Underground Comics

This week I read parts of Mr. Natural, Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Hytone Comix, and Mother Oats Comix.

Speaking from a very broad point of view the biggest difference I've noticed between these comics and everything else I've read so far is that they don't hold back or restrain their thoughts at all; they know it's vulgar and if anything they embrace it.

Mr. Natural seemed to be the most tame of the things I was reading. He takes the role of the wise old man, who is quite famous but predominately appears in the life of Flakey Foont. From the portions I read, I found myself slightly intrigued by how he is very focused on Flakey. Throughout some of the stories Crumb lets on to how famous Mr. Natural really is. Notably this was seen when he ditches Flakey for a while, finds himself surrounded by diehard fans, and tries to disguise himself to go undercover for a while. Of course, at the end we find that he goes back to being Mr. Natural and uses that fact to get laid. Crumb utilizes exaggeration in his work, especially when it comes to women and how big their breasts are. Every woman seen in these comics wears tight clothes and has abnormally large breasts among other things. All of Crumb's work seems to embrace absurdism and guiltless living. The absurdity is carried on throughout Hytone Comix. These stories seem to push boundaries even further, notably with the comic "Horny Harriet Hotpants", a story about an "oversexed" woman who seems to constantly crave sexual interaction with men at all times. Even their PSA styled ads which seem to poke fun at those that are seen in mainstream comics push the barriers, using a talking toilet that reminds everyone to wipe their ass and "join the clean asshole club". It's hilarious, but also explains why it would never exist in mainstream comics.

Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers was more focused on the drug scene. The series follows three drugged-out hippies named Franklin, Freddie, and Phineas on their drug fueled adventures. The characters are all very convinced that whatever reality they're hallucinating is actually real life. The opening comic was especially telling of this, as it saw them attempting to break their friend Cowfreak out of prison, when in reality Freddie had just eaten all of their hash cookies and was getting his ass kicked for it. It also jumps back and forth between the main storyline and small comic-strip styled excursions about Freddie's cat, who carries a "don't take shit from anyone" sort of attitude; he doesn't let himself feel weaker or less than any human. The brother's stories are generally short lived, mostly dealing with whether or not they were running out of drugs or how soon they could get them. However, the story that carries on the longest is that of their eviction and eventual splitting of paths to find a new home. I found this to be one of the more interesting parts of this story; the author explores what happens when they're each left to their own devices.

Mother Oats took the drug craze in a different direction. While Furry Freak Brothers were more interested in finding drugs, characters in the stories in Mother Oak were shown experiencing their hallucinations. Although very abstract, I thought that some of the better illustrations from underground comics were in the vivid imagery of the drugged-out mind. The 3rd piece of this comic was particularly interesting to me, where the main character started to visualize different aspects of his psyche (I.E. his ego, his conscience). It's a different viewpoint of self-examination. I think illustrating what goes on in one's head is something that is going to be abstract to begin with, so the way the main character ends up interacting with his drug trip is something that stood out to me from these comics. While these comics are beautiful to look at, they can also be very overwhelming. There are large patches of text, combined with very complicated and strong visuals. It becomes difficult to focus on just one thing, and it really completely overwhelms me as a reader. I think that I would need to spend more time really taking a closer look at these to really understand them better.

Eisner + Thompson

This week I read A Contract with God, Blankets, and Habibi since I had ordered it and wanted to read it anyway.

Something across the board with all three of these novels is the attachment to religion in their writing. Eisner establishes this pretty quickly, using his first character to actually scribe the physical contract. Then of course there's the questioning of the religion and beliefs, followed by the eventual demise. From this point forward the story really became more about the tenants and people associated with the apartment building. I appreciated the way Eisner split things into individual character studies; having a group of smaller stories held together as a whole by a unifying factor. It helps to really understand their individual personalities, while still carrying out a narrative relating to them. I can really appreciate his attention to detail with illustrating all walks of life.

I have read Blankets before this class, but I enjoyed re-reading it and re-evaluating the storyline. Thompson's autobiography jumps back and forth in time throughout the major part of the story, really as a point of referencing his childhood, his relationship with his family, and how that has affected him. Thompson's take on religion in this novel is very quirky: Although he never really loses faith in God or in his own religion, he does question some of the ways that it's brought down to him (Most notably the pastor who is continuously trying to convince Craig to go into the ministry). His relationship with Raina is one all too familiar to the world of teenagers. The whole idea of outcasts finding love between each other, coupled with the inherent problems of first love, mixed signals, and separation is almost a perfect description of high school romance.

