Revised Maus Piece

I’m not gonna lie, when I think of comics the first thing that comes to mind is grown men fighting criminals in tights and outlandish garbs. Maybe I would then think to cats that love lasagna, or boys that wiff footballs, or those really political comics I never understand. But it certainly never jumps to a story about a writer interviewing his father on his time in the Nazi death camps during the Holocaust. Maybe it’s because of the first examples above, but I don’t think people grasped the idea that a comic could cover mature themes till Maus (and while mature comics had existed before Maus, Maus’s popularity brought the idea of mature comics to mainstream audiences).

It’s easy to see why a story like Maus became as influential as it was. Despite depicting a very adult and mature subject matter it’s something even children could follow. I remember friends of mine reading Maus back in the sixth grade. While it constantly depicts horrific imagery, nothing gory is ever shown. Characters swear, but it’s never anything major. And I think what adds to its appeal is the story’s subject matter. There is something so appealing about the holocaust, the fact that humanity could allow such heinous treatment of other human beings to happen and then let that go on for years. It’s hard to believe it even really happened, but it did. Like a terrible scene you want to look away from but can’t peel your eyes off of. Any retelling of a survivors experience in the holocaust is gonna be fascinating, because they all went through so much just to be able to tell their stories.

Art Spiegelman also doesn’t slack on the artwork when telling his story either, taking full advantage of the medium to add layers and depth to the story being presented. There’s an entire metaphor going on throughout the books where the holocaust victims are depicted as mice, while the Nazis are depicted as cats, showing the dominating presence the Nazi party had in that time in a way that could never be translated into a written format. It holds the narrative weight of a novel but also uses images to help deepen the impact of the story. When the audience sees an illustration of mice screaming in agony as they’re burned alive, it carries a weight with it that words could never hold a candle to. It’s for that, Maus was able to open people’s eyes to the potential of the medium. They could tell more mature stories on the level of  books or movies, and through using the strengths of the medium conveys a story only comics could tell.

From Super Man to Regular Man

I’ve noticed a shift in the styles of stories in comics as new variations on the style are created. Comic books are usually shown depicting super heroes, beings with superhuman qualities far away from the reality of daily life as a means of escapism for the average man. Even in comic books like Watchmen and The Killing Joke, which goes as far as possible to humanize its superheroes and villains, the viewer is still shown a grown man dressed up as a bat beating up a clown and a man with blue skin teleporting to Mars for some alone time. Still pretty far away from what you'd see driving to work. Comic books as we know it is inseparable from people’s perceptions of it as superhero stories. Obviously not all comics have to be about superheroes, bright spandex, and justice. The last thing I’d expect in an issue of The Peanuts is for Batman to show up and start beating up stores at the mall for celebrating Christmas too early. But the point stands that there is a clear divide between the Earth of comics and the Earth of our reality.

Graphic novels seemingly shifted focus of its contents from fiction to nonfiction though, with the originator of the graphic novel, A Contract With God, being based off of things Eisner heard going on in the city he grew up in. Maus and Blankets also focus on the histories and stories of real people, going through Art Spiegelman's dad’s experiences in the Holocaust and Craig Thompson’s time growing up. Even in fictional stories like Asterios Polyp, the down to earth nature of the book’s storytelling makes it feel as if the story could’ve been based on a real person’s life. With the creation of the graphic novel came stories that were more tied to unique perspectives of its authors and ultimately became more personal. Comics tell stories about super people, graphic novels tell stories about normal people.
That leads us to today and webcomics. The biggest distinction between a webcomic like “Ducks” and the graphic novel is the lack of a clear narrative with webcomics. Graphic novels are still in some ways stories. Maus is about showing Spiegelman's dad’s experiences in the Holocaust, Blankets has Craig develop and mature as he grows from a child to an adult, A Contract With God shows us different people’s time living in the city. This is not the case with "Ducks". "Ducks" doesn’t feel like a story, so much as a picture journal of the authors time at her old job, showing life at its realist. "Ducks" is a series of loosely tied together events that don't conclude in anything major, there are no arcs, climaxes, acts, just people. Real people. Showing the journey of the medium as we see the shift in comics to graphic novels from fiction to nonfiction, and the shift in graphic novels to webcomics from stories to reality. This is even shown in the artwork, which is much more crude than what one would expect from comics, but this also adds to the way reality is far less appealing than fiction, which only presents the most interesting parts of life and leaves everything else only to the imagination.

