Stacy Moon

For this week’s reading, I had the pleasure of reading one of Art Spiegelman’s greatest works, Maus . To be honest, I had already read this graphic novel last year in the summer, but I definitely did not mind going through it once more. This book really changed my perspective on the Holocaust. The way that Spiegelman told his father’s (and his own) story was so innovative and every page was masterfully composed. You can really tell how much thought process went into the layout of the spreads and the complexity of the storytelling through an interview. Maus is such an iconic novel not only because of the style and techniques used, but also the touchy subject matter and how Spiegelman chose to interpret it. Obviously, the choice of using cats and mice was very effective. Not only was it easier to draw, but it helped emphasize his view of how the Holocaust was. Being held up in rotten camps and having to group together in unsanitary conditions is usually how people see...

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 ...