Metal Hurlant (66 pgs)

Well of course i look a the illustrations first and i thought that the drawings were very strong and i really enjoyed the style reminds me of my illustration teachers style... I had to really zoom into the comic because it was very hard to read the text, maybe if i had it in person it would be easier to read but on the computer it just didnt work for me.. or maybe i just need glasses.  but then againafter i zoomed in i noticed that it was not even in english. haha

But it must be about goblins or maybe his form of aliens where they are playing in outerspace or blowing things up .. maybe even there is a war between two species...Some of the characters will give me nightmares and some were pretty funny to enjoy.  I noticed that the artist was not afraid to show nudity, which i mean i think some of the comic books do good with great story, drama, good characters, and some nudity.  I just felt that i was in this whole other world and i actually kind of believed that it could be real... the way the environments worked with the characters and everything else just worked out.  It was believable.  One section was where two aliens were getting it on and flirting with each other and finding that sexual connection.. and i mean seemed pretty legit, i never think about aliens having sex.. but this was funny to see.  It definitely has a twist, after they were doing it then they were running away from these two large creatures and as he was running holding her hand the person stepped on her and she was dead.. only thing left was her arm which was attached to his hand still.  I did NOT expect that at all!!

I really thought this comic was pretty cool just because of the creatures/characters he does in the environments. I am an illustrator and i know that i could not pull this off, i am really not that good at making a complete different unique new environment especially with aliens because lets just say i have a phobia of aliens.  But i enjoyed someone else take of an alien/creature that was definitely unique!

Superheros Reconisdered:Preacher 1-7

Starting with the cover i thought the illustration was awesome. showed how dark and disturbing the comic is and i just enjoyed the coloring of it.  I noticed that all the people in the comic had long faces and most had long features as well.  The illustrations were awesome i never got bored reading this comic because the illustrations lead me through the writing of it.

The story is about how the preacher tells us the story of Jesse Custer who is a preacher in a town Annville in Texas.  He was by accident possessed by Genesis which killed his entire congregation and flattened his church... He seems like he is battling his faith with God and so is he is on an adventure of trying to find Him, God. 

This preacher is definetely not right with himself or God, i mean he was in a place looked like a dinner and told people out loud what their secrets were since he is the one that hears it all the time, which is completely wrong, and some of those secrets were cracked out.  And he smokes cigareets and drinks where he does say things like that out loud, which portrays him as a dark and disturbed preacher.  Even the dim lighting of each panel gives off that way. 


Some of the story lines were gory which i thought were cool.  When the girl decides to blow away this guys mouth while he was in the car with two other people was just awesome.  The coloring of the panels were sick because they were cold illustrations with the use of blues and greens, and then when she shot the gun, and the outside of the car was orange and yellow and reds and inside the car was blues and greens still.  I just think that the artist really depicts what is going on with the choosing of his colors. 

Woman Comics: Molly Kiely Diary of a Dominatrix

I thought it was interesting where she would like to go for comics, i mean i never thought a comic would be about a dominatrix woman would be one of them.  But i love her illustrations, i love the style with line work and blocking things in with black.  The black and white and some with a little bit of color such as her nail polish and lips make them so much stronger to my eye.  I liked how in the beginning of the comic she had a poster portraying a dominatrix and she is all tied up and on the side its a ad with the number to call is you want to get with her over the phone like phone dominatrix sex.  I thought it was original just because i have never seen this and for a woman to do this is surprising just because it seems more like a males fantasy than a woman's.  I wonder if she was into this kind of stuff or it just amused her to do it, or maybe saw a market for the use of doing this. 

The comic has humor in it that i enjoyed, i mean saying she is your friendly neighborhood dominatrix is pretty funny and how she portrays it as not a bad job where she enjoys what she does like dressing up everyday and maybe beating the shit out of your boss ( which is hilarious.)  It got a little raunchy with the butt plugs and dildos or your fist, and then showing a guy put one of those props up his butt. I mean i guess i know now that dominatrix doesn't mean just whips but crazy ass things that involve stretching a guys balls. ouch. 

