Free comics at the public library!

I was at the Cincinnati public library, down on Ludlow, picking up books and saw this flyer! So I wanted to pass it on to you all if you're interested!

Final Paper Reminder--Due May 1st via email; Also: What do I mean by research?

A few of you have emailed to ask for guidance about what sorts of research I'm looking for you to include in your final papers, so I thought I'd post what I've been writing to them. 

 What I mean by research: That would mean anything from including interviews with the artists in your analysis to searching venues, such as JStor and Project Muse (both accessible if you log in via the library website), for scholarly articles related to your paper.  You might look up articles about a theme you're interested in (eg animals in Maus, gender in comics, the relationship between manga and U.S. comics), for instance, or you might look for specific research on one of the comics you treat in the work.  You could also use a more general resource on comics, such as a book of comics theory a la McCloud.
 
Here are the books I posted links to early in the semester:



Hillary Chute's Graphic Women

A Comics Studies Reader, Ed. Jeet Heer and Ken Worcester

Michael Chaney's Graphic Subjects

Jared Gardner's Projections: Comics and The History of 21st Century Storytelling

Charles Hatfield's Alternative Comics

Frederick Aldama's Multicultural Comics

Douglas Wolk's Reading Comics

Thierry Groensteen's The System of Comics

Will Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art

Neil Cohn's The Visual Language of Comics

Randy Duncan's The Power of Comics

Stitches

Sorry for the delay. Graduating makes life crazy.

Stitches, for me, stylistically, was like many mediums in one. The story read for me like an old silent movie; actually, if you go to David Small’s website for Stitches, he has instrumental music that is eerie and goes nicely with Small’s art. Respond with your thoughts on art, music, and mediums and how it influences/aids adolescents, and Small’s adolescence specifically, in how they respond to pain and powerlessness.

With young adult novels trending towards darker themes as of late (Hunger Games, Divergent, The Fault in Our Stars), how do you think Stitches compares to these popular works of fiction?

What did you think of how the memoir ended? (“I didn’t”) How did it affect you? How do you think it affected/affects small?

Comic Extra Credit

I'm not exactly a fantastic artist but I do want to do this for a living some day, and this gave me some good practice. I expect I'll be continuing this comic in the comments if anyone happens to be interested.

It is kind of influenced by the sorts of things I've been watching lately, coming to the end of Falling Skies and having just started Helix.

I hope this is interesting to you guys.

Stitches, Part 1

I have to begin this with an apology for the lateness. 

1. A title card is a lead in to an episode which usually tells a person a little bit about the story that they are about to receive. Small uses this technique throughout his story either to break up the action or to provide insight into the way each part of the story will play out. What do you feel his intent in using the title cards is? Do you think that his application was effective?

2. Small uses a relatively realistic style of drawing to portray himself and the other characters throughout the story. If Scott McCloud is to be believed, this should make it more difficult to place yourself in the character's positions. Do you find this to be true? If not, explain your experience.

3. Pages 61 and 62 show small slipping into a paper and into what seems to be a stomach. What do you feel is the significance of this? What do you feel the stomach is meant to represent? What is the significance of the characters residing in the stomach?

Graphic Novel Extra Credit

            I wrote the short graphic novel The Path as a sort of journey for someone who feels alone. It shows a man gradually becoming distant and alone then eventually becoming stone even though people are there for him. He is being pushed along by this “crown” that increases his mental state and transforms him into a troll like creature. I love stories that are mystical and have a deeper meaning than what they truly show. I love stories that are weird and interesting. The graphic novels that I pulled from for this piece were American Born Chinese’s supernatural and play with nature and Fun Home’s artistic style mixed with some of the works of Jeff Lemire.

            I really love art. Most of my projects these days are sculptures of dinosaurs or movie characters. The change to actual drawing was hard, but I really feel like I pulled it off. The layout of this piece is sort of erratic. I wanted to create a few centers of attention. Those centers being the faces on both the second and third pages taking up most of the pages themselves. I switched between artistic styles throughout. Closer up you are to the objects, the more detailed they look. I love to follow that’s style closely since it makes the drawing process much quicker.

            The writing process took some time. I wasn’t completely sure how I wanted to go with it. I just started drawing and hoped that the story would flow along with it. I’m hoping that the story makes sense. I really enjoyed this course more than any other course this semester. It was on a topic I have so much respect for. Getting to write a short story like this was a dream that I never pursued. I really look forward to checking out other student work.

Extra Credit - Jordan Posey

I didn't actually think of a title, so how about... "Teenage Closet Story on a School Bus" ???

As far as style goes, Bechdel and Waldman mostly influenced the art for this. I wanted to work with a text from literature in the same way that Bechdel did because I liked that dynamic between text and picture in Fun Home. I also attempted the technique used by Waldman that involved changing the art style for a different narrative function. I am slightly worried the difference is not clear enough, but in the panels that are illustrations of the book I was working with, Maurice by E. M. Forster, I tried to use a wispier, looser style with more pencil and less pen. I originally planned to do a lot more and actually use this as just a template/sketch for a more elaborate digital draft, but I underestimated the time commitment. I planned the panels on a separate paper and then drew all of them before filling them. My initial ideas did change from the original plan to this draft, though. I originally picked different passages from Maurice but I changed them to be more relevant to the pictures I wanted to draw. In general I found words/text falling second to art, although I think it would have been more practical to do it the other way.

The story and the concept were two things that were much more difficult for me to come up with. I wanted to either focus on race or sexuality, or both, but I ended up choosing only sexuality because of the book I wanted to work with, Maurice, which is a book about sexuality and class. This is not autobiographical, but instead I wanted to convey feelings I have felt before. Reading a book about homosexuality on a school bus is something that would have caused me great anxiety in high school, and even now. I wanted my character to be so enthralled with the book that they would read it in public, and I wanted it to be sort of ambiguous as to whether he was embarrassed or not. The passages I chose are actually out of order by a few pages, but it made more sense the way I did it. The first is Maurice finally telling his former lover, a man who chose to live a heterosexual life, he is done with him. The second is Maurice embracing his new lover. I wanted the second scene paralleled with the current narrative, of my character shyly telling someone (possibly a romantic interest, who knows), that he is reading a book about homosexuality. This is essentially a story about being in the closet, or not being in the closet. Maurice and his lovers are certainly in the closet so I wanted that contrast, and I wanted it to be ambiguous as to whether my characters were in the closet or not. Whether he is or not, my point was that its always hard to put yourself out there, especially with sexuality.

If anything, I wish I could have differentiated the two styles more so that effect could have been more impactful. I really enjoyed making this though.