LITERATURE OF COMICS AND THE GRAPHIC NARRATIVE

This week I read the Gay Comics series of Underground Comix. What was surprising to me upon first glance was how the cover did not exactly speak for what was on the inside. The covers were some kind of joking, goofy setup, but the actual comics were heartfelt and personal stories from the lives of the artists. Something big I noticed was just how much these comics were a reflection of the political climate at the time. In one of the issues I read, all of the issues tackled; homosexuality, race, facsism/government, and religion. I was actually a little taken aback because the exact same issues are still prevalent today. We talked about how the Vietnam War is still a dividing factor in today’s society though. Topics from the civil rights movement are still subject today too and it was the first issue in one of the Gay Comics series. Another was religious pastors pursuing boys which has recently become a big topic. Another was rallying against supporters of fascism and explicitly naziism,...

This week I read Will Eisner’s “A Contract With God” and part one of Craig Thompson’s “Blankets”. Blankets felt like something I read before, and it is. The author/artist’s life being the subject of a graphic narrative is common and it is a fun way to portray your life, like a Draw My Life on YouTube. Blankets however lost my interest halfway through because I felt like it was dragging on and I didn’t have a connection with Thompson’s experience, which is ok. His story just isn’t for me. Will Eisner’s A Contract With God was very interesting. He took the graphic novel and pivoted it toward adult audiences. The stories in his novel were heavy and held a deeper lesson in them. It was somewhat reminiscent of The Twilight Zone to me with the sort of twist endings. Eisner also did a great job with his visual storytelling. In his interview with Stan Lee, he talked about how he approaches it, and I agreed with him on the points he made. He demonstrated sequential art, which helped make his gr...

Comic strips like Winsor McKay’s “Little Nemo” started to develop what became a comic book with it’s idea of a continued narrative. This week I read the superhero comic FlyMan, one of the Crime Illustrated comics, a DuckTales comic, and some of Herge’s Tintin. These began to have a bigger narrative to them than a comic strip would. A comic strip usually has a set up and payoff and does it in a few panels. In a comic book, our main characters start going through arcs and follow a more film narrative. Tintin especially shows this. Herge’s Tintin comics were longer and had more plot and character development in it. Usually we see Tintin encountering a villain and overcoming that conflict, but like in Tintin in Tibet, we see him grow as a character as his conflict is internal. It has a much deeper message and meaning. Tintin also has time for several characters to really develop, like Captain Haddock. Comic books like Tintin and DuckTales also reached out to a wide audience. They weren’t...

After reading early comic strips, I see they haven’t really changed much compared to today’s comic strips. What the comic strip started as worked, and it set the wheels turning for what became today’s comic strips and what eventually evolved into comic books and graphic novels. Two comics I read the most to compare are George Harriman’s Krazy Kat and Winsor McKay’s Little Nemo. Krazy Kat surprised me a little because I never really expected so much from early comics. There’s some mild swearing and the characters have unique accents. I know putting in accents isn’t new in literature. For instance Huckleberry Finn makes use of it, but I guess I imagined early comics to be very plain. There was also mild swearing and the humor carries on to today. The style is very simple and cartoony as well, and, looking back on Scott McCloud’s lesson on relatability with cartoons, this comic checks out. Krazy Kat doesn’t resemble a cat very much in the first place. He has a pretty human nose. Again, th...