The panels i thought were interesting, the use of showing her prepping up her appearance and the other three panels on the same page shows her doing other stuff like popping a pimple, and teasing her eyebrows... i thought the close up's were a great way to go into more depth of an outsiders look of a panel.  Also some of the pages where things that she needs/wants to do.  As in, what she needs to do to get ready, what kind of make up, what should she wear, what would she need to bring for props, and she makes it like a dress up kit doll so you could cut her out and put the outfit you want on her.  i thought that was very creative on her part.

i liked how the panels of the comics were not just the only thing she did but when she did ad's or posters, or a huge panel that just showed how normal they could be when they are in public shopping for food compared to the panels that are just all over the place and showing how many ways you can do something to a guy.  Some of the panels on a page would be a little stressful to try and understand, there would be just so much to try and read into the illustrations and the props and objects on the side would just overwhelm my eyes. 

Love and rockets by Hernandez Bros.

i liked how it is very contemporary because i could relate to the comic more. It portrayed how teenagers are "rebels" towards their parents where they do not show any respect to them, they show sex hints in the background, for instance, usage of posters on their walls, and there was drinking and smoking cigarettes with swear words in the mix.  Even in the beginning a character referred his sister as a bitch.  Also this comic portrayed the drama that comes with being a teenager, it had a "love" story sort of, maybe more of crushes, and then how joey wanted to find his record really bad but it kept being handed off to another person and every time he went to that person they handed it off to someone else.  The only thing was that i got so interested into the story about all the characters and it ended so abruptly and very confusing. I will never know if joey will find his record, i will never know what happens to joey and tom tom, and i will never know if izzy and the girls will find a new house since they are being kicked out.  But i really enjoyed the simple illustrations, the black and white worked out, normally i do not like black and white comics i chose color over it, but i had no complaints about reading this comic.  I was very amused and satisfied besides the ending.

Wide World of Comics

Blacksad Quelque part entre les onbres


As an illustrator, ( which i feel like i always say, but it's true) i cannot help but just watch the visuals more than the text.  But the good thing about this, is that it is in Spanish, so i really cannot pay attention to the text, since i am not fluent in spanish.  BUT, the illustrations are sweet.  I like the style, and i like how the characters are sometimes animals such as a cat or dog.  Which i s weird seeing a cat and a dog work together... since in real life most of them do not.  Without knowing the text, i think its about a criminal investigation in the beginning where the dog and cat are talking about how she died, but seems to argue about what happened. The panels i think are really set up nicely, but as i keep going back looking through what i experienced through this comic, i just cannot get over the illustrations, i am becoming a fan of these.  I am confused at some parts in the comic, one minute the main detective is investigating people  that could of been related to the crime and then one minuet doing some girl showing up with a rose from the guy he was investigating.  Or maybe he was stealing a rose from him and putting a gun in his mouth, i will never know, but i highly doubt that scenario. But i really got lost, i keep coming up with a million things in my head of what the story could be but none of them seem right. I would like to know what this comic is about and what each scene is saying... but other than that i am in love with illustrations and i think this comic is fresh and clean looking that keeps it orderly.

Rumiko Takahashi—Ranma Book 1& 2

I decided to read a little bit of this comic over break because i wanted to go out of my element and read something that i am not aware or familiar with.  Well at first, while i was reading i was getting incredibly confused about how the wording was and who was talking.. it just felt very jumpy and i didn't know where to begin.  But after awhile i started to catch on how the wording was going and got on their level of the jumpiness, so i started to enjoy it better. 

For the most part i felt that this comic was weird, i mean i liked how different it is from most comics, but trying to keep up with if Ranma Saotome was a girl or boy.  And it was like in the second chapter they were going to tell what was the deal with Ranma, but instead they started fighting and then the panda turned up again.  So now i figured out that Ranma's father is the panda due to maybe chinese training?  But i feel like i totally missed out why or how Ranma is portrayed as a girl and boy.  It seemed like it was resolved but i still am not clear about it.


