Survival with Tights

We are all aware of the discrimination X-Men deal with time and time again for their mutation. So are we going to get something different this time? Nope! And I don't care, I am 100% biased when it comes to X-Men. I will most likely love everything that has to do with X-Men (even that one movie that we never talk about). Just a quick disclaimer before you go on with this post.

The X-Men want to be accepted and they want to be part of society as equals. BUT what they want above anything else is to survive. Survival is at the core of everything. We discussed this last class when we were talking about art. I argue that everything stems from survival. We eat to survive, we reproduce to keep the human race alive, we create technology to make it easier to survive, and so on. Survival is a theme in X-Men. In Astonishing X-Men, whether they admit it or not, the X-Men are doing whatever it takes to survive (at least within issues 1-3, we'll see). Yes they are treated unfairly, yes they are oppressed, but forget about all the social injustices. Those injustices do not matter if they are all dead. So Cyclops decided to bring some of them together and not just "make nice with the public," (23) but "astonish them" (24). Public opinion is crucial to the survival of the X-Men (duh).

Emma Frost gave that depressing speech/warning about how humans will always hate them, they can never trust them, and how they will never be at peace (10-12). It seems like there is no hope for the mutants, so why even try to get the public to like them? Because they see that the Avengers, S.H.I.E.L.D., Fantastic Four and all of the other superheroes are not just tolerated, but loved at times. Cyclops thinks that by mimicking them and creating a team of superheroes, the people will automatically change their perception. He thinks superheroes' tights or spandex will help them survive.

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There is one thing that he is forgetting: mutants are people who developed these powers without any explanation. The Avengers, the Fantastic Four and even S.H.I.E.L.D. obtained their powers either because they are aliens, there was some scientific experiment/accident, or just through training. In other words, they have an explanation for being different. It does not matter that the X-Men created a superhero team, the costumes they wear, the people they save. or how many worlds they save. Nothing matters because the humans will always see the mutants as a threat to their survival. They see them as the "next step in evolution... the end of humankind" (25). Just think about how many times you were intimidated by someone who you thought was stronger, smarter, or more attractive than you. Whenever that happens to me, I feel threatened by their perceived superiority. My instincts tell me to either stay away from them or one-up them somehow. The humans are also doing whatever it takes to survive. The humans however, have the support of the government and other non-mutant superheroes. The mutants have no one. Even Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. will not help them because they are seen as threats, not allies. The mutants are on their own.

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Comics and Cosmic Transportation

I'll admit, I am not exactly well-versed when it comes to comics.  In fact, the only comic I ever seriously read when I was a kid was Calvin and Hobbes, which I loved dearly.  However, I never really got that deep into stuff like Superman or Marvel, D.C., and the many heroes that encompass these worlds.  I've often wondered why comics never truly resonated with me like they did for so many other kids (and adults) but I never really found an answer.  However, McCloud brought up several key points that I feel simultaneously explain the popularity of comics to the world at large, and why they never really captured my attention, save for some specific examples.

While McCloud does an excellent job as describing what a comic is, he also succinctly highlights what makes them so appealing to people.  When humans are presented with a distinct face, we simply see that face and realize that it is another person; not us.  This is why we often find it hard to put ourselves in another individual's shoes - we know that we are us, not them. But illustrations, media, and comics serve as what McCloud calls on page 36, "an empty shell that we inhabit which enables us to travel in another realm."  But how, exactly, do comics do this?  As McCloud would show through his illustration of the 'stick figure face' and more detailed faces, we can project ourselves onto a indistinguishable face and live the life of a superhero through a comic.  My major point is, comic characters are usually representations of what we aspire to be but they aren't so detached that we feel like we could never achieve the greatness experienced by comic characters.  I find it difficult to express how I feel about this, so please pardon my rough example: Popular superheroes like Batman, Iron Man and Spider Man live downright cool lives.  I mean, what's not to love about driving around the Batmobile or swinging between buildings in red tights?

