Comics Relief

Here are some questions to think about for class on Wednesday.

1. Think about the different genres portrayed in different comics in Madden’s book. What does the genre add to the comic, if anything? What are different genres portrayed? Does the genre add to the “story”?
2. Does the protagonist in the different comics matter? For example, how do you read the comic “No Matt” (pg. 198)? Does Jessica even matter for the “story”?
3. What are your least favorite comic and what about it bothers you?
4. Does Madden still hold authorship for each comic even though they are portrayed in different styles? If comics retell the same stories but with different characters is there even an author?

See you all on Wednesday!

A few notes on the batch of papers I just returned, plus reminders about future ones…

The grade is out of five, since each response paper is worth five points of your final grade.  I apologize for not having said that when I was talking about the papers!

I encourage everyone to revise them, if you have time; that’s the best way of making sure that you’ve internalized the comments.  If you choose to revise, you have a week from when I give the paper back.  Be sure to turn in my commented copy with the new one, so that I can appreciate the changes you’ve made.  I will generally give you the grade the new essay deserves.  This is an option for all of your response papers; just because it’s a big class doesn’t mean you can’t work on your writing.

Future response papers are due whenever the spirit moves you, although I strongly encourage you to start early.  Papers on a particular reading are due no more than a week after we’ve discussed it (i.e., weds. the 9th for 99 Ways).  It’s fine with me if you want to write on something we haven’t read for a couple of the response papers (as long as it’s a comic!), but you should drop me a line to discuss it.

Finally, here are the writing issues I addressed at the beginning of class, so that there’s a written record (and now that you’ve gotten your papers back):

Title

Have one!  Don’t just summarize your main point; feel free to be creative here.

Mechanics

Punctuation, syntax, spelling, and other so-called technicalities are important for two reasons:  First of all, they prevent misinterpretation, and secondly, they are guarantors of quality, in that the person who has perfect spelling can be trusted to have taken similar care with the bigger issues as well.  (This last point is the main reason that the academy is fussy about citation format.)

Making claims

Some profs are looking for hedging that reflects the truth (“I believe that we can read this image as…”), but I don’t really see the point.  Be bold with your assertions!  If you argue the point well, hedging will be pointless, and if you don’t, all the hedging in the world wouldn’t have helped.

It’s not a bad idea to get in the habit of checking your sentences to make sure that your main claim is in the main clause of the sentence.  The way to do that is to look for the subject, verb, and object of the sentence.  If they are things along the lines of “One interpretation is…” and “The audience is invited to see this as…” over and over again, then your writing is too indirect.

The architecture of a paragraph (I forgot to mention this in class)

The strongest part of a paragraph is the beginning, and the next strongest part is the end; the middle is the weakest.  Don’t bury your best ideas in the middle of the ‘graf!

Mind you, I only care about these things for academic papers; write however you want on the blog.  This post, for example, has at least one grammatical mistake in it, and that’s just fine.

Hi folks!

We all come to 99 Ways with different backgrounds, esp. in comics reading – I thought I’d post a few thoughts/things I noticed. Matt Madden shoots references back and forth on pretty much every page. I know I ran into quite a few where I KNEW I was missing a reference, so here’s a tiny sprinkling of the references that I caught to start us talking! Please respond with references you got/fun things you noticed!

~  Grace

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P. 83 “A Newly Discovered Fragment of the Bayeux Tapestry

Here’s a rough translation of the Latin, might be helpful to those interested in comparing intricacies of textual differences in each retelling (If I get something wrong, let me know! It’s been awhile since I translated).

hIC MATTHIAS PVLPITVM AD MANDATVM DVBIVM RELINQVIT - Here Matt leaves behind the platform/stage (desk?) to doubtful order (for an uncertain cause?)

hIC IESSICA QVID HORA EST INQVIT – Here Jessica asks “What time is it?”

hIC RESPONDIT MATTHIAS – Here Matt responds

AD GLACIE CISTAM – To the ice chest

hIC MATTHIAS IPSE ROGAT QUICQUID QUAREBAT – Here Matt asks himself what he was looking for.