For the comic, i didnt care too much about the character designs, i am not really a fan of anime, maybe the only person that doesn't... hopefully not.  But, it seemed to me to have an anime feel to it, and the text was sometimes confusing when the would jump from one panel to the next panel. 


I liked this comic, just because it was different to my comfort, and i liked leaving that comfort that i have been doing in the beginning of the semester, but it took me awhile to catch on and i am still trying to.

King: Ho Che Anderson

WOW. these illustrations i just loved so much.  I mean i was having a hard time reading than actually looking in detail at each and every illustration. I kept looking at how they used newspaper photos in the composition in a orderly manner way.  I thought it was cool how in my American Creativity class which is held on tuesday mornings, we were just talking about Dr. Marting Luther King and the bus boycotts and his "I have a dream speech,"  and to be reading this as well i feel like this week i learned so much about him.  The pictures of him getting through what he had to do which he knew was right and to see him beaten up was just astonishing.  Another thing that i was thinking, these illustrations kind of reminded me of a jagged edge, very straight edged, like Braque or Picasso.  Not broken up like how they did, but in some sort of way it does remind me of that.  Anyways, I have to say this was a moving comic about his biography and it definitely kept me interested in reading.  Lastely, i notcied that Anderson gave each person in this a unique, creative voice, which makes the movement in this narrative so much stronger.  But i really enjoyed reading this and viewing the illustrations, it was very motivating to maybe try a style like that as an illustrator. 

Maus: Art Spiegelman

I have to say i liked Maus, i really liked the illustrations to how it was more of a novel than a comic.  Also, i sometimes got a bit lost because it would jump back a bit and then back up to where it was, it was just jumpy, so i had to re-read it sometimes to get it.  I felt as though it was real affective on me because an idea such as him and his father going through the changed life of being Jewish was very real to me.  I liked how they played with the idea of how cats "hunt" for mice in real life, so in the story the mice were the Jewish people and the cats were the Germans; making it seem there is definitely an upper hand or authority.  If this comic was with people instead of animals i feel like this would have maybe gotten lost, but with the animals we can connect with it and somehow make it "fun" in our minds where we would be more interested.  Maybe they chose to do animals because it gets away from the gruesome pictures of just having dead bodies, and with the mice it makes it not as horrible to read.  I have to say overall, i am very pleased that i read this, it is just a great illustrated comic that tells a story about people that went through one of the worst historic events. 

Underground Comics

Well i chose to look at the gay comix, which i thought was hilarious.  The first cover with the gay boy in tight short shorts eating a hot dog sexually in public defenitely drew me in. haha.

These are funny, just because they are simple gay jokes that even straight people can get.  There a jokes from a girl trying to figure out if she is a lesbian or just a bi-sexual to lesbian couples having problems in their relationships to a boy trying to figure out if she could come out or even comfortable with his orientation.  I thought the characters maybe were a little overly gestured which i liked, like for instance, the one girl's tongue was four inches long and it curved a lot.  The characters also were sometimes a bit "scratchy" the lines weren't put together kind of looked like it was rushed the style.  Also with some jokes was a reference to L.A. saying how it shouldn't be impossible to find another lesbian in L.A., just because it is known to be one of the biggest city of lesbians and gays.  The couple parts are pretty hilarious, showing how lesbians do cheat on the person they are dating, or how they think they can date two people at once.  They mostly showed a lot of couples or people that are not "trustworthy" but there was like one or two , i dont know about two, but where the couple was actually committed to each other.   I dont know if that was intentionally to show that they are "non- committing" or what, but it was kind of bogus to me. 

When i read "Billy goes out"  i thought it was hilarious too, i mean they are i guess, but it showed him imagining himself doing another guy and like him talking to his penis, which i never saw in comics lol.  But then they had the rejection list for when someone approaches you at a bar for the first time, and i have to say when i read it, it was correct.  I mean everyone in their mind takes about what... five seconds to know if they like the person or not.  It starts with the looks, then goes down to how did they hit on me? too strong? too weak? its facts, and i liked how they had that above a panel like he was thinking about it. 

I enjoyed these underground comics, especially this one just because it was real and joking about being gay. 