Killing The Preconceptions of The Superhero

What does it truly mean to be a superhero? If a comic book were to have sentience and if said comic book’s name was Batman: The Killing Joke, it would argue that a superhero is more than just a costume, more than the person inside it. It’s a will, a will to carry a burden heavier than any other. A will to go through the worst experiences and still come out able to maintain justice. Superheroes were originally constructed as powers with people, not people with powers. Clark Kent wasn’t a person, he was a vehicle to display cool superpowers, with little in the way of any actual character besides his desire to do the right thing. I couldn’t tell you a single character trait of The Flash, but I know he runs quick, in fact that’s about all I know about him. Because that’s all I was meant to know about him. Superheroes were nothing more than representations of cool abilities with bland characters for people to project themselves onto.
 This is the major change comics of the 80’s and 90’s brought to the medium, switching the focus from the powers to the people behind the suits. Comics in this era were about Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Barry Gordon, not about batsuit, flying speed laser beam, and superspeed.
This brings us to the Killing Joke, a story squarely dedicated to showing that even when pushed as far as he possibly can, Bruce Wayne will still do the right thing no matter how hard of a decision it is. Batman isn’t a superhero because he wears a giant batsuit while stopping minor crimes. Batman is a superhero because he makes the hardest decisions a person could make - keeping alive the man responsible for disabling his friend, stripping her and taking pictures of her injured body, and torturing the chief of the police department - all for the sake of preserving and maintaining justice. Bruce Wayne’s code to never kill has always been a part of who Bruce Wayne is, however The Killing Joke puts Bruce Wayne's morals to the test. Bruce Wayne’s never been forced to confront the ramifications of who he’s kept alive in a major way. The reason The Joker is such is a great foil to Batman in The Killing Joke is because he’s fighting Bruce Wayne ideologically, pushing his morals to their limit and forcing him to do what is right even if it means the keeping the Joker alive. It’s a major part of who Bruce Wayne is, and it’s development as a result of him losing his parents as a child makes it a believable part of who he is. He fights crime because he doesn’t want anyone else to suffer like he has. If he kills, he’s no better than the man who murdered his parents, thus he locks away the criminals he fights. It’s these two aspects of Bruce in conjunction with The Killing Joke’s plot, gives the reader a character who lost everything while he was still a child, and shows their true resolve in maintaining their ideals even in the worst of scenarios.

The Actual Family Vacation

The family vacation trope is one as old as time. More commonly seen is films with the likes of the classic National Lampoon films to more recent films like, Vacation and uh … Diary of A Wimpy: Dog Days (a true modern masterpiece). The family vacation trope is a staple of American media. But as times have changed I’ve noticed a shift in the approach of making the family vacation story into the “The Actual Family Vacation” story. The term referring to a vacation film which goes away from the unrealistic narrative conventions of most family vacation films in order to tell a story that feels more like what an actual family vacation experience would be like, often involving things like more mature subject matters, lack of narrative structure, and seemingly have a preference to abruptly end without any major climaxes. Stories like the movie, The Way, Way Back and the book we’ll be focusing on, This One Summer, are what I categorize as “The Actual Family Vacation” stories, as both feature the traits listed prior.
 What makes This One Summer so interesting is its lack of any forced elements in its plot. There are never any moments in this book that couldn't believably happen in reality.The plot with the pregnant girl is kept very down to earth, and while it is brought up often, the conflict is never ever resolved. Which makes sense, seeing as it was just an event that passes by Rose. Nothing of particular importance happens to Rose either. Like a real beach vacation Rose spends most of the book watching movies with her friend or coasting off the waves of the beach. The drama between her parents is something many people have dealt with themselves in some form or fashion. All of it feels like it could've been based off of a real vacation the authors had, nothing dramatized for the sake of the reader’s interest. Rose does at one point overhear her mother and aunt discussing some important things, a cliche of many stories of numerous genres. However it's not uncommon for adults to discuss many of the things going on in their lives amongst one another, and given Rose's lack of anything to occupy her time, it makes sense that she could overhear her parent’s speaking.
Many stories like to dramatize events for the sake of maintaining the audience’s interest or for making the story work better under conventional structure and means, however what kept me reading This One Summer was its ability to just show people on vacation. The reason so many stories are based off true events is because life itself contains many intriguing events that are often more entertaining than what the human mind is capable of creating. This One Summer proves this theory to be correct, creating a fictional story that maintains readers attention to its conclusion, not in spite of its choice to follow a more mundane sequence of events, but because it embraces the mundanity of life to show the reader a world very close to our own.