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P. 90 – “Ligne Claire”

‘Ligne Claire’ (Fr., ‘clear line’) is a style of drawing used by Herge, creator of the Tintin comics! I loved these as a kid. (Awesome adventure comics all over the world, which I now realize were pretty racist and at times quite offensive, but are nevertheless exciting to read and a delight to look at…) I thought this retelling was an adorable nod to Herge’s artwork; Madden even replaces the cowboy hat with the character Captain Haddock’s hat (in the comic, he’s always losing that hat too…).

Our earlier thread on the thoroughly exaggerated nature of female sexuality in Comics got me thinking: is there such a thing as normative sexuality in the graphic novel/ comics medium?  As a pseudo-outsider in the culture (up ’til now!) I had sort of always pictured comics as being too far removed from the main-stream consciousness to abide by such silly conventions set in place by other forms of art. It seemed that in comics differences were celebrated instead of shunned. This was a scrawny geek mecca; unlikely heroes abound, and with the help of a mask and a pair of stylish spandex pants you can be whoever you want, and damn everyone who says otherwise. That being said, I wanted to hear what people had to say on the subject of normative sexuality as it relates to the general concept of identity in comics. And to get everyone thinking, please enjoy this link to “The 8 Most Awkward Sexual Moments in Comics.” While I don’t really think the first posting on Tentacle Sex (don’t get too excited you freaks out there) has much bearing, I do think the posting about Iron Man’s experience in a homosexual abusive relationship with one of his Iron Man suites which has been spontaneously animated, poses an interesting springboard for discussion. These are clearly not just comics that went awry, these creators (well, maybe not all of them) were using the art form to open up a discussion about non-typical issues in regards to sex and sexuality, and I am curious to hear what everyone has to say about these!

PS: I am using the label “non-typical” in the kind of vague scholarly way that includes everyone who is not Anglo, heterosexual, and has an average of 2.4 children per household.

Link:     http://www.cracked.com/article_18957_the-8-most-awkward-sexual-moments-in-comic-book-history.html

I walked out of Wednesday’s class being a little bothered by something about our discussion concerning the 180 degree rule as used (or rejected) in the comic book example we were examining.

One of the most important functions of the 180 degree rule in film is to conceal the technical apparatus behind the gaze (the camera) in order to facilitate the suspension of disbelief in viewers. As we discussed, the 180 rule exists to draw attention away from the camera. I can understand why this rule exists in film, since it’d be hard to concentrate on the narrative unfolding in a movie if the whole time we’re being reminded that there’s a camera filtering the visuals on the screen.

However, I can’t imagine why the 180 degree rule would apply to comic books. There is no need to conceal the apparatus that frames each panel because the apparatus is a pen (or pencil or paintbrush or maybe a computer program), and no shifting of 180 degrees from panel to panel is really going to do anything to conceal that the image we see was drawn.

I haven’t read enough comic books to really know if this is a rule often used or even considered. My immediate guess is that if the example we used in class did follow a 180 degree rule, it speaks more to the influence that films are having on contemporary comic book writers than to any rule that exists or makes sense for comic books in general.

After our discussion on bats flying through windows last Wednesday I’ve been thinking about the portrayal of emotions in comics and graphic novels.

It has always bugged me how many comic drawings are often emotionally ambiguous. Sometimes a character stares out from the panel with a blank look on his face, and god knows what’s racing through his mind. Sometimes the text tells you he is in pain, but as far as you’re concerned his face only betrays stoic composure. A deliberate contrast of inner versus outer emotions, perhaps. Or flat-out suppression and denial of one’s true feelings. Either way, how exactly is something as intangible as emotional expression executed visually on a page? Are there certain methods or tricks that comics masterminds employ?

What about our superheroes and other characters with MASKS – how do we read their emotions without seeing their faces? How much of our interpretation relies on text? Do we even necessarily believe what the text tells us?

In a movie, music often sets the mood for a lot of scenes. The body language of characters and the tone of their dialogue also points you towards the “right” emotions. More importantly, they actually have ACTORS, real people who are capable of shouting, crying, smiling and producing just about any shade emotion they want you to believe.

