Week #14: 21st Century Comics

Comics in the start of the century started to transition to online hosting. This media, in my opinion, is preferred nowadays because the potential audience increases manifold, and thus, their potential revenue and job opportunities. The internet is vast and reaches every corner of the world so even someone in Japan can read your comic made in USA. This couldn't be done with printed media.

Not to mention the advantages of working digitally: the ability to retouch colours, lines and layer elements to work faster, and so much more. A person alone can deliver an entire coloured and detailed page in a week. That's how patronage works in the digital world.

However, not every 21st comic is solely digital. Print graphic novels of the new century deal with thematics not seen in the mainstream of the previous century. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a clear example of a mixture of comic styles, western and japanese, blooming in the comic industry. So now there isn't a single artistic view of comics, but a wide variety of them allowed amateurs and fresh comic artists to springboard into the comic making industry.

I would say that digital is a malleable medium that hasn't reached its maximum potential, so I expect more innovations done.

Then we have a new breed of digital comic-making: the webcomics. These comics have a free format, which means they can be longer in height, or width, as opposed to a fixed constraint of the printed book.

A great webcomic showing the versatility of the new age for graphic novels is "Bongcheon-Dong Ghost", by Studio Horang, hosted in comic.naver. 

Because of the interactivity with computers, this webcomic brought awareness to comics as audio-visual pieces. A horror story that doesn't only rely on visuals, but also in animation, playing with browser codes and sound effects! It is sure to scare anyone who thinks it's just unmovable pictures.

This kind of envision and innovation gave birth to many comics using sounds, background music, code manipulation or animation to make the comic more immersive, something that printed comics cannot do. Many of these elements also are observed in the game industry.

There are many new comics with this kind of path in creation, and much more to come, for sure. We just have to look for them.

Week #13: Reaction to The Killing Joke

1. What is your reaction to the text you just read?

The Killing Joke is a very dark story dealing with abuse, attempted murder, psychological torture and finally the internal war of Batman: vengeance. 

In the original comics, the Joker was just another villain to fulfil the role of Batman's antagonist and a running gag at that. But Alan Moore created a backstory for the Joker, a strong motive for his character's transformation from a hardworking comedian, dedicated to his wife and his unborn son, into a monster thirsting for revenge on everyone in Gotham. The joke of his life was to end in tragedy, and he wanted to be killed by the one who wouldn't take his bluff.

The inclusion of the Joker's past tragedy made the comic even darker, it made me pity him, I related to him in losing the only motive for existing and working hard. I understood why he went insane and why he lost his faith in humanity. What was left for him was to entertain himself until his end was met. The prince of crime who pushed the definition of virtue and justice, Batman, to the edge.

All the while, this past also made me realize the struggle of Batman with the dilemma of ending Joker's life or not.

2. What connections did you make with the story? Discuss the elements of the work with which you were able to connect.

As I have written at the end of question one, I connected the most with Joker's tragedy. His life ended in the punchline of "no matter how hard you work, your life means nothing". And that is something everyone can relate to in the rock-bottom we reach. The connection I made with the story is the need to parallel the world we live in, misery and endurance with tragedy and temptation. Batman is tempted to break his vow and kill Joker. Joker tries very hard to make it happen by crossing the line between joke and pranks, to desperation and real villainy: torture, murder, maiming.

The connections I made were mostly storytelling elements. While art elements, I connected them to Watchmen, because Alan Moore has an intricate way of matching panels to cinematic shots and giving a sort of punchline feeling of surprising the reader.

The motif in these comics is the dark side of humanity. Contrast between ideals and the war inside everyone's head. Society's expectation vs what one really wants.

3.What changes would you make to adapt this story into another medium? What medium would you use? What changes would you make?

I definitely see this story being translated into an animation. A dark noir, perhaps. If I were to direct the art of the animation, I would choose the style of Batman cartoon from the 90's, which is dark but retaining the cartoonish quality. I believe this contrast is one of the best things to help animation regain its respect, and it will definitely match the 90s style of animation.

I could also see this having the style of western animation with the influence of Japanese animation. The exaggerated qualities mixed with the silent and pensive pace of mystery animes.

This could be both a feature-length animation because the pace between scenes is interconnected, or as episodes in a series because the scenes also can stay apart from each other and give the viewer a sense of urgency to continue the series and find out what happens next and how the scenes connect with each other. For example, one episode in the present time of Batman vs Joker, then an episode of Joker's past. These could be 5-15 minutes in lenth, sort of like a special for Saturdays or weekday evenings.

The script might have to be revised to fit the time constraint, choose the scenes that are most important, as a sort of promotion to The Killing Joke, if you will.

Overall, this is a great comic to have in the shelf as an influence to crime and psychological both in storytelling and comic making.

 

Week #13: Reconsidering the Superhero

In this period of time, comic books like "Watchmen", by Alan Moore, take superheroes and put them in more adult themed stories. This starts the trend of the dark and gloomy superhero reboots like DC 52 and Marvel's endless reboots of character arcs. Comic books were officially reinvented. They were no longer just for children but refined to fit the generation that grew with the comics of old.