The 'coolness' aspect of superheroes attracts people by default, but it's the fact that these characters all have something in common (especially in their earlier, pre-movie stages) that make them so likable: they have masks.  McCloud briefly touches on a topic similar to this, but I'd like to expand upon it.  We don't really see too many distinguishable characteristics about these heroes that would cause us to see them as "them," but rather we see vaguely human characteristics that allow us to imagine ourselves as Iron Man, Batman, or Spider Man.  In other words, when we read comics we don't really feel like we're a passive audience, but we feel like we're the hero.  Doesn't everyone want to be the hero that saves the day from the bad guy?  Comics give people a chance to live in a world they would otherwise not experience.  Superheroes, and their ambiguous identities that anyone can put themselves in, act as the vessel for us to fulfill our dreams of saving lives and being the good guy.

Citations: McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics:. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994. Print.

This is Not a Blog Post

After reading "Understanding Comics", I started thinking about how people communicate. I find it astonishing that something imagined by a pile of gelatinous bio-matter in your skull can be transferred to another through symbols written on paper. Its also fascinating how we are not limited to one type of medium, but are constantly creating new ways of expressing ourselves. McCloud gives us a view into comics as its own distinct and effective medium of communication. Comics allow ideas to be expressed in ways literature or pictures alone cannot. They provide a dynamic form storytelling that is engaging for the reader. Would the story of the X-Men been equally as influential if it was written in a 800 page novel or would have Batman been as iconic if his debut was on Broadway?

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I believe some ideas are better expressed in specific mediums. In order to get your meaning across, you need the audience to focus on certain key features. For example, visual media focuses on your sense of sight while music on your sense of hearing and, as a result, produces a different experience when consumed. The old saying "A picture is worth a thousand words" highlights this idea, though I think the opposite can also be said. Let's experience this first hand by seeing how the medium affects your experience. The following are two different mediums expressing surrealism (Why surrealism? Ceci n'est pas une pipe):

Metamorphosis of Narcissus

By: Salvador Dali

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Mobius Strip
By: Robert Desnos

Translated by: Amy Levin

The track I'm running on
Won't be the same when I turn back
It's useless to follow it straight
I'll return to another place
I circle around but the sky changes
Yesterday I was a child
I'm a man now
The world's a strange thing
And the rose among the roses
Doesn't resemble another rose.

 

Both works are trying to communicate their authors ideas of surrealism, each achieving this by taking advantage of their specific medium. Dali captivates his audience through visual juxtaposition giving the audience a sense of wonder in the dream-like world he created. A similar sense of wonder is felt when reading Desnos' poem producing a very similar dream-like feel, but with the ideas being completely expressed in words. Dali used the visual medium, which focuses on visual stimulation, to explicitly create a dream scene for the audience to experience. Desnos on the other hand uses the abstract nature of writing to allow the reader's mind to wander and create the dream scene in their own imagination. Picking the medium of communication is as important as the message being communicated.

I think one of the reasons comics succeed as a medium is due to their ease of consumption. One comic can contain an entire story, be read in about the same time as a short story, and be fully understood on the first reading. Not only that, comics have almost-limitless potential as they have all the benefits of both pictures and writing. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence"(McCloud 20) worth? Many stories would benefit by being told through comic, but do they lose something when being converted from their source medium? 

Sources:

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics:. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994.18. Print.

Comics, Space, and Star Wars

When Scott McCloud began to set the record straight in Chapter 1, he brought up one specific point that I thought was particularly interesting. Here's the quote - or dialogue, I guess: 

"Taken individually, the pictures below [not pictured] are merely that - pictures. However, when part of a sequence, even a sequence of only two, the art of the image is transformed into something more..." (pg. 5) 

Central to the idea of the comic is the concept of sequence. There is an order to pictures/words/images/events/etc that gives them meaning. The narrative of a particular text is meaningful because of the sequences that interact (plot, characterization, the various nuts and bolts of a story) inside of it. It's progressive - image A leads to image B leads to image C (for example), and so on and so forth. Long story short: a sequence makes a narrative. 