Asterios Polyp: A Contract With God's Spiritual Sequel

It’s been 40 years since the release of A Contract With God by Will Eisner revolutionized the comic book landscape through its creation of the graphic novel. The creation of Maus then pushed forward in the evolution of A Contract With God by popularizing the graphic novel, legitimizing comics as capable of telling more adult oriented stories and, what is most important for the sake of this piece, forever changing the layout of the graphic novel. It could be said that the reason pages in A Contract With God are styled the way they are, with images and text often separate, and the comic book styled panel often going unused and instead replaced with loose outlines, is so that it lessens the limits of what Eisner can put in each illustration, thus allowing for greater details that couldn’t be put in text. But these style of page layout also could have been done as a means of furthering the graphic novel from the comic book, since keeping a similar layout to the comic book often leads to confusion as to whether what is being read is a comic book or graphic novel. Why I bring all this up is because I haven’t seen a graphic novel in the style of A Contract With God since A Contract With God, which I believe may in part be because Maus popularized the idea of the graphic novel less as a different medium from comics and more as a comic book that tells a more adult story, but also could just be that A Contract With God was the first of its kind, thus it was still experimenting with what a graphic novel and couldn’t innovate what a graphic novel could be. Either way after weeks of searching, not searching, I think I found what I’ve been looking for.
Within the first couple pages of Asterios Polyp I was having major flashbacks to my time with A Contract With God, with page 19 being the first page to really this one in for me, this style of page, where the words carry a weight to them that the images only enhance, and not vice versa, is something A Contract With God did that most graphic novels have reversed since. In those couple of seconds I spent on the page I emerged at the conclusion that this was the modern reimagining of that original format of graphic novel Eisner had pioneered. Since Maus back in 1980 had popularized the graphic novel as a more word heavy comic book, many graphic novels had followed in the comic book format, panels, speech bubbles, etc. Asterios immediately stands out because of this, and made me curious with where it was heading. It still carries with it the standard Maus had created, but it seems to switch between the Eisner style of page layout and Spiegelman layout often, and it all culminates in what feels more like a spiritual sequel to what Eisner’s story may have been going for than what I’ve read in most stories since (not to discredit graphic novel that don’t follow the format of A Contract With God).

BlackJack Shot First

I am being very careful in my choice of words in calling BlackJack the predecessor to medical procedural dramas like House M.D. or comedies like Scrubs. BlackJack was not the creator of this style of storytelling, as the format is reminiscent of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the 19th and 20th century. Rather it is a spiritual successor to that style of storytelling - with our main character solving different self contained stories each chapter - created by the father of manga himself, Osamu Tezuka.
BlackJack is a very simple story, with the titular character, BlackJack, going around and solving his patients’ problems every chapter (or rather from the chapters I read) and it is easy to write it off because everything about it seems so basic. As the spiritual sequel to Holmes this can make the stories of Blackjack seem lesser by comparison, as Sherlock Holmes stories had a lot of moving parts, with every page Doyle writes containing as many different as he can cram into each plot, however the important thing to note is both the medium in which BlackJack is told and its impact on popular media in the future.
Going in order of the list above, BlackJack is, in essence, a comic book, and as such has much less time to set up and full develop its plots when compared to shows like House, which have half an hour to an hour to full flesh out its themes and ideas, as opposed to BlackJack’s 20 pages. Unless Tezuka was willing to bloat his stories with pages filled with words, Tezuka instead focuses in on the simplicity and breaks his stories down to their barest parts, saying everything he needs to say while maintaining a style of storytelling that makes every page of BlackJack easy and enjoyable to read.
The other thing to note about BlackJack is its impact of American media. BlackJack is a hugely influential story in Japan, however its impact in American seems nonexistent. It’s the kind of event where its impact goes largely unnoticed, but I believe BlackJack has had some impact on the existence of the medical procedural, since it was one of the earliest pioneers of the genre. Without it there’s no telling if House M.D. or Scrubs would have been made, and that doesn’t sound like much, but leave it to Tezuka to literally create a new genre of story even with one of his (compared to Astro Boy) lesser known series.

