Stacy Moon

For this week, I read a selection of underground comics on the course resource page. I did manage to read through Robert Crumb’s Mr. Natural as well, and I honestly don’t know how to comprehend most of these. To put it bluntly, I didn’t enjoy reading any of these comics. It was kind of like a culture shock to me since I had never seen or heard anything like these before. The humor was too crude and sexual for my taste, and the drawings were also hard to follow sometimes. I found a lot of the comics to have too much going on in one panel, and having unsettling body proportions. It was strange how much illegal sexual activity was found in these comics, like child molestation and bestiality. Overall, it was chaotic and overwhelming to look at. I understand that the times were very different and that these were a form of artistic expression against the societal norms, hence the term “underground,” but there were so many times where these comics just went way overboa...

This week I had the pleasure of reading Will Eisner’s Contract with God and Craig Thompson’s Blankets . Both in the form of graphic novels, they tell very different stories in very different formats. Interestingly, they had some similar reoccurring themes. I’m going to be completely honest and say that although Eisner’s graphic novel was an interesting read, it had nothing on Blankets in my opinion. The first story in Contract with God was different because it was almost like a children’s book format, with word bubbles being replaced with third-person narrative on every page. The later three stories were more traditional comics, but the stories were not as compelling and personal as Blankets . The third person narrative definitely makes it harder to connect to Eisner’s work, whereas Blankets comes straight from the voice of the author. I think that the style of storytelling also varied drastically between the two. In Blankets , Thompson really knew how to captivate a ...

For this week I went ahead and read a couple of comics from Carl Barks, Art Spiegelman, and Hergé. Right off the bat, I could tell that these comics were very different from the classic comic strips. The beauty of comic books is that you can be entertained with the good humor and adventures of the cast for a longer period of time. One-liners are not as apparent in these works as storytelling takes off in a more sophisticated, elongated approach. I think that I have a bias towards Carl Barks because I’m a big fan of Ducktales. However, after reading through all the comics, I grew very fond of Tintin. Tintin was always that one comic book that I’ve heard about, seen everywhere, but never touched. I now understand why it’s so popular and iconic. Firstly, the art style is simplified yet detailed enough to see form and structure behind the drawings. The overall design kind of reminded me of a video game franchise I played as a kid called Professor Layton. I wouldn’t be...