Comics can’t do that. No matter how realistic the drawings, we know that the characters aren’t real. Unlike movie actors they can never replicate true emotional expressions on their faces. There seems to be an even greater challenge in trying to deliver the “right” emotion for each frame, if there even is one.

If the three examples below are anything to go by, facial expressions seem to be of minimal importance when conveying emotions in comics.

Mr Fantastic may have his back facing us, but no prizes for guessing what he must be feeling. Our knowledge of his personality, the cold, stark walls and flooring, and the unmistakable implication of the doctor’s words all tell us that he must be feeling rather emotionally stretched (so to speak).

Interestingly, a lot is left to our imagination. The artist and writer seem to be relying on their readers’ own assumptions on what a miscarriage would entail. Rather than focus on the doctor’s worried expression, our thoughts and concerns drift to Reed Richards and how we believe he must be taking the bad news.

The despondency Iron Fist feels over losing his parents is also chiefly communicated without facial expressions. While there is no denying the dramatic looks of horror on the characters in the background art, we have little facial indication of how our protagonist feels about this flashback episode.

We gather a lot of Iron Fist’s current emotions from the text. He confesses that he is “crying like a kid”, and that this memory stirs in him “a hollowness deep within”. He stutters (and presumably chokes) through his tears and explicitly laments that it “hurts NOW”. Finally he wails in what seems like a deafening and agonizing emotional climax befitting of the kid he believes himself to be.

A lot is communicated through his body language too. Oh how he buries his face in his hands and crouches over on a flight of stairs, alone and under what seems like the cruel spotlight of self-pity heartrending suffering!

This last one summarily captures my initial misgivings about comics and the believability of emotions in them. How do you fathom a character’s emotions if he insists on hiding behind a Guy Fawkes mask the entire time? When I first read V For Vendetta I was rather spooked by the fact that he was always “smiling”, even when setting off his latest explosive. I was annoyed that I had to depend so heavily on the words to figure out what was going through his twisted mind. Surely he mustn’t be smiling. I mean, we all know terrorists don’t smile. But wait, he seems little playful and speaks to the statue like the gracious lover that he is. Wait, now the heart-shaped box explodes and he muses “how lovely…my precious anarchy”. Perhaps he’s just a little loopy and relishes destruction so much it almost justifies the creepy smile…

Needless to say I soon grew to appreciate the visual irony. Again a lot is left to the imagination, but not before they leave us a lot of clues. I think that’s the beauty of comics (or graphic novels, if this distinction is important to you). You think that the text is filling in the gaps and telling you all that you need to know but subconciously we are also processing the inherent significance of the images – the vigilante appearance of his persona, the strikingly suspicious heart-shaped box, the retrospective irony of his gentlemanly bow, and the practiced manner with which he walks away and appreciates his handiwork from a distance. To say he is bitter, angry, contented, indifferent or (insert any emotional adjective) would be missing the point. While we need words to understand the context of the scene and to be privy to V’s thoughts, words, in this case, ironically fail to truly capture the emotional resonance of the scene.

You know what they say about a picture and a thousand words.

My dad just sent me this old instant message that he’d saved. It’s from my sister when she was 10. At the time, there was a strict system in place at our household where we had to “earn” our computer and TV hours by saving up reading hours. The conversation eventually turns to the subject of comics, which, as we know all too well, often doesn’t get the respect it deserves…

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~*sOpHiE*~ sent 4/8/2007 11:55 AM:

Hi dabber. I want to ask you something.

I’m wondering if…

If I read a comic book, does that add on to the time of my computer? The other day, I read a book and Mommy said that if you read 1hr of book you get 1 hr of computer r TV.

Now I read a comic book for 1:30 hrs. and then I read 30 minutes of 20,000 leagues under the sea and then mommy said that the comic book didn’t count because it’s not called “reading.” Is that true?

She said that the comic book is just like junk food because it’s not “nutritious”! I dont think thats very fair because I read it, didn’t I? Its a book and it has words, it has a lot of words actually.