American Comics Should RanXerox European Comics

When I first started reading the adventures of Lieutenant Blueberry, I thought I had the story figured out from the first page. Because of my time reading American comics, I expected this to be a light-hearted, child friendly, adventure story about the cool guy, Blueberry, getting kidnapped and finding violently tame ways of escaping the Indians grasp. I know in the grand scheme of things what happens next is still tame, but seeing Blueberry tied down about to be tortured in conjunction with his panicked thought bubble proclaiming “Shit!” as he looks for a way to buy more time surprised me more than any of the adult comics I was reading in weeks prior. It was something so subtle, so small, but seeing this family friendly action hero do anything above a “Damn” made me see though that these comics were not gonna be what I was used to from American comics.
Overall I get the feeling there’s always been a place for more adult stories in European comics, with the problem of censorship not being nearly as much of an issue. Where I see this the most strongly is with Ranxerox, a beautifully, brutally, illustrated work about a robot beating its way through the streets to find its owner (or something along those lines, I was too busy staring at the lusciously detailed artwork to process much beyond it). This was clearly a published work, meaning the graphic content depicted in the story was allowed for distribution publicly in 1978. To put that into perspective, Maus was released two years after Ranxerox, meaning the Europeans were further ahead on what could be shown in a comic book than Americans. If this is what the adult comics, Air Pirate Funnies, Mr. Natural, and Zap! of yesteryear were fighting to produce, then I am beyond appreciative for their contribution to the comic book industry.  Ranxerox is what I look for in an adult story, something with language, sex, and violence, while still showing a world beyond that content. It doesn’t just serve as the punchline of a joke, it’s used to give the viewer a lens into the bizarre, futuristic world Ranxerox takes place in and because we’re informed of the setting, the world of Ranxerox feels like a living, breathing world people inhabit. It’s a work I wish I could have known about sooner since any less time spend with it would be depriving myself of “art”
Stories like the ones above remind me of how much a bubble American society puts itself in. Sure there are occasional foreign properties that make their way to states and get popular (the Pokemon boom of the early 2000’s comes to mind), but a lot of the other products are left completely by the wayside. It’s hard to say for sure without much knowledge of the comic industry, but I get this feeling even the comics of today could learn something from Lieutenant Blueberry, Ranxerox, and the other European stories that didn’t make it stateside popularly speaking. Perhaps it is less a problem with quantity as it is that most of the adult that do come into being just don’t get popular enough to be seen by the majority of audiences. Maybe in Europe these type of stories are just the standard, either way if more stories like that came stateside and got popular, comics could go beyond its current niche of children and middle aged adults.

I'm Sick Of This Abu(se)

Often people perceive stereotypes only for its negative depiction of foreign cultures and ethnicities. Cases like the recent backlash against Abu’s character in The Simpsons are an example in which people argue against misrepresentation of a culture as it negatively affects the way that culture is perceived. However in the case of Abu I’m left scratching my head at why Abu’s character has suddenly become a problem despite being around for as long as he has. It’s not that I can’t see how a person could be offended by Abu’s blatant stereotypical depiction of Indians, but it is not like Abu is the only character in the show who is a blatant stereotype of another culture. Where’s the controversy for groundskeeper Willie, who’s bright red hair, quick to anger nature, and obnoxious accent make him a dead ringer for the most stereotypical Scottish person on the planet? Despite his character being equally as obvious of an “offensive” stereotype as Abu, people haven’t rallied against the show to get rid of groundskeeper Willie. Even Homer Simpson, could be considered an offensive stereotype of an American citizen, from his bald head and overweight body to his lack of any intelligence. Homer is the typical average American through and through, but even the main character, a being who the audience sees the most of, hasn’t rustled anyone’s jimmies even though his harmful stereotyping could be considered even more present than Abu. Chief Wiggum is an obvious jab at the stereotype that cops are completely incompetent forces of authority, Mayor Quimby pokes fun at the “corrupt politician”, Mr. Burns is a satire of a greedy businessman. All of the character’s in The Simpsons are stereotypes, so the show should just be canceled if misrepresentation is an issue. But The Simpsons is a comedy, a satire meant to use these stereotypes as a way of viewing American culture in the 90’s. You couldn’t have The Simpson’s without stereotype, it’s linked directly to every character in the show, so the notion that Abu should be removed as if he was the only character exhibiting the stereotypical traits of his culture seems ridiculous. This entire controversy speaks more towards the country’s ever growing sensitivity issue than of stereotype in itself, as I’ve clearly demonstrated through other characters in the show.
I conclude in saying The Simpsons is a wonderful case study in the use of stereotypes, as every character in the show the benefits in using stereotypes as a lens into our own culture and the way it’s exaggeration of character shows us a lot about the way we perceive other people ourselves. While the stereotypes can be seen as harmful they are ultimately being used as a vehicle to make a grander point about the society we as a whole live in, and thus removing characters that gave it that lens to begin with takes away from the story as a whole. Stereotypes obviously aren’t always used beneficially. Racist depictions of African Americans in the 20th century only propagated the racial bias people had against black culture. Stereotypes can be used to harm as well as it can be used to help, and it is ultimately up to the people using it to determine whether they want to use it to help or to harm. 

