Contract With God

I read Will Eisner's 'Contract With God' and I've got to say that it was definitely something that made me grin as I read. I couldn't help it. All the irony added into the graphic novel was just simply entertaining. The man makes a contract with god as a child going to America. He makes a life for himself, in charge of a synagog and a child placed at his door. As he grows up, his child passes away and he finds that God broke his contract. So he 'argues' with god and throws the contract written on a rock out the window. He starts becoming a business man, buying and selling property with the deeds of the synagog. Eventually, he asks the rabbis to make him a new contract with god. Thinking he's a good man, they agree and write him up a new contract. He dies shortly after and a child outside finds his contract that he had thrown away so many years ago. The child signs the contract himself.

Everything that was written I could see coming. It was an obvious thing. I think I just personally search for ironic situations in stories. So it made sense to me that everything that happened went as it did. As for Eisner himself, I think I greatly enjoy his sense of humor in his writing. It's almost tragic all the things that he puts this man through, but by the end, you just can't help thinking 'he deserved it.' Not at the beginning. It didn't seem like his daughter deserved to die. But once he grew up and started abusing his power, it just made sense that he would die. It was something I knew would happen to him. With the attitude the main character portrayed, it seemed fitting that god would be vengeful towards him.

One thing that really interested me was how the words on the page became an art form in themselves. They could become different artistic forms that worked with the page more than a simple speech bubble with words in it. I remember on one particular page, the words formed into rain drops. It just seemed that they interacted more with the pages than usual comics that I'm used to reading. It gave off more of a mood than most words usually do. Eisner knew what he was doing and clearly was an excellent story teller and artist.

Carl Barks, Tintin and Betty Boop

What can I say about those three subjects? They're all interesting in a variety of ways. To the point where I'm not even sure where to begin. I'll start with Betty Boop. When I was young, I had a Betty Boop doll that I would carry around with me everywhere. I think I actually watched some of the animations. I must have since I was such a big fan of her. But as usual, I never noticed all of what was going on when I was that age. Now that we've rewatched some of it, I've got to say one thing: Wow. Betty Boop is very dark! I never noticed it before. It's definitely more mature than I thought it was. For one thing, the song that the ghost sings to her. "Minnie the Moocher." I've heard that song in multiple places. While with Oingo Boingo, Danny Elfman uses it in "The Forbidden Zone". During that time, he is playing Satan and sings that song. The film was in 1980 although I didn't discover that the movie even existed until my roommate watched it a week ago. Where I'd heard the song the first time was in Family Guy's "Blue Harvest", their spoof on Star Wars. As Peter (as Han Solo) and Chris (as Luke) try to sneak onto the death star. It's amazing how much one song and reference can get around. I owe it to Betty Boop for bringing it up again so I could research it out of my curiosity.

Just like Betty Boop, I knew about Carl Barks when I was younger too. I was a huge Disney fan and Donald Duck was great. I read a story that was composed of eight pages called "Gyro Gearloose in Grandma's Present". It's about Gyro, and inventor. He goes to 'grandma's' farm to board for the Christmas vacation, hoping to get away from inventing. But in the end he creates a machine that can use dirt to produce anything on the farm. So nothing would be needed. No use for pigs, cows, anything. It was pretty interesting. I'd seen him in the old television shows and decided to read about him. It was pretty interesting to read. I noticed that the color palet was rather limited. Every single panel on all eight pages had a blue background. Whether it was sky or a wall, it was blue. And the ground was always white or yellow. If it's inside, the color is white. If outside, it's yellow. It was printed in 1956, so it's not a surprise that the color palette is minimal. It seems like that comic is generated to a much younger audience. It has easier concepts to grasp.

Then look at "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets". Children would not be the general audience for that. They could read it, but they probably wouldn't understand it. Unless you were actually in the time when Tintin was printed, because then the Soviet Union would be a current issue for you. But by the time I would have read this as a kid, I wouldn't have understood it. The comic is set up by Tintin trying to get to Moscow. But the Soviet police keep trying to stop him. He's put in jail, a torture chamber and more. Each time, he escapes and runs away. He puts on a number of disguises and gets hurt quite a few times. He gets in a car crash, he gets beaten up, and yet he always seems perfectly fine just in time for the next accident. He finds stolen goods that Stalin, Lenin and Trotsky had been gaining and tries to get back to Berlin to let the press know. The secret police still tries to stop him before he can get it out, but he manages to get back to Berlin. It's definitely something I wouldn't understand if I had read this before. And I have read it before too. When I was a student ambassador in France in 2005, I stayed with this family for three days and they had Tintin's comics in their house so I read them. And I wasn't fluent in French, but I knew enough to understand the gist of what was going on. I'm not sure which one I read, but I think it might have been Tintin in Thailand. But overall I find the comic a very interesting read.

It's amazing how each time I read a comic in this class, I understand it more than I ever could have when I read it previously. It seems like all comics are much more mature and sophisticated than I noticed.