I don’t get it!

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Needless to say, Sophie doesn’t think it’s fair that I am taking a Graphic Novels class in college and getting credit for it.

It occurred to me after yesterday’s discussion that it might be helpful to have  a shared  (and drastically oversimplified) definition of a few of Silverman’s terms, just so we’re all standing on the same terrain as we go forward.

The first term she evokes, although she doesn’t use it a lot, or loudly, is subject/subjectivity.  This motivates the whole discussion, in fact.  We become subjects (ie, we gain subjectivity) when we realize that we are independent beings part of a larger system, rather than being the center of the universe.

The implication of subjectivity is that we are thus a subject for others to look at, judge, and incorporate into their own systems.

That brings us to the gaze.  The original psychoanalytic idea of the gaze was that it is the mirror (or in film, the screen) looking back at us (where “us” = “baby in front of mirror”).  Through the gaze, we — boy babies — experience sexual difference.  Thus mirror -> gaze -> sexual difference.

But then feminists said, “Whoa, wait a second, this is all way too masculinist.  Girl babies don’t look at mom and experience sexual difference.”  [The what-about-girls thing is a big stream in the history of psychoanalysis.]  This gave rise to the male gaze: woman as object — visibility without agency — a thing that defines itself as to-be-looked-at.  Which, of course, is what a movie is.

A word that comes up a lot is ideology, and different disciplines use it to mean different things.  In our field, it means an overarching system, a world view into which everything must fit, regardless of whether the fit is good or even valid.  Not practicing what you preach (like the Marxist with the affluent lifestyle) is symptomatic, but it’s neither necessary nor sufficient.

Finally, suture.  It is a solution to a problem: namely, the world of the movie is a world that has no place for us!  We’ve been cut out; we have no connection.  Suture answers that problem by sewing us back into the movie with camera techniques that give us a perspective of our own (not just the unrelenting perspective of one character).  Suture re-creates us as spectators.

Postscript:  Back in the late 70s, the film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel (who had a movie-critique show on PBS) pointed out that the current crop of horror movies (it was a heyday of the genre, with Halloween, Friday the 13th, and all those classics) all shunned the shot/reverse shot in order to film all the violence from the killer’s perspective — which they thought disrupted the thrill of uncanny pleasure we get from horror films.  In other words, before Kaja Silverman was writing, they critiqued these films for not suturing the viewer into the picture, for not creating a separate identity for the viewer.  It sent a big ripple through Hollywood, and now horror movies don’t do that whole only-from-the-killer’s-perspective thing.  Film theory FTW!

I was originally going to respond to the last post by imereimere with this, but I didn’t want to diverge from what imereimere’s actual topic was. The comment that I wanted to call into question was, “If you recall, McCloud says that the simplified cartoon is a more universal representation than a highly realistic picture, therefore allowing its audience to self-identify with a character. Ok, I buy that.” This was something in McCloud’s piece that I didn’t buy, for the following reasons:

1) I don’t know enough about simple human representations in different cultures to make a solid statement about this, but the stick-figure face that McCloud depicts looks decidedly Western to me. If anyone else has more information on that, let me know. I’m not saying that people from different cultures wouldn’t be able to recognize that drawing as a representation of a human face, but I’d be cautious about calling it “universal” when it’s Western-created.

2) When I see an “unmarked” subject like the face that McCloud drew, I automatically assume that the artist intended a white, male representation. I feel like this assumption is further founded by the fact that the simplification of faces that McCloud drew began with a white male.

3) We looooove gendering things (see below), and we usually don’t miss opportunities to add or display gender markers when possible. The face that McCloud drew bears markers of masculinity, and also has the absence of female markers- bald head, plain mouth/lips, plain eyes. I know that he was attempting to draw something that was legible as a human face with as few lines as possible, but that doesn’t have to change the fact that the final result was male-looking.

Why are children drawn to fantasy? Why is realism for adults?