Maus-ing on The Impact of Maus

I’m not gonna lie, when I think of comics the first that comes to mind is grown men going around fighting criminals in tights and outlandish garbs. Maybe my mind would then go to cats that love lasagna, or boys that wiff footballs, or those really political comics I never understand. But it certainly never jumps to a story about a writer interviewing his father on his time in the Nazi death camps during the Holocaust.
Maybe it’s because of the first two examples above, but I don’t think people grasped the idea that comics could cover mature themes till Maus. I know I’m making it sound like these people are idiotic fools and of course comics can be for adults. How can people be so stupid and not realize that. Yadda yadda yadda. But of I course I think that, Maus had already pushed the comic medium forward by the time I was around, so I’m gonna assume like the close minded person I am that every generation had the same amount of knowledge I had. It’s easy to perceive things as being obvious once they already exist.
Everyone (hopefully) agrees that slavery is bad, but it hasn’t always been that way. There was a time when people thought they weren’t doing anything wrong by enslaving an entire race of people. When put that way it makes 1700’s Americans sound foolish. And no, I am not saying people that didn’t know comics could cover heavy topics are as stupid as people that thought slavery was good. What I am saying is that it’s hard to know what is or isn’t right when there isn’t a standard set in place. That’s why they’re the standard, they sparked a realization in a large enough amount of people that it changed the way things are perceived.

. . .

It’s easy to see why a story like Maus became as influential as it was. While depicting a very adult and mature subject matter it’s something even children could follow. I remember friends of mine reading Maus back in the sixth grade. While it constantly depicts horrific imagery, nothing gory is ever shown. Characters swear, but it’s never anything major. And I think what adds to it’s appeal is the story’s subject matter. There is something so mystifying about the holocaust, the fact that humanity could allow such heinous treatment of other human beings to happen and then let that go on for years. It’s hard to believe it even really happened, but it did. Like a terrible scene you want to look away but can’t peel your eyes off of. Any retelling of a survivors experience in the holocaust is fascinating, because they all went through so much to be able to tell their stories. It’s not something that can be easily overlooked. So from a narrative standpoint Maus was always going to be an intriguing and book to read.
Art Spiegalman also doesn’t slack on the artwork when telling his story either, taking full advantage of the medium to add layers and depth to the story being presented. There’s an entire metaphor going on throughout the books where the holocaust victims are depicted as mice, while the Nazis are depicted as cats, showing the dominating presence the Nazi party had in that time in a way that could never be translated into a written format. It holds the narrative weight of a novel but also uses images to help deepen the impact of the story. When the audience sees an illustration of mice screaming in agony as they’re burned alive, it carries a weight with it that words could never hold a candle to. It’s for that, Maus was able to open people’s eyes to the potential of the medium, to show that graphic novels weren’t a popcorn “turn your brain off and look at the pretty pictures” form of entertainment. They could tell stories as legitimate as books or movies, and through using the strengths of the medium conveys a story only comics could tell.

You Know I Had To Do It To Them

They asked for this, adult comics, I mean. I tried thinking of an interesting and unique perspective on these bad boys for a solid several seconds, but they’re so direct about their goals and intentions that I’d be remissed not to give them what they want and discuss the only thing these comics want to discuss. Adult comics didn’t have substance in mind when being created. They weren’t written to spread a deep, intricate, message that audiences can take something away from. Then again many comics, regardless of audience, serve a similar purpose as adult comics in that most are made to entertain. It just so happens that they are a lot more blatant with with their intent.
Adult comics serve one purpose. To entertain through obscene and offensive content. That’s their message, that’s their goal, that’s their subject, that’s there everything. Let me clarify that it is okay for a story to cover mature themes, it’s good for stories to cover new grounds and look into topics not often explored. I should also add that a story doesn’t need to have some grand purpose for being in order for to be enjoyable and entertaining. I think The Peanuts is great and The Peanuts just tells funny jokes. In a sense these comics did more from the medium, since they created content that broke the boundaries of how the medium was seen. By that some token however, they did not age as gracefully as a comic like The Peanuts
Perhaps what it comes down to is simply a personal bias. I don’t find these comics to be very entertaining. It may be their forwardness which pushes me away, or that I want more from a comic then just obscene jokes, but no matter how much of it I read I feel I put more into it than what I get out of it. I don’t think the humor is too offensive for me to handle, I’ve long been desensitized to this kind of content. I’m not like the generation first reading these comics, bewildered that such content can be published and bought. I grew up using the internet and nothing I'm shown surprises me anymore, so with that surprise gone I’m left with one question to ask. What else of substance is in the stories to keep me reading beyond the surface surprise? For me - nothing. I bet my thirteen year old self would’ve loved these comics too, laughing at all the obscene jokes, curious in its depictions of sexual content, and eager to see what racist stereotype it can depict next. But i’m not a teenager anymore, I need more than the adult equivalent of a fart joke to keep me stimulated, and adult comics do little to satiate my need for interesting content beyond a surface “SURPRISE!”. Adult content has always been a part of the comic medium from my perspective, so the appeal of these comics is lost to me. I can respect how influential adult comics were on the medium going forward at the time of their release, but that does not mean they still translate into entertaining content today.