McCay, Herriman and Schulz

Winsor McCay is someone who I will never forget. When I was young, I had this long video about dinosaurs made up of several different scenes. It was called "Dinosaur Movies" with Don Glut as the host. "Gertie the Dinosaur" was one of the shorts in the video. I'm not sure what stood out so much for that video, but I will never forget Gertie. Something about it just fascinated me and out of that whole video, it's the most memorable for me. I know Gertie isn't his most famous work, but out of everything he's done, that's the one that I will never forget. Although now that I've read more and seen more, I've got to say that Winsor McCay is an amazing man. I very much enjoy his work and his personality even more. It's entertaining that in his videos, he showed other people's reactions to his work. In the "Little Nemo" animation, I think it's very funny that the other comic artists just laughed at him until they proved him wrong. It was like everyone was always doubting him, but he would always prove them wrong. Something about that just humors me. His personality combined in his work is just a great thing that I'm glad to have seen. This might be a strange parallel to make, but he reminds me of Elvis in a way. They both were heavily controlled by their agents or managers. They were kept from doing their work freely; Winsor for his animation and Elvis for his acting.

As for "Little Nemo", I had the chance to read some of it. I read excerpts of it and I really do enjoy it. I wish I was that kid. Nemo becomes the center of some strange world and all the other characters are centered around him. I know that it's recommended that you don't focus on the style, but I really do enjoy that as well. I can definitely see the influence of Art Nouveau. I've always found that a particularly interesting art movement. It's great that McCay can just draw you into his world. You really feel a part of slumberland. As if this could be your dream. And it really could be! I didn't think I knew "Little Nemo" until I got to Ringling and heard about it. But when I was looking up information on it, I found images from the movie and now that I've seen that, I remember. I have seen that movie. I remember the floating bed that he was on. It really did scare me when I was little. That black goop (I have no idea what other word to use for that) that was always following him and trying to get to him. It was a freaky movie to see back when I was young! But the comic itself is something that I really enjoyed getting to read. The concept behind the comic is something that is very enjoyable, no matter what age you are.

Over the past week I also got to read some of "Krazy Kat" by George Herriman. It's not exactly a comic I enjoy too much. I do like the love triangle going on, and how Krazy Kat never is determined as a male of female. They say both, so it's a bit confusing. Although usually all you hear is Krazy Kat instead of he or she. But other than the love triangle, I didn't really get into it too much. It just reminds me of a strange version of Tom and Jerry where the cat likes the mouse, but the mouse still attacks the cat. It's just sort of strange. But I didn't really read too much of it, so maybe I just needed to give it more time.

I also read various "Peanuts" comics by Charles Schulz. I've always enjoyed these comics. I like the fact that although it is something I read when I was little, I can still read it and enjoy it. It's not just for children. It's actually a much more mature comic when you go back and read it again. It has many concepts in it that a kid wouldn't understand. For instance, the website I read them on has a different comic each day. The one posted on the 11th was originally dated from September 14th, 1962. Linus and Charlie are talking bout Charlie being slow in reading. Linus tells him that it could be because of "mixed brain dominance". I would definitely not have understood this when I was little. I had no idea what that was or what ambidextrous meant. It's a very intelligent comic for little kids to be reading. Of course they end it in a more comical way by Linus saying "If this is true, we can rule out poor vision as the cause of your slow reading." and Lucy steps in saying: "have you ruled out stupidity?" So it has a mixed balance of adult and childish humor; something I wouldn't have ever noticed when I was younger.

Understanding Comics

While reading "Understanding Comics", I found myself very interested in what was written inside of those comic panels. Of course when I first picked up the book to read, I was thinking to myself that I wasn't going to like reading this. I thought it would just be something I had to do because I had to. But now that I have read it, I have to say that "Understanding Comics" really did it's job to help me think more about what I was reading. I never thought about comics so much. I just read them and enjoyed the story line or the art work. McCloud made me rethink most of what I had perceptions of while reading or looking at comics. 

Like a lot of readers, I was one of the ones who would read a comic sometimes based on art. More often than not, I would see a comic that I didn't particularly like the style of, and I would put it down. "Watchmen" by Alan More is an example. I picked it up after seeing the movie, and I put it back down. Something about it just made me want to put it back down, even though I knew it was going to have a very interesting story line. McCloud points out that the content of the comic is much more important than the craft. It's true. People don't always focus on what they should. I paid more attention to the styles than the ideas. That's something I really need to start working on. 

Comics envelop the viewers. That's another point that McCloud brings up that I never noticed before. When you read comics, you're not just looking at images and text. You're completing it yourself. You're adding all your sensed into it. It's mostly not even from the panel. It's the panel-to-panel relationship. When you look from one panel to another, you complete the story in your mind. You imagine what's going on between those two panels. Who would have thought it took so much of your mind to read a comic? You see the words and you see the text. But what you're really doing is adding those together along with the rest of the panels to create a moving story line in your mind. You are left to complete the work. It's amazing when you think about it. Thinking about it, the viewer becomes the most important element in the comic.

A very important element to the comic is the writing. I always see the writing and the drawings to go hand in hand. But writing is a completely separate aspect to the comic. Before really thinking about it, I never really explored the fact that the writer and the author don't have to be the same people. I knew they didn't have to be and weren't all the time; but as someone who read manga all the time, a good amount of the artists do their own writing as well. It was just a preconceived notion in my mind that most artists did their own writing. But they are completely different aspects of a comic. Writers can be just that. They don't have to draw as well because a lot of comics rely on writing just as much as drawing. 

I could go into more things that Scott McCloud made me think about, but I would just keep going and going. Comics are amazing and "Understanding Comics" really opened my mind to see them more as an articulate form than I had before. I am more involved with comics than I ever could have known. Some people don't like listening to McCloud, but I personally believe that his points are more important than anything. The comic isn't about him. It's about the points he makes; and those points were things that I will always think about from now on when reading comics.