It doesn't even have to be a linear narrative - the sequence that makes up a non-linear narrative is still a linear sequence, because time is still just one of the thing that make up a text. Star Wars is actually a great example of this: narratively, it opens in media res, but A New Hope is the first movie sequentially - even though it is fourth in the timeline. 

(messing with your preconceived notions about narrative and timelines since 1977)

McCloud brings up the idea that "space does for comics what time does for film" (pg. 7) Comics are spatially sequenced; the space between them is the sequence. Comic action happens in the blank lines between each frame. To help myself visualize this, I remembered my junior year of high school, when I had to learn about early photography in either Photo 2 or AP Art History. Here are the frames of Eadweard Muybridge's work with horse racing: 

 

Eadweard Muybridge, Human and Animal Locomotion series, 1887

Now here's the same thing, only animated: 

(same citation, but accessed on Wikipedia) 

There's still a gap from point A to point B. If you look at the sheet (if you want to call it a storyboard, I guess you could - I'm pretty sure there's a term for all those frames lined up, but I can't remember what it is) you see that there's missing action - we don't see the horse's leg go from straight to bent. That's action we missed, that we didn't see. The meaning is not only in points A and B, but how we get there, the space that makes them different.

(A random aside: I was thinking about how so many comics are adapted to film, and I began to wonder if filmmakers in general don't like to read comics because comics are so reminiscent of storyboards - maybe almost like comics are unfinished, unrefined bits of a larger work? Or maybe they like to read them for much the same reason? I'm not sure. Who knows?)

Sources: 
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics:. New York: Harper Perennial. 1994.18. Print. 

WOAH....Comics are deep!

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, oddly enough for me wasn't a painful read. I understood a lot of what McCloud was explaining and it was all very interesting. Reading this comic book took me back to elementary school when I used to religiously check out the Garfield comics in the little school library. It reminded me why I liked them so much. This comic's drawings were beautiful and very overwhelming at the same time. But it was amazing how many complex elements went into comics and their meanings....

McCloud explained a lot about how comics are drawn or written to make the reader understand something in specific. When he went deeper into certain techniques I was amazed because I really didn't think that THAT MUCH thought went into comics. It is so natural for me (the reader) to simply comprehend what the techniques are intended to portray.

I also appreciated that fact that he really broke things down for the reader. Specifically when he talked about different types of icons in chapter two and that they are all used to represent something, This explained why the pipe was not a pipe.... it just represents a pipe. The weirdest thing about chapter two would be when McCloud mentioned that the human race is "self centered" and that "we see ourselves in everything."  I thought this was kinda creepy at first, but it’s actually so true. I could literally put googly eyes on my TV and think it looks like a face. Then he talked about how inanimate objects become a part of our identity like how phones become our ears and utensils become our hands. But when he said that when we get in a car and get hit we say "he or she hit me" not “he hit my car with his car," humans really do do that!

In chapter two McCloud also talked about how the more abstract picture are the more perception it requires and with words the more bold and direct the faster they are understood and vice versa. Does that mean comics is like its own breed of writing....with both writing and pictures balancing each other in aiding the readers understanding? Added, the whole pyramid thing was really hard to follow.

In chapter three I also liked how he explained the different panel to panel transitions. But what I really want to have clarified is the difference in western and eastern (Japan) comics. McCloud mentioned a lot about how there were different patterns in Japanese comic techniques but it was sorta confusing to me. Overall some of what McCloud was saying kind of lost me while other things he explained like the fact that comics are subtraction and additive as well as the concept of comic motion I completely understood.

Now that I think about it I may not have been really amazed by what McCloud was explaining and really just by his drawings. But, I think that this comic was a great way to explain comics in detail because without the pictures and examples how would we understand what McCloud was talking about? If he explained in a book I don't think I would understand what he was talking about in the depth that I did. But isn't that part of the beauty of comics? 

Source: 

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics:. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994.18. Print.

Ack! Comics!

Let me start off by saying that except for reading a few Cathy comic strips found in newspapers when I was much younger, I am completely new to the world of comics.