Pillow Thoughts Contracting Me To Talk About The Landscape of Graphic Novels

Graphic novels always have always had the distinction from comic books that the stories they cover are a little bit more mature. This is merely an over generalization of my experience with graphic novels though, and a gross oversimplification of the general populous’ views towards comics. Obviously each medium can cover topics of any kind, regardless of the format of their release, and it is foolish to assume comics and graphic novels have to appeal to one demographic just because they’re assumed to do so. This isn’t helped by the fact that what constitutes graphic novel and comic can become so blurred that at times the two terms come off as interchangeable, leading me to often question whether what I am reading is a graphic novel or a comic.

Fortunately this class has given me credence to what some graphic novels are and of what they lend to the medium of cartoons. Drawings have always been perceived as something meant for children, this is in part because of the inherit link between when most people begin and end to draw. A lot of people drew as children, stopping somewhere along the way out of waning interest, resulting in their talents never growing further beyond that which they could do as a child. Because American cartoons have simple art styles, further lending themselves to be more easily imitated by the children watching them, and to have broader demographic appeals to people of all ages, when other stories are made that continue the trend of more simplified styles, people still perceive them as childlike, regardless of the content being presented to them.

I was never under the precept that graphic novels were strictly for children, I’ve known about Maus and Scott Pilgrim since I was ten, neither story containing content which could be seen as suitable for younger minds. And this had lead me towards confusion during this class, as I feel there was a revelation I may have missed, or had already known. It almost feels too easy to say Blankets and Contract With God are similar because they are stories containing mature themes. To me, it would have never even occurred to me as to that being considered enough of a topic to write about. But that’s just the thing, I grew up under the preconceived concept of cartoons being aimed at more mature audiences, and I believe that the idea of a comic having more mature things isn’t groundbreaking.

This isn’t me saying it is bad for a story to have a more mature tone, or that a story can’t be praised for covering topics that are not typical for the genre, but I am saying that mature topics in graphic novels have literally been there since their inception (Contract From God is as far away from a story for children as is humanly possible), and stories since then have continued in that path throughout the following decades. There will always be a push towards children's content by publishers for the widest appeal, but there has also always been people out there creating stories that have a niche appeal more mature audiences will love, and so this idea that more mature stories in childlike mediums is as ancient as my ancestors.

All that being said, I grew up in an age where perspectives on comics and graphic novels had already been shifting. I was born past an age where those mediums were at their peak, where their popularity was rampant, and where those notions were most people’s standards, so it’s harder for me to understand the weight and significance of these stories. I do see why stories like these matter. Even in our current climate there is a continuous push for more mature content in the cartoon landscape, but we’re also past an age where it is as persistent of a problem as it was in the past. Graphic novels are above the notion that cartoons have to be for kids. It’s been that way since the beginning with A Contract With God, and with Blankets will continue to be for future generations to come.

Why It Bothers Me That The Link For Black Panther in course resources sends me to batman #600

It’s not a huge deal. I haven’t lost any sleep at night deep in thought about it. It doesn’t haunt my every waking moment, every breath I make, every move I make, every step I take, it’s not watching me - but it still bothers me. Whenever I click the link to course resources, I dread going to the week four section of the page, because I know I’m setting myself up for disappointment.

Here’s why …

I’m a big fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. My love for Marvel’s loosely based comic adaptations began in 2012 when a friend invited me to watch the Avengers. Up to this point I had never seen any of the other Marvel films, but even in spite of the inability to understand the movies references, I didn’t care. The Avengers is a fantastic stand alone story, I hold it near and dear to my heart, and it is probably my favorite movie of all time.
From that point onward I was a Marvel fan. I don’t watch all of the movies they’ve released given how many there are, but I’ll watch any I am interested in. This lead me to seeing Captain America: Civil War in theaters with the same friend as before. Thoughts on the movie aside (I like it), Civil War introduced me to the Black Panther. While I wasn’t a fan of his character in Civil War, I still saw the Black Panther movie when it came out in early 2018. Was that mostly because of that incredible, Kendrick Lamar curated, soundtrack? Yes. But also it seemed like I would come out of the theater satisfied. I was right. Saw the movie, I liked it, didn’t put much more thought into it though.

