At first glance "Maus" is a biographical graphic novel about the father of the author's survival of the holocaust, but I think at the heart of this narrative is the effect that adversity and loss can have on people and their families. In a story dealing with such events as the Holocaust you would think that the hardship of the horrific event would be the main conflict, but this story in my opinion focuses more on the after math of such an event as it's effects creep through time into future What struck me the most by this story, is its ability to tell a difficult and serious story, in a way thats palatable for younger audiences. Perhaps Art Spiegelman is successful in this because of his use of symbolism in representing characters. The individuals in the story are human-like, but not human. Spiegelman uses cats to represent nazis and mice to represent jews. This clever portrayal dehumanizes a sensitive subject. The reader is still struck with incredible emotion while reading, but since the subjects aren't human, the images don't seem as graphic. The author represents himself in the story, as he interviews his father about his experiences in the Holocaust. In this presentation, the story feels more personal and it allows the reader to put themselves in Art's shoes I couldn’t really take some of the concepts seriously due to the fact that the characters were mice. It felt like I was looking at a Tom and Jerry cartoon sequence.

Underground Comics

GERTIES GREASE PIT
by: Flaherty

Rancid, Squeamish, and grotesque.These are words that I would use to describe the comic gerties grease pit. 
Flaherty takes you to last diner you would want to attend and plucks you right in front row and scrounges around in the alley to serve up a steaming pile of spit and grime in every panel.
This comic plays on the little fears and discomforts that we all may have when it comes to dining ,filled with shady individuals, less than desired cooks and meals made to order in the time it takes to flip a coin. Flaherty does a good job at making you rethink your breakfast, shocking your sense of taste and smell. Leaving the reader queasy and strangely exhausted at the idea of food. 

Blankets (religion,art,and life)

"Blankets" is an auto-biographical graphic novel about the life of a fundamental christian as he grows up and battles the conflicting emotions between following the faith and following his dreams. After reading the novel I found it to be an extremely rich and thoughtful account of the authors life. He tells the story of his life from an artistic angle that is easily digested and engaging. I feel that this novel is an example of how interesting someone's personal story can be after some self reflection and analysis. The author shows me that a character that is based off of real experience is often much more fleshed out and relatable than a character that you were to just make up. I feel that this is a huge part of art and in my own work I think of every character as being a piece of me, I don't believe there is a way to disconnect yourself from your artwork and if there is than that's a sad way to do art in my honest opinion. I have always felt when the debate over representation in media comes up that the author of any work cannot create things they do not have experience with. I would say that without extensive research and real life experience that it would be very hard for me to write a compelling story about the life of a Korean child seeing that I have never experienced that directly. I feel like this is where alot of stereotypical and archetypical characters come from. Asking for a compelling story about the plights of a black man from Atlanta from a white man from Boston doesn't seem like it would work out well to me just based of the fact that the man from Boston has never experienced the life of the black man from Atlanta. My conclusion from "Blankets" is just to stick to what you know and not in a negative way, but in a way where you celebrate your own experience instead of suppressing it for storylines and characters that marketing people think will resonant with the audience. This novel is straight up fantastic, a must read for anyone interested in story telling.

For this assignment I read Charles Schultz’s Peanuts and Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes. While reading several strips, it became very apparent that these were designed with adults in mind. 

Although I know many people who associate newspaper comics with children. Because of current associations with children and comics in our present day. But while reading it, I was presented with jokes or punch lines that only an adult would understand. 

The two comics share a large part of their charm together. There about children observing the world with a ‘I don’t quite understand how the whole world works yet, but I am observing it how i see it’ charm. Meaning, you can make snappy judgment about how your life is going to turn out when you grow up. 

While Calvin and Hobbes was much more adventure, imagination, and childhood fun. Allowing the reader to remember the good old days when they had stuffed animals, tried not to go to school, and their worst part of the day was going to bed. 

Peanuts had kids doing kid things with simplistic humor with children hanging out and making jokes that adults, the intended audience, would find funny such as the kids making jokes about taxes, or having one-word comebacks that usually link to an adult term in the work force. 

Understanding Comics

When reading Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, he most interesting thing I found about it was the small discussion about character design.

The idea that he portrays is that the human race is so conceited, that when looking at a simplified human face; such as a default smiley face J we see ourselves in it. And because of that we are able to sympathize with the information or the emotion better because we are now imaging ourselves in the story. With this technique we are no longer observing the story, but instead extending ourselves into the story and fully immersing ourselves into the story’s lore.

His example of this was the very way he drew himself in the comic. Instead of seeing him as his own character, we are instead seeing him as an extension of ourselves. Instead of someone else explaining the terms and ideas in a comic book, we are using the little voice in our head to make him talk and move around on the pages. He brings this up well when he draws himself as a realistic man instead of the simplified person. When doing this it gave his drawing a personality outside of our own. Forming a stranger on the page that we don’t know anything about, and the mind is quick to wonder whom this person is. But when he was simplified we didn’t care about who he ‘is’, because he was just another piece of the viewer.

I have heard this theory before but put in a different context. Some believe the reasons Groot was such a hit in the movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, was because he had an extremely simplified face. Although the character said one line throughout the entire move, we understood to his emotions and could see ourselves in the character. Unlike the other characters that formed a personality of their own, you were able to put your self in Groot’s possession and sympathize with him the easiest.