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2010/08/12/cathy-to-utter-her-last-ack/

Reading McCloud’s Understanding Comics was an overwhelming experience.  I had never realized the complexity of comics or the amount of thought and work put into them. It is a lot to process and I found myself getting lost in his chapter of icons.  Did you know that there are different degrees of realism in simply drawing a face and that each degree of realism conveys a different connection and understanding to the material???  Neither did I!!!  Confusing right?!

Once I got through the initial barrage of pictures and words, the nuances of the art of comics started to become clear.  I was impressed by the amount of thought and detail that go into each page.  As explained in chapter three, the size of the box, the space or “gutter” between the boxes, and the shape of the boxes are all deliberate in conveying the artist’s message.  Who knew it was that complex?!  I merely thought boxes were used to separate each image so the reader wouldn't get confused.  I was also impressed by the mood that can be invoked with simple lines.  It is easy to convey emotions with words and you often get distracted by them, but to look closer at the drawings and feel the anger, sadness, or love coming from the artist is impressive.

I am a frequent watcher of the show The Big Bang Theory and for those unfamiliar with the show, most of the main characters are religious in their love of comic books.  A love that I had never fully understood.  However, I am beginning to understand why comics are so popular.  They are not merely images in little boxes with onomatopoeia splattered across.  Each stroke of the pen is deliberate. The degree of realism in the character versus the background is purposeful.  Whether a line is straight, curved, bold, or broken all have meaning in relation to the story and mood the artist is creating.  I don’t think I will look at comics the same.  I imagine there are varying degrees of comics and art within them but I am quite impressed with the field overall.  They truly are works of art.  Kudos to all the comic artists out there!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0898266/mediaviewer/rm3293874432

Additional Source:
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics:. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994.18. Print.

Overwhelmed by Comics

Before reading the first five chapters of “Understanding Comics,” the only comics I had ever really read were those in the newspaper. Whenever my grandfather would get the newspaper I would sit down next to him at the breakfast table and read the comic section. I used to love all of the funny pictures and cartoon animals.

Now as I’m sitting down reading this comic book, I don’t feel the immediate joy that I did as a kid. Instead, I honestly find comic books rather overwhelming and dizzying. There are so many different pictures and words that my eyes can’t find one thing to focus on. I like to consider myself a fairly organized person and I tend to make a lot of “to-do lists.” Sometimes, before I make those lists, I get super overwhelmed with all of the thoughts jumbled around in my head. When I look at this comic book I get that same feeling, as if I’m looking at the inside of my brain.

While I’m overwhelmed, I’m doing my best to be open to reading a new style of writing I’m not used to, but there’s a few things that are REALLY bothering me…

1. Why are there some words that are randomly BIGGER or BOLDER than all of the other words? You usually see this done to draw the reader’s attention to certain words, but just like over highlighting a text, can’t you overemphasize too many words?

2. Why is there so much gosh darn writing and art work on one page? I will admit that it is pretty cool that there are so many different types of artwork and fonts (you name it)! But, there is just so much on one page that I can’t really process it all.

3. Okay, so good ‘ole Scott McCloud says you read a comic left to right, just like a book, but some of the boxes are different sizes and shapes that it seems more like left, down, right, down, left, up to the right, etc.

So, I guess you can gather that reading this comic book and learning how to read comics/history about comics is not my favorite thing, but I will say there was one thing I appreciated.

At the beginning of the second chapter McCloud talks about the vocabulary of comics. For those of you who don’t like sappy love movies, the first two pages of this chapter are talked about in the movie “The Fault in Our Stars,” when Hazel Grace where’s a shirt that says, “This is not a pipe,” under a picture of a pipe. Though I love that movie and appreciated the common connection, I was mainly intrigued for the very same reason I was dissuaded by comics-they’re super complex and detailed. While it still confuses me, there are so many different possibilities that exist within comics and it just fascinates me how incredible our imaginations are! Kudos to all the people who can actually sit down and draw and write like this, I know I can’t.