Promethea

            While reading Promethea by Allan Moore, I noticed several prominent symbols throughout the comic.  The first symbol I noticed was the scepter with the snakes, similar to the medical symbol.  The girl’s father at the beginning of the story summoned the staff while giving his daughter time to flee, sacrificing himself.  One of the gods that meets the girl in the desert holds this staff. Later, we see that Promethea (the girl) and all other reincarnations of her wield a glowing magical version of the scepter.  I assume that the scepter is representing that whoever is holding it is protecting someone else, such as the father protecting the girl, and writer that turns into Promethea protecting the former Promethea.  Another symbol that I noticed was the ankh, the Egyptian symbol for “life”.  One of the gods that meets the girl in the desert wields a staff with an ankh on the end, and later in the story, you can see it again on Promethea’s armor.

            I was able to connect with a bit of the story, remembering studying ancient Egypt in middle school; I recognized a lot of the symbols and gods. I recognized Hermes with his winged helmet as well. I can connect with the main character a bit with being in college and writing term papers. Other than that, there isn’t much more I can relate to in this comic.
            If I were to adapt Promethea into a movie, I would probably leave out the scene with “The Five Swell Guys”.  I think that the audience wouldn’t understand it and it doesn’t really fit in the serious theme of the story.  Another change I would make would be with the two gods meeting the girl in the desert.  In the comic, I’m not sure whether or not the gods are supposed to be conjoined.  In the first panel with them, their arms are confusing in that they are going through each other’s torso.  In a later panel, it looks like they are conjoined on at their shoulder down to their hip. This was really confusing me when trying to figure out who was holding what staff. I wonder why the artist made them conjoined, If the reason isn’t important, I would have them as two separate gods. These are just some of my thoughts while reading Promethea

Maus

This week I read Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman.  I have heard of this comic before but I have never gotten around to reading it.  I thought it was going to be just another story of a holocaust survivor, just with cats and mice, and for the most part I assumed right. What made this comic stand out from other holocaust stories is the way Art Spiegelman drew it and told it.  I thought that the comic was expertly designed with the way that Spiegelman used his line work to get across emotions and mood in the story.  Characters emotions could be seen though beads of sweat on their faces when they are under pressure, as well as stress lines that can be seen under the eyes of all of the prisoners in despair.  You could tell the disgusting conditions of the Nazi camps by the way fumes were drawn emanating from the prisoners outfits and barracks within the camp.

            I found it interesting that Spiegelman portrayed the different races as different animals with Jews being mice, Germans being cats, and the Polish being represented as pigs.  Although Spiegelman did this to make it easy to distinguish the characters in the story, apparently making the different races look like different animals in the story was criticized for promoting ethnic stereotypes.  I liked how Spiegelman showed that the mice were trying to hide their identities by wearing pig masks.  I found the comic easy to follow with it panels being placed in an easy to read manner with not much text per page.

            Before reading, I assumed that the book was a fictitious tale about the holocaust, except the characters were animals.  I did not realize that the comic was about the author’s father telling the story of his family and experience of World War II.  The story was interesting and disturbing.  I would definitely suggest this graphic novel to anyone who has not read it.

Week 3 Assignment

This week I drew a comic about a kid talking to his stuffed animal and believing it is real. The inspiration for this comic was inspired after reading of a couple of Calvin and Hobbes comics.  Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson, are hilarious and very sophisticated, with something that almost everyone can relate to.  The character of Calvin is a clever and witty child that loves to go on make believe adventure with his stuffed animal tiger named Hobbes. I think that the exaggerated expressions and gestures of the characters really add to the story telling.

Calvin sees Hobbes as a real tiger that converses back and for to him, but his parents just see Hobbes as a stuffed animal. I figure that Calvin talking to his stuffed tiger is representing his wild child imagination and not the fact that he might have schizophrenia, which would be rather dark for comic targeted toward people of all ages.  I enjoyed reading about the adventures of Calvin and Hobbes and found them to be very inspirational.

Week 2 Assignment

This is my short comic about a sniper shooting a walking skeleton in the head. From reading Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, I learned of the different importance between realism and simplification in comics, as well as learning about icons and abstraction. I learned about the different transitions from panel to panel such as moment-to-moment, action-to-action, subject-to-subject, and aspect-to-aspect. I attempted to use words as sounds effects in my comic, but after re-reading the instructions for the assignment, I took them out.  I learned of closure in comics, and instead of having my comic end with the bullet just whizzing through the air, I gave it closure by having the zombie get shot through the head.

Wordless Comics

At first I thought I was just looking at a series of random images, but as it zoomed out on the picture of the family, The Arrival by Shaun Tan started making sense to me. The story slowly progressed through series of images closely related, such as one showing the family of the main character, then the next picture is zoomed out more revealing that it is actually a framed picture of the family, and then after that it shows the main character wrapping the picture in a cloth. It continues to follow this pattern throughout the story. The characters expressions and gestures also influence the mood of each scene. Flashbacks are represented in a different way. When the story goes into a flashback, I noticed that the pictures get darker and grayer, possibly representing how the past events were dark and depressing times.  The darkness connecting with the past events is shown in the one picture where the giants with vacuum machines are sucking up the townsfolk and their faces are covered in shadows. The sky around the town is dark, and the city is blanketed in darkness in the wake of the giants. The darker images also seem to represent negative moments, such as when the main character is on the boat, alone, without his family. When he gets off the boat, the images start to get lighter again.

Some events are repeated in the story, such as him arriving to the city in a flying box, and then later his family arrives in a similar box. At one point it shows the main character gesturing someone to look at a map so he can get directions, then at the end of the story, a woman is gesturing to a map, and the main characters daughter gives her directions, so I though that was an interesting way to tie up the story. I also noticed that each chapter separated the days that each event occurred. One thing that I am unsure of was the period of time between each chapter. I am not sure if each chapter happens months apart, or if the main characters family meets back up with him only a week after the first chapter.