Eisner & Thompson

For Eisner, i read The Spirit and the Contract with God.  With the Spirit, i noticed right away there was some type of slang/ accent, and if it was an accent i couldn't figure out what kind.  The spirit is about a drim fighter who gets blessing from the police commissioner, sort of reminds me of Batman, which involves drama, mystery, horror, comedy, and love stories.  And with the Contract with God, i loved the drawings, they were awesome pen and ink, which they almost looked like etchings.  I thought it was a little cracked out when the guy was drunk on whiskey and his kid was crying and he threw it across the room.  It's just crazy to think about someone actually doing such a thing.


And, when i read Thompson's work, which i did not read Blankets but i did Doot Doot Garden, i fell in love with this comic.  I love weird, corky, disgusting things that are comical.  When i first opened the file and i saw the characters it reminded me of Salad Fingers, which i loveeee Salad fingers, so i was already in this comic.  As i started reading i thought the text was awesome, it was out of the ordinary.  For example, a character said "I found a good buoyant log an i'm floating myself down a river of diarrhea."  hahaha, i love it.  The text bubbles were pretty cool as well, instead of being the simple shaped rectangles or squares that are perfect, but they are more like curved fun and different shapes that kind of goes with the characters inside them.  Also he is not afraid to cut off a characters head which you normally do not see. 

Superhero Comics: Batman

i decided for this week (02/03/2011) to read some batman comics!! dun dun dun.


So i was trying to compare the older verisions compared to the latest that was on the website.  First i started off at the somewhat present batman comics, and i was very surprised how awesome they are!  I couldn't keep my eyes off of the illustrations, details, the panels, the compositions, mostly everything. i thought that this comic was so well thought out and i was very impressed how together it was.  I loved how the panels on the outside, the biggest panels, would have panels on top of that one, or overlapping them to make the composition better.  At the part of the love scene i like how they are creative to put on the borders of the panels and put roses, so you knew it was some-what romantic.  Or how the way the used color, the would use black and white panels for the past and the colored ones for the present, which i thought was interesting especially when they were in the same panel how they would make it fade into the past. 

After i read the present comics of batman, i went further into the past.  the only time i liked the illustrations was from the bat girl comic, which was a neat more simple illustrations then other.  But the very past batman's, i did not like the illustrations, maybe because i saw them after the present, but they were boring with single panels, very separated, and not very creative like how they are now.  They were missing the dramatic scenes and lighting that the present has to offer even the compositions. 

McCay: Little Nemo, Herrimans: Krazy Kat, Schultz: Peanuts, Watterson: Calvin and Hobbes

With this assignment, i could not start out with any other comic but to most definitely start out with Calvin and Hobbes.  Maybe it is because it was my childhood memory of comics, but i used to collect the books filled with their comics. 

Now reading Calvin much older, i start to understand a lot more than when i was young.  It's just a brilliant comic showing the imagination of a little boy(kid) that could consider anything to happen, such as a monster in a closet or a water monster in the tub with him.  Even his stuffed animal Hobbes, is made to be real in his imagination and then in another panel it comes back to reality where if the parents are by the tiger he is depicted as a stuffed animal.  This comic portrays a childhood that everyone can relate to through comedy of the  jokes that adults can even relate too. 


For the reading Little Nemo, bad on my part.  I thought i was reading the right thing, but i guess i was not.  I happened to read the nemo classics, and i have to say going from Calvin to Hobbes to the nemo classics, i was bored and found myself not being interested in the comic.  But after class, listening to the class discussion i read it after class the right little nemo, and i enjoyed it.  I like how it is a dream sort of land that makes you more interested in the environment more than the characters.  I found my eyes following the environment more than the characters.  I also notcied that the parents in this comic seems to not really care for nemo's imaginative creative work, not like how calvin's parents would just pretend that would listen or maybe do and go along with it.  Like how Calvin's mom told him that she was making an eyeball stew from a crazy animal, and he seemed to be more interested in that than the spaghetti. 