The comic that I decided to take a look at is Alan Moore's "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen". In this comic, Moore takes literary and fictional characters, fitting them into the superhero role. I found this premise to be refreshing, as I remember the movie was great and filled with action.

While this introduction is short for the epic, it swiftly shows what is remarkable about the quality of storytelling and craftsmanship. It has details in linework, the colour doesn't fight it. There are lots of silent panels where the time slows to read the various events happening. It also helps with the pace of the story, because its atmosphere I consider dramatic and eery. Mysterious even. We don't know what's going on, yet thanks to the illustrations and good pose, we can relate to the scenes and grasp at least details to form the bigger picture. I'd call that quality.

Storytelling-wise, we are the spectators, not omniscient. The dialogue of aliens and foreigners are written in symbols that we couldn't understand, with no subtitles. I found that interesting, as dialogues usually convey information, and this censorship adds to the suspense. The way he uses the different ways to stretch the time between and within pages is a simple swapping of page layouts, but very effective. For example, the first page I show has a regular pace of dialogue. The second page is even slower, zooming out of an abstract shape combination, to something recognisable, to a character introduction and then to a stop-motion-like animation of panels showing where the character is headed.

The overall theme is the gathering of extraordinary individuals, who are not the stereotypical costume-ridden corny superhero of the 50s, but gentlemen in a science fiction (almost steampunkish meets aliens) world, with a mystery, murders and fantasy.

I would definitely use Alan Moore as inspiration for storytelling and script.

Week #12: Comics by Women

Women making comics isn't new, but topics that talk about women issues is fairly recent.

One of the comics I really liked is "Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic" by Alison Bechdel. I can't remember when was the last time I read it, but it stuck with me, and I took this opportunity to revisit this interesting story with twists and cynicism.

The way the panels flow and are laid out is also an interesting element to me as a comic artist. She has interesting shots and arrangement of actors, and while the scene-to-scene seems an ellipsis, it feels bound together like two sides of a coin. The storytelling isn't linear at all. This sequence of panels, for example, are two different memories of Bechdel. The first one is when she was much younger, while the second one is a few years later.

The flow isn't the only element that is disrupted in the timeline. The next sequence of panels also shows an ellipsis of memories from a similar timeline. A scene-to-scene sequence showing the difference between her escaping during the day and returning at night.



Almost all panels are accompanied by Bechdel's narration and description of his father. We can say the text and the image are parallel. One expands more information about the other.



The narrator has no trouble in telling the twist of the story early on. This in itself is pretty rare, as comics usually give a cliffhanger or suspend the reader in mystery until the end. This story is sincere, a recount of events.







The flow seems to be fast because of all the jumps in time where we see her in the present, then back in her memories, reflecting, then again in the present to reminisce. Ellipses have been seen before in old literature, but to see it in a comic is not an easy fit to achieve because it might confuse the reader. This is what we call a flashback.





From all this, what I get is that ellipses and flashback aren't a bad thing if it's the point of the comic you're making. The pace of the story changes based on what she draws and how many panels it takes to finally come to the key panel of information. This taught me that successful stories aren't necessary linear or surreal.

Week #11: Comics as Contemporary Literature

Asterios Polyp, by David Mazzucchelli, has an interesting play on how characters and moods are represented in comics. Up until now, I've seen moods were drawn differently, by contrast, colour or how the line weight of ink showed. But in Asterios Polyp, the mood, the environment and characteristic of characters bleed to the technicality of each panel.

Even the narrator, his dead twin, is not a conventional narrator. He's sort of observing his brother's struggles of trauma and how he wishes he would overcome them.

The graphic novel by itself is highly stylised, almost geometrical in appearance.

The main character is proper and always "right". He is a control-and-clean-freak. You can see by his design he is some sort of posh character.

A great example of character portrayal is the background complements said character. He is very precise and successful, knowledgeable by comparing myths to his own life, and constantly critical about others.

It's not just a non-sequitur because it is accompanied by a sort of "profile picture" of the character that explains very well what we are dealing with and who we are going to follow throughout the story.

With other characters, it is the same. It shows the contrast in demeanour. Cold and strict versus organic and warm. It's an interesting approach how consistent the author is in showing how different his portrayal can become but still make sense in the storytelling. It's not simple complementary. The art tells the story as well as the words on the page. 

Their speech bubbles, their character design, their backgrounds and the panel shots all show this portrayal. As the story progressed, we see a slight change in the main character's emotions by how he is drawn. He goes through a series of catharsis because of his relationship with Daisy. He is distant and proud, so he couldn't ever be wrong or lenient.

At one point, he loses Daisy to his arrogance, and he parallels his life to the myth of Orpheus. He needed to do one thing, and because his temptation got the best of him, he lost her. His line work also changed, it became erratic just like his control on his emotions.

Overall, this graphic novel taught me you can be consistent if you know why you do the changes and break the mold of comic art. The portrayal of characters isn't mere whim, but an aesthetic with a purpose. I would definitely apply this to my graphic novel.