"Ensembles of Productive Mechanisms of Meaning"

Sarah's random ramblings about web comics

Web comics... an interesting thought for a chilly Saturday.

What I love and appreciate-

I love the idea that because of the internet, comics are available to anyone who chooses to seek them out. I love that all sorts of comics can be made for next to nothing and shared with people around the world. It really is amazing how much the internet
has changed our daily interaction and access to music and music creation. I love that everyone found such different types of comics to share and that there are thousands out there waiting to be discovered and appreciated. I love that every comic seemed to
reflect a lot about the personality about the reader- from those who shared, I feel as though I got to know something new about you or confirmed things I already suspected (like: you are awesome and have quirky taste). I love that I have a whole new way to
waste time online. I love that readers don't have to wait forever, don't have to pay, and can actively interact with comic creators. I love that there are so many ways to experiment with the form and push the lines of what a comic actually is.

What I am not so sure about-

I worry that the aspects of comics that we have studied could be lost to the web medium. I worry about too much animation and comics turning into cartoons. I worry that if comics go too far to enhance the experience of reading a comic, they will eventually
take the experience away from the reader and put it in the hands of software, of effects, of animation.... I worry that the relationship between the comic and the reader will become lost and that readers will become nothing more than spectators.

Regardless: the first category outweighs the bad so.... as long as there are web comic creators who truly love and appreciate comics as a unique medium, I am sure the future of comics is in good hands. 

It's been a wonderful semester and I am thankful for my new appreciation of comics! Happy holidays and/or have a wonderful winter break!

~ Sarah

The best web comic

This is my favorite web comic of all time. Start at the beginning and just keep reading until it gets funny. The beginning is a little rough, it will be worth it.

http://achewood.com/

-Owen

iharthdarth live journal!

Here's the comic I found! I wonder if there is an ewok comic out there...

Stephanie

Dark and Lovely Webcomics

I don't regularly read any webcomics except the first one, which I only recently began to read.

http://contemplatingreiko.com/ - this is about a wicked little girl and her family. It's dark, adorable, and all single image. I love it.

The rest of these I just found and will read from now on:

http://1984comic.com/pdf/1984comic_chapter_01.pdf - 1984 Comic, an adaptation of Orwell's 1984.

http://23.thecomicseries.com/comics/2 - 2/3rd Dead, a comic about two teenagers that try to live their lives in a zombie-infested world.

http://insanitycomic.blogspot.com/ - a Lovecraftian comic

Susan

Web Comic - Darths and Droids

 This is a web comic that I enjoy reading. A group of people are basically playing their way through the entire Star Wars saga as if it were a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. I think it's pretty funny, but for people not terribly familiar with role-playing games like this, it might not be as amusing. 

Anyway, I think we were supposed to share these this week, so here's my contribution:

http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0001.html

- Jill Bohle

Trauma and Exploring Trauma in Comics

The exercise we did at the beginning of class this week left me a bit puzzled. I felt that both the poem that I wrote and the picture I drew conveyed the feelings about my trauma that I was trying to explore. At the same time, I feel like both were insufficient. 

In an attempt to identify trauma, both Owen and I equated trauma with damage, but I think even this definition is insignificant. In my experience, trauma is a moment. The moment could last minutes or years, but both the words, the images, the sounds, the feelings, the tastes etc. associated with that moment are part of the trauma. Maybe this is what was so hard to capture. Perhaps comics, since they combine together multiple elements of a 'traumatic moment,' they are able to better capture the essence of that trauma. Perhaps not.

Disability as the "Exotic Other"

My post this week comes out of a brief conversation I had with Sarah during our Wednesday class. We were discussing the visual style of Epileptic, and I mentioned being intrigued by David B.'s choice to portray epilepsy through a style that, in my opinion, closely resembles pre-Columbian art. I feel that he chose this particular style in order to draw attention to how foreign and exotic the disease seemed at the time, not only to his family but to outsiders as well. In addition, I believe that this representation of illness as the "exotic other" partially accounts for the family's desire to tame it and even conquer it rather than simply learning to co-exist with it.

 - Daniela Miranda

We're giving written language too much credit

Any language requires knowledge of a code, and familiarity with its use. Just because we are familiar with written language and we all use it in a very similar, highly specialized way does not preclude the use of another medium for a similar purpose, or require that all written language must necessarily be instantly and easily interpretable by anyone. We are highly insulated.

— Matt Halm

Comics as Tools for Trauma Recovery

                I’ve been thinking a lot about Epileptic as a piece of disability theory and literature. Though it is not the account the person actually afflicted with epilepsy, David’s trauma is no less important not only for him as something to share and purge, but for any person who has illness or disability in their family. It takes over everything and it becomes difficult to distinguish where the condition ends and that family member begins. I appreciate that this book addresses not being a perfect sibling or perfect family who knows exactly what to do to care for the person and treat the condition. I appreciate the honesty of wishing the family member was gone just so that life could be simplified. 

These are taboo issues and not something people are really supposed to say out loud. I can’t help but consider how helpful this book would be for people in similar situations. For them to see the externalization of someone’s experience and willingness to say what people aren’t sure they are allowed to think or feel. We have talked about comics used in education and I believe Epileptic
would be incredibly useful as a tool for siblings of people with various disabilities and illnesses. 
Part of the paper I have proposed for the Mardi Gras conference addresses this book, as well as “Overpeck” in regards to their ability to function as self-help/ trauma recovery tools. I believe the comic form allows them to connect with readers in a unique and profound way, as well as being an accessible form for those with varying literacy levels.

~ Sarah

Issues with Film Adaptations (and more!)

After hearing that Alan Moore was critical of the movie I was curious about what exactly bothered him about the adaptation. In response to the script Alan Moore remarked: [The movie] has been "turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country... It's a thwarted and frustrated and largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values standing up against a state run by neoconservatives — which is not what the comic V for Vendetta was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about England" (http://www.mtv.com/shared/movies/interviews/m/moore_alan_060315/).

What interested me is that Moore seemed to be critical about the integrity of the adaptation itself--it was not true to the comic, and therefore was not "V for Vendetta" (as imagined by Moore) at all. Eisner wrote that in comics the art and its story (like the artist and author) are inseparable--and so perhaps it was this reimagining of the story paired with Lloyd's art and iconic images from the graphic novel that most unsettled Moore.

I do think that it is possible to make a true adaptation of a comic in movie form--Persepolis is a good example. What is impossible, I think, is to make a perfect adaptation. The reader's relationship to the comic is very individual--pacing, where the eye wanders on the page, etc.--and so it is impossible to create a movie experience that matches the comic-reading experience of every reader. These issues of comic-reader versus movie-watcher experience come to head in "V for Vendetta"--how many of you thought that V's final battle was much longer in the movie? Didn't Evey's prison scene seem more like a few weeks in the movie versus the months that passed in the comic book? What a film version of a comic book does is fill in (some of) the gutters--taking away some of the viewer/reader's agency in the text, but also imposing a certain 'reading' of the original story. 

Once a film version of any written work is made, it becomes difficult separating the original form from the film form. The interpretation of the comic book-- and the gutter gaps filled therein--can sometimes impose a certain reading of the comic. For those of you who saw the "V for Vendetta" movie before reading the book--did the movie affect some of the ways you interpreted certain scenes or characters? Was this what Moore was critical of the most--that the interpretation of "V" in the movie would somehow change the way readers approached or understood the original graphic novel? Thoughts? 

(Sorry for the late post; lots happening this weekend)