Cut to the fourth week of classes…

I’m looking at the course resource page and I’m scrolling through the comics section and I see a link to the Black Panther comic, the only link to a Black Panther comic on there, and I immediately get excited, but what makes things interesting is the type of excitement I got. As earlier described, it’s not like I was big on the Black Panther character. I liked the movie, but I never bought an issue of the comics. What my excitement was comparable too was something along the lines of a child in the toy store. And like a child being told to “put that back on the shelf”, when I found that the link sent me to a Batman comic, I was disappointed. That’s why it bothers me that the link for Black Panther sends me to Batman #600.

I Prefer My "Peanuts" A Little Bit Schulz-y

Never read comic strips as a kid. Even by early 2000’s standards newspaper must have been going the way of the dodo. My parents certainly never subscribed to any newsies, so this whole comic strip business is alien to me. I know what a comic strip is. I recognize most of the famous ones, but I’ve never taken the time to read their origins.
Peanuts. A comic strip if ever there has been one. Watched the specials as a child, but I never read a single Peanuts strip till this semester, so going in I wasn’t sure what to expect - and boy  was I missing out. I never realized how much I loved The Peanuts till I started reading the earliest comics. It wasn’t like The Peanuts I grew up to know. Early Peanuts still had Charlie Brown, Lucy, Schroeder, Snoopy, Linus, but none of them had their iconic designs, all of their quirks (like Linus) were in their infancy and such. Seeing their first incarnations was refreshing to say the least.  I like seeing Charlie Brown fly and missing a kick as much as the next guy, but that joke is a part of my issue with comics.
My biggest problem with long running comics is the feeling over time that the original creator loses more steam each and every year, as they have to start scraping their most boring, generic jokes just to reach a deadline. Early Peanuts takes place in a time before Peanuts had the worldwide recognition it has today. Watching Schulz form an identity for his story is more rewarding than I was expecting. Of course, not every joke in the comic lands, but early Peanuts seems to feature a lot more hits than misses.
The thing that really brings it over the edge into hilarity for me though are the relatability of some of its jokes and the facial expressions that often serve as the punchlines to end off the strip. From what I’ve read of the later comics expressions are at the forefront of The Peanuts humor. However the way the comics go about it even by the 70’s feels stale. Characters basically have one expression for punchlines. You know the one. Where the face is doing a kinda worried/blank/feeling down on your luck kind of look. It is the definitive face of the Peanuts. Now let’s go back to February 11th, 1954, and look at that day’s issue of the Peanuts. It starts off simple, girl talks about how she wants to be a nurse when she grows up, asks Charlie Brown what he wants to be and he responds with “perfect”. Needless to say I was on the floor by the end of the strip. I think it is the combination of Charlie’s straight face, implying his dead seriousness with his answer, coupled with the girls expression, which goes from a large grin in the first three panels to a blank expression in final one, and it really adds a lot to the strips’ punchline. That strip, along with many others are why I hold the comic in such a high regard.

Understanding Comics Beyond The Surface

So much artwork feels entirely devoid of substance, so much made hastily and quickly, so much work made with style in mind over substance. Like in every field of work, art is a job. Not everyone is willing to spend their life devoted to mastering their craft and if they’re satisfied with where they stop then there are no issues with choosing to cease before incredible work is made (although that does not prevent bad work from being critiqued, after all if the work sucks, then the work sucks). This is not a problem subjective to just the current art being made, I am just around to see all that people have to offer, good and bad. Bad art has always been prevalent, although it is not prone to last. Art without substance will be forgotten by the passage of time, so too will the people behind its creation. When people look to the art of the past what they see is less of a representation of the pieces of the time and more of a “best of” compilation made by that generation’s most talented individuals. It is easy to forget that there were artist alongside masters like Rembrandt or DaVinci when in all the time since their lives, they were the only ones worth remembering. The final pages of Understanding Comics go into great depths to describe the evolution of the artists, starting with an innate desire to create “surface” works, the goal being work that only looks aesthetically pleasing, without the substance to go down in history, and working down to creating pieces which have “purpose” and “form” to them, pieces that say something about the individual and of the society that surrounds them. Pieces made to last beyond when they were made.

