Lauren's Literature of the Graphic Narrative

This week I went in a very different direction and read strips from  Mother's Oats , an underground comic.   The comic surprised me right away with its cover page (above). The cover features a mother swearing at her child and smacking him across the head, while her other boy curses as he looks on. Although this scene is made out to be comedic, it is very disturbing. Even the child abuse by Craig's father in Blankets-- last week's post--was not nearly so blatant. The shocking cover was a good indicator of what was inside  Mother's Oats . Nudity and blatant drug use abound in the comic. In one strip, a character even shouts that he "Musta O.D'd". In another, two faucet spouts have sex. Mother's Oats is not only about shock value, however. The comic also frequently jumps into political theory tirades in the middle of its insane adventures. One character, for example, discusses his "theory of perpetual ignorance" to his friends. The bo...

I will be moving into more recent work this week with Blankets, an autobiographical   graphic novel   by Craig Thompson. What struck me right away when reading  Blankets was how engaging Craig can make a mundane, personal story. It's easy to forget that many of the childhood tales he relates in the novel are those that would likely be considered boring in any other medium. However, Craig uses his expert paneling and illustration skills to draw us into the action and make us engaged in the childhood play. Craig's mastery of the comic medium also shines in how he shows his perception of the world. His childhood church school teacher, for example, shifts from a rosy, plump old woman to a looming, shadowed figure depending on what she is teaching. Similarly, Craig's depictions of himself range from scratchy, ink-brushed and spiky drawings when he is upset, to beautiful, curving abstractions when happy. These radical visual shifts in Blankets were what really stru...

This week was a focus on the comic book in the context of two comics: Marvel's Mary Marvel and Hergé's TinTin.  Mary Marvel and TinTin already have basic differences built into them. TinTin is about a young boy and the adventures he experiences around the world with his colorful, if imperfect, captain friend. Mary Marvel deals with an idealized teenage girl and how she battles crime in her neighborhood. With these two comics are already being so different, I tried to look out for more interesting stylistic contrasts. What ended up surprising me most about these comics were the extreme differences in formatting. In Mary Marvel , Mary leaps over panel borders to grab criminals, speech bubbles change shape from a circle to a squiggle to a storm cloud to suit the mood. Meanwhile, big blocks of color guide our eye and unify each page by breaking up the narrative into specific color fields. In other words, Mary Marvel has the traditional flair most commonly associa...

This week's reading is a series of comic strips from Little Nemo in Slumberland  by Winsor McCay and Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. While I grew up on Calvin and Hobbes,  I had only heard mention of McCay's work. So, I decided to read both comics to see how they would compare as two strips featuring the adventures of a young boy. Breaking into McCay's work was very surprising. I was expecting traditional pen-and-ink strips, but instead found a comic in which each panel is its own painstakingly designed, full-color illustration. McCays's style is strongly informed by classical illustrators. His work joins the curving designs of art nouveau with Maxfield Parrish's lush classical backdrops. While these illustrators' work was quite realistic, however, the world of Slumberland is abound with highly designed creatures.  While cartoonists tend to caricature, McCay truly takes his designs one more step forward. One character from McCay's strip ...

This week I read Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art,  a non-fiction discussion on comics theory by Scott McCloud. In Understanding Comics, a cartoon McCloud guides the reader through an exploration of the theory, psychology, and tools of comics. Drawing upon the wisdom of masters like Will Eisner, McCloud authored a book that has become a fundamental part of many comics educations. One of the most interesting discussions  McCloud covers in his book  is iconography and the sense of self in comics. It's well known that cartoon representations are more endearing and relatable to audiences than realistic representations. Out of all the posts on my own  art page , for example, the piece that got the most mention from family and friends was a doodled cartoon rather than one of my more "serious" illustrations. Most will recognize that emotional bias towards cartoons comes from the simplicity of the characters. However, McCloud goes one step ...

Welcome to my blog! For my first post I read The Arrival by Shaun Tan. A silent graphic novel, The Arrival puts a surrealist spin on the immigration experience, inspired by Tan’s own experience immigrating to Australia. Tan’s mastery of illustration and research of real immigration stories come together beautifully in this compelling novel. Though The Arrival is marketed as a children's book, it takes a mature and eye-opening approach to its subject. The protagonist, an immigrant leaving his family to start a new life in an unfamiliar country, must navigate an unfamiliar place without knowing its language. The Arrival puts its reader in the same position--we must navigate the book without words. Instead of language, Tan uses character acting, panel setup, and the details he chooses to focus on to tell the story. For example, at the beginning of the novel Tan shows a montage of different objects around the immigrant’s home--a child's drawing of the family,...