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.