I read an article a while ago that questioned why children, who are relatively new to the world and therefore in a position to find the real world exciting, show more interest in fantasy worlds. And on the flip side, why are adults, who have been immersed in the real world for long enough now, generally more attracted to realism? As evidence: kid’s TV channels are loaded with cartoons, but adults only watch The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy… there are a handful, but not that many.

[Note: here, I am treating "fantasy" as an animated or hand-drawn depiction of the world and "realism" as a photographic or cinematic depiction, because I want to relate this to McCloud's discussion of the simplified cartoon face as a more effective "messenger" than a highly realistic-looking one. My use of "fantasy" and "realism" limits our discussion to the visual quality of TV, movies, and comics. But of course there are many other ways to consider fantasy and realism, and feel free to explore those too in this thread.]

If you recall, McCloud says that the simplified cartoon is a more universal representation than a highly realistic picture, therefore allowing its audience to self-identify with a character. Ok, I buy that. But then McCloud juxtaposes two sequences, nearly identical except in style — one featuring a realistic-looking Scott, the other the cartoonish Scott we are used to — and claims that we are much more likely to listen to the cartoonish Scott than the realistic-looking one. I read that portion like six times and was able to convince myself both ways. I feel like I can just as easily self-identify with a character in a live-action show as in an animated one, so maybe McCloud’s theory doesn’t account for everything.

Thoughts on this? Also, does this provide any answers to our original question about children and fantasy, adults and realism?

Slightly unrelated side question. Children may be drawn to fantasy because they feel powerless and small in the real world but can live vicariously through a number of flying, morphing, color-changing super-people in a fantasy world. Only, if this is the case, how do you explain a child’s attraction to a cartoon that doesn’t deal with super humans, but rather… yellow sponges? A lot of characters in children’s cartoons feature are really cute. Why?

I can drive 3-4 people to a local comics store — perhaps the 2 in Rancho Cucamonga? — on Wed or Friday afternoon. Let me know and we can make plans.

Hi all, here are some questions to think about for class on Wednesday. Hopefully they’re not incredibly loaded.

1. Why is there a fear of using film to understand comics?

2. Think about some of the similarities between film and comics. Differences.

3. Think about the different terms out there – comics, comic books, graphic novels, graphic narratives, graphic storytelling, graphic-fiction/non-fiction, illustrated narratives, co-mix, etc. – now figure out which (if any) you like the most.

4. Lastly, is there any type or tone of story built into the form of comics? For example, we discussed the idea that comics aren’t as “important” as say writings on a wall in an ancient culture. Does that mean comics can’t or shouldn’t be more historically important?

I got this blog post idea from sociological images (a blog worth checking out – especially if you are interested in the ways gender is represented in culture).  The entry is titled Gender, Boobs, and Video Game Characters.  The primary argument of the article is that there is an absurd amount of sexual objectification of women in comics.

The comic artist Megan Rose Gedris drew male characters in the clothing of female characters in order to emphasize the degree to which women are sexualized.

Let’s be honest, the guys look pretty unappealing.  It seems possible that the male characters are made “chubby” on purpose.  The women, on the other hand (at least in my opinion) rank well in sex appeal.  The men look ridiculous.

I’m also interested in the role and depth of female comic book characters.  In these images, some of the women seem to have super powers (like fire) while others seem powerless.  Some have no overtly visible powers (unless sex appeal is a super power).

It seems like there are very good economic reasons for this sort of sexual objectification.  But even beyond that, the stylistic themes seem to be institutionally established.  Even drawing books focus on making the female characters sexy.  The pictures above are from the Wizard book, How To Draw.

Some excellent quotes from the book’s advice:

“Don’t feel like you need to draw a butt shot on every page to help portray sex appeal.  Try to keep things more subtle by focusing on different aspects of the entire body.”

“Even a completely blue female with stuff all over her body can be very sexy.”

“It’s the subtleties of this piece that make it sexy.  By her not looking at the camera you can see she has her head turned with her neck exposed, which is very sexy to me… Plus, she’s covered a bit by the waterfall that leaves that imagination going to work again!”

This is not subtle.

There are two things I want to explore further, perhaps in later posts.