And the other comic that i read, was Krazy kat, since i never heard of this comic.  I liked how simple it was as an illustrator, and how it shows a dream to reality really well.  For example, the one comic strip the dream was in numbers ( the panels) and then when it turned into reality the numbers turned into numeral numbers and started off at one again.  It makes it separate, but yet it is still so together.  In our class discussion i didn't notice until it was brought up, but even the environment background always changes even if it is not a drastic change where the character is. 

Understanding Comincs: Scott McCloud

When i was reading this comic, i was very interested right off the bat because i really wanted to learn about good comics vs. bad comics.


What i thought was interesting was the fact of simplifying a form or like the example he gave a realistic portrait of someone is better for cartoons to make it more simple.  The artist can strip down the image where they are not eliminating details but they are focusing on specific details.  Which i always didn't know how simple you could go with that, but apparently a circle and two dots and a line could be enough for our eyes to read this person. 

I thought it was cool how you could have friend draw irregular closed curves and every one of those can turn into a simple face by just adding an eye or eyes.

The thing that i was ineterested in was how thet when people interact, they have vivid details about the other person talking to them because they are anaylzing that person.  But for when you are talking to someone and you are smiling, you can picture yourself less vividly.  You know that you are smiling but you do not know what it exactly looks like.  How would you know that you had a piece of spinach in your teeth?  You wouldn't until you looked in the mirror while you went to the bathroom after eating that deep fried chicken.  But the other person would notice it and in their mind would have a detailed version of it from staring at it every time you would open your mouth or smile.

Realistic vs. Cartoon:  when they stated that it is easier to read the text when there is a simple form of cartoon rather than a realistic version, i noticed right away that they were right.  the one page had a realistic person saying something and the next panel was the  cartoon speaking, and i noticed how much easier it was to read the cartoon rather than the realistic one.

i enjoyed this reading, mainly because i finally got a good idea of what is good and what is bad in the comic books and also reasoning's behind why they put that icon there, or split an image. 

Rooster Panel Activity taken place in class.

Max Ernst comic panels during class.

mine might sound crazy, but this is what i recieved by looking and examining the panels, but i let my mind go and not try and stop what i was thinking.

1.  She's attempting to do a chicken dance so that her chicken produces more eggs for her to sell.

2. Either she turned into a big chicken, or she died from starving and bad health because she had no money to help her survive and her chickens are there to say goodbye.  Or maybe there is just a chicken cult.

3. "The chickens" have a ritual for her and barriers her into the ground at their church.

4. Maybe the chickens are turning other women into chickens for their clan.  The one woman is lying on a panel that has the sketlton and cross bones, HUMAN --> CHICKEN!

5. The chicken clan which i am going to name, "Those eggs are mine" clan probably kills royality?

6. They have chickens watching their next victims, even when they are dancing.

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

The Arrival written and illustrated by Shaun Tan was an awesome speechless children's novel.  When i first looked at the cover i did not know what to expect from this book, but when i started to read through the illustrations i noticed it was about the struggles of a man departing his family to make a better life for himself and his family as well.

My favorite thing about this novel was that it had no text.  At first, i have to say, i was definitely confused if i was reading the right thing just because there was no text, but then i realized not every book has to have text.  I think the choice of not having any text makes it more creative for the reader to explore their thoughts and ideas of what the author is trying to portray through the story.  It allows the reader to grasp the story in their own way/out look.  My experience was that i had to read it once one day and then the next day i would read it, and so on and so forth.  I had to read it so many times to try and figure out one way that i wanted the story to be.  After i would collect my ideas, thinking maybe this is a dream of his, just because of all the little monsters running around, i didn't know if he was making up the monsters to be his "imaginary friends" or what.  But after reading this a couple times, i started to see that it was about how crazy of a world it could be for an immigrant coming or going to a new place to explore.  ( i know how crazy of a world it could be for such an immigrant due to the fact that i have friends from Africa now, and how they did not know a lot about things like, what is a squirt gun?  

I really just love how me being the reader, i can enjoy myself entering a new strange world that makes me participate into the main characters emotion of loneliness. And how could i forget, the detailed illustrations and emotion through the pictures just blew my mind away as an illustrator.