Not all bad artwork is created without passion. Deep down every artist started down their path out of a sense of desire and want, but few have the passion to dig deeper past what is beyond that surface level, beyond the skin of the apple.  No one is born creating The Mona Lisa. Picasso spent a lifetime deconstructing his artwork to its barest elements, creating pieces that focused less on things that looked good and more on pieces that were good. In spite of that, success does not play fair. Van Gogh was very unpopular throughout all his life, and he did not become popular until he had already died and he is what many consider one of best painters of all time. The creme of the crop rarely rise to the top. What appeals to the most people is “the surface”. Many people are successful based solely on their appeal to the general public. People do not know what they want, nor are most willing to put the time into something with “purpose” and “form” to it and will often be in awe of things that are flashy and eye catching. Even when great art is successful, the people behind it are not always heroes in capes, but can end up being criminals with a gift for camouflage (ex. John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren and Stimpy).Understanding Comics is not about the author’s desire for more masterpieces to be created, he does not ask upon the reader to make anything, nor beg them to bring back the good ol’ days of the medium. Rather, he wants the reader to understand that good work comes and goes, and it comes through further understanding of the medium being worked with. Over time and through creators with a yearning to do more with the medium, it can evolve further into art which future generations can continuously work to and improve upon.

Arriving To Conclusions

Words and images are inherently linked together. After all, words originally were created as a means for our ancestors to further communication, allowing for shorthand and references to creatures and items that any member in the species could understand through some education. Because of that, words do not need to appear in a story in order for it to make sense. Through learning a language and through the experience of growing up and evolving over time, humans are intrinsically able to understand the words images convey, expressions providing further insight and deepen this understanding.
As an example, in page 28 of The Arrival, the reader grasps early on that the protagonists of the story is unable to understand what the people talking to him are trying to say. In the first panel the audience sees the protagonists with an expression of utter confusion. Panel 2 provides the audience with some context, as the main character puts his hand over his ear, a common form of expression in most cultures which is understood to mean that they could not hear or understand what was said and therefore need repeating. This re contextualizes what we see in the first panel. It tells us that the reason the protagonist was confused before was due to not understanding what the person talking to him was telling him, whereas before the reader could assume his look of confusion was for a myriad of different reasons. This is followed by a series of panels wherein the protagonist tries to explain his situation, fails to find the right words, which leads him to show a picture of his family and try to explain himself one last time before finally bowing his head down in defeat, moving the reader into the next page. It took over 100 words to explain page 28 in The Arrival. 100 words. For one page. In a story with no words of its own, yet still conveys to readers its plot.
That doesn't means words have no reason to exist. Just because a story can be told without words does not mean it has to have no words. Arrival succeeds in telling a narrative without words because the author is well adept at drawing, to the point that he can provide reader the information they need to know without the need to do it through text. In that way it gives the story a unique appeal, since so much of what is popular today mostly tells its stories through dialogue. Words are necessary to a story, even The Arrival still has a title. You would not know what I was talking about otherwise. Those two words are essential to the piece. The Arrival needs a title for the reader to understand what this story is going to be about. Had it just been an image of the protagonists on the boat the reader might assume this was a story about the Titanic, had it been the protagonist with the pet the reader might assume the story was a about the relationship between owner and pet, both images representing big parts in the story, while still failing to tell the reader what the story is about before they even open a single page of the book. No story fully succeeds in being told in zero words, but The Arrival, in being told in two words, gets pretty close.

Rooster's of Fright

The woman, in anger, points to the sky to attempt to beat her pet chicken in their ongoing staring contest. Little does she know her chicken is too busy planning on enslaving all of humanity to even try.

A man looks over a corpse on top of a table, and is a chicken.

Chicken man strikes again, except this time they at least buried the woman before posing for the camera.

Well, currently looking at two guys in chicken masks standing over a naked woman on a plank of wood. She's most likely about to die given the skull at the bottom of the wood.

Now there is a corpse on the ground, face covered by the blanket of a bed. In the corner a man in a mask is celebrating his accomplishments. His two cohorts (both roosters) watch over the situation, one to the body, and one to the wall.

An elegantly dressed man poses for a woman. The pose he is taking replicating the shadow in the corner behind the woman.

This next piece involves a chicken man wielding a stick over the balcony of a theater, the women nearest to him unable to keep her composure, unlike the woman to her right, who remains perfectly calm despite what she sees.

Two women, terrified of being caught, hide in darkness as the monster, a bear with a rooster's head draws near. Only a door separating the two, with a lit candle on the ground being the only monster's trail to follow.