1) The extent to which sexy female characters are developed beyond their physical appearance.  Will they have personalities?  Depth?  Or just Bosom?

2) The extent to which male characters are sexually objectified.

At last, victory will be mine!

[Note: This post was inspired after watching "lazy teenage superheros," but since my comments weren't about the cinematography of the video/other superhero-esque movies,  I thought I'd write a separate post. About BAD GUYS!]

Do villains have lives of their own? Clark Kent equivalents? Do they too have to jump into telephone booths when they decide they want to go pummel a nearby city or rob a bank? Usually we only see them as villains, rudely interrupting the lives of our heroes–the Powerpuff Girls, Power Rangers, and probably loads more–with their latest hare-brained plan. Even when they’re not implementing some evil scheme, villains seem to be the opposite of “lazy teenage superheroes,” plotting and evil-grinning so often it’d make Wile E. Coyote blush. Meanwhile, the superheroes they’re so obsessed with defeating are usually living contented, humdrum lives… until the world is thrown into chaos and they have to go save it. Without villains, superheroes seem to get along just fine passing under their double identity.

But without superheroes, the arch nemeses seem to live in stasis, instead of pursuing “normal” lives of their own. For example, in Return of the Dark Knight, in which Bruce Wayne decides to come out of a 10-year retirement, the villains that Batman put to sleep (read: Arkham!) 10 years earlier suddenly snap out of their passive, white-washed asylum lives when they hear that the Bats is back. Before that, they simply remained motionless in their Arkham rooms, whereas when Bruce Wayne was not fighting crime, he had an unending list of activities. Don’t villains have “normal people” problems or “normal people” lives that they can turn to when the fighting is over?

I don’t have much experience with superhero comics other than the Batman one I talked about earlier, so I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts about villains’ double lives, if any.

All the readings for monday are in the sidebar, now labeled with the date we’ll discuss them in class.

For monday, read all three pieces with a skeptical eye.  Harvey and McCloud, particularly, are in conflict with one another (ideologically and, to an extent, personally).  And McCloud sets things out as facts that many scholars disagree with.  And give some thought to why/whether definitions are important!

This video is for the superhero graphic novels fans. I came across this short film, which I thought was quite entertaining and well done with a little hint of graphic novel-esque qualities. (At least from what I believe is a graphic novel)

It actually reminded me of the recent movie “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”. I thought it was alright but the concept was new and interesting enough to make me pay to see it. With the split screens reflecting the boxes in a comic book, I feel that directors are attempting to refine this new stylistic move with movies like Scott Pilgrim. Even “Hulk” directed by Ang Lee,  attempts to perfect this style.But I feel plenty of work still has to be done to perfect this adaptation of comic books to movies. Enjoy!

As mentioned on the syllabus, 10% of your grade depends on your participation here. At the end of the semester, I tot up all the posts and comments and assign a point value according to a curve. More is better.  Spread throughout the semester is better.

I won’t always nag you about participating (and I hope I’ll never need to), but it doesn’t matter: The grade will go on.  Two contributions a week or so is what you should aim at.

Participation, however, can be as informal as you like. In fact, informal is better; long speeches on blogs make for boring reading, especially when you’re doing it for a grade. And you don’t need to stay on topic — that’s what class is for.

Things that could make good blog posts:

• Some weird point that yesterday’s reading reminded you of
• A point we didn’t get to in class that you want to pursue further
• An odd resonance you noticed with today’s lecture in EA 50
• A link to a goofy video
• An advertisement for the play you’re in this weekend
• A request for clarification about tomorrow’s reading
• Thoughts that occurred to you only after class

Two things are very important to know:

1. Comments are just as valuable as posts, in terms of both grading and the grand scheme of things. If you follow up to other people’s posts a lot but never write a single post of your own, you can still get 10/10 for participation.

2. You gotta keep it civil. Ad hominem/uxorem attacks on anyone are completely off limits. Disagree as vociferously as you want, but call someone an asshat and experience my wrath.  That said, I don’t care about keeping it clean. Superman may not cuss, but Batman sure as hell does.