lot of The Comic Book History of Comics interesting. It gave a pretty wide scope view on the different artists, publishers, writers, editors, and studios that influenced each other throughout time. An aspect of the comic I found interesting that I’d like to focus on is how WW2 influenced both animation and comics. It was fascinating to see how different artists and producers in the field adapted to something like war. Jack Kirby and Joe Simmon created Captain America by facing him against the real-life villain at the time, Hitler. They built a hero that represented American ideals and patriotism in the face of a real-life war, and it became a success. I think it probably helped embolden many young readers with a sense of patriotism, though I’m not sure if that was good or a bad thing as it wasn’t a very accurate portrayal of war and gave an idealistic version. After Pearl Harbor, though DC editors chose to have heroes like superman stop fighting in the war in comics. I...

  I think what impacted me the most from The Arrival is the familiarity of the story to the experience my parents, and probably many other immigrants, had when coming to America. I think it encapsulates the various struggles that come with acclimating to a new culture, along with the reasons why someone would leave their home for a foreign land; whether it be to escape war like the old man in the factory on page 85 or slavery like the girl on the air boat on page 52. The main character leaves his home in search of opportunity and from fear of the imposing threat of the spiked creature that has taken over his home country. He goes to a foreign land to earn enough money and stability to allow his whole family to come as well. This reminded me a lot of my dad’s immigration to the US from Vietnam. He was the first to come over in his family, running from the threat of the war. He was only 17 and faked his identity to board a ship in the US, which is similar to the main character who a...