Habibi took a much darker route than what I had expected after having just read Blankets. Although Habibi is heart-warming in some respects, it's also a very heavy story to take in as far as content in concerned. Again, Thompson utilizes religious passages and stories interweaved with the storyline of the book. This makes a very clear and obvious relationship between religion and the characters' path. What I enjoyed about this story is how well Thompson immerses the reader into the environment, but at the same time can throw you off and take you somewhere that seems completely different but is still the same. The relationship between Dodola and Zam was something very delicate and definitely strange, something I can't say I've seen done in comics or graphic novels before. Some of the subject matter is pretty gruesome and a bit harder to take in. What makes this book so wonderful is how delicately Thompson handles these situations; nothing seemed overkill or out of place. I just feel that this book had the space or at least good purpose for having as much of the darker material, rather than with Blankets where these heavier situations seemed to fall few and far between.

Overall I think these books were a good starting point for a discussion of the Graphic Novel format of writing. These were longer stories that needed to be told in an uninterrupted fashion. Eisner's work showed a great sense of connectivity between their characters who never really interacted with each other. Blankets and Habibi both carry on stories that focus on a relationship, and how the characters are able to handle themselves in it, while continuing a narrative that spans many years. Overall the long format is ideal for all three of these works.

Comic Books

For this week I read through a few of Carl Barks' Donald Duck comics, some stories in Weird Science, portions of TinTin, Captain Video, and Jon Juan.

Starting with Donald Duck, the first thing I noticed is that like the comic strips we were reading there is a main cast of characters that stay constant. With this longer format, they are able to switch out the situations and other primary characters very easily. Barks also really plays up the ridiculous factor in his scenarios. I enjoyed that although his nephews were capable of causing him torment, that wasn't their primary purpose in the story. A lot of the time it looked like they ended up being merely observers of the ridiculous things that Donald was doing.

Weird Science was not exactly my cup of tea, but I can also appreciate the way that it operates as a series of short stories. Each story starts with a conflict, finds a resolution, but of course that resolution is not something that really lasts forever. It's always interesting seeing how people in the 50's thought life would be in the future. Some of it is very standard fantasy of flying cars and time travel, but sometimes they do have some basis for how they feel like will play out. Specifically, they mention history repeating itself. In that sense these comics act almost as a warning or reminder.

I read through portions of Explorers on the Moon, which kept itself interesting by having the characters feel completely unfamiliar with space travel and how that affects them. I found their reactions to the gravity shift to be really funny. The whole denial of even being in the situation they were in was key to this. The whole idea of being thrown into a situation and having to figure out how to cope with it on the fly seems to be the basis of this particular comic.

Captain Video and Jon Juan shared qualities of the superhero. Predominantly there was the obvious build of the characters, and the very "take charge" attitude that they both possess. I felt more drawn to read through Jon Juan, and found that his character really does resemble all qualities that men are expected to desire for themselves. He's extremely strong and charming, he escapes all of his obstacles, and he has all the women fawning over him. More to the point, he's labeled as "The World's Greatest Lover". Although completely unrealistic, it's setting a standard. Most men want to be seen as attractive and strong. Jon Juan seems to embody both of these thing to an excess. However, his situation is still more normal than what I can remember from reading standard superhero comics. Rather, he doesn't have any sort of superpowers, he just happens to exist and be better than you.

In Class - Dream of the Rarebit Fiend & Krazy Kat

Reading through a few of these strips of Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, I've noticed more than a few common themes and devices used. One constant is that each of them end with the dreamer waking up. The text leaves not too much to the imagination, as it really does spell out most of the information from the scene. Each starts with some sort of issue that they spend the remainder of the comic trying to solve, but something always goes wrong and they end up waking up. The style of the comic is very simple; mostly linework, little to no shading except to define dark clothing and some shadows. The panels jump around between scenes spastically as do many dreams. I think the point of these comics is realizing our own fantasties or fears, but at the same time understanding that reality has to kick in, and you have to wake up. For that matter, you can escape whatever problems you may have encountered in your dream state by waking up.

Krazy Kat confused me mostly because of the spastic style of sequencing and writing. The dialect takes a double take to really start to understand. We can expect that Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse are literally playing the cat and mouse game, and of course the tables are turned as well. It's expected that in the end Ignatz's plan is going to fail miserably. Krazy Kat also seems to take Ignatz's plans as affection. While watching the animated version of Krazy Kat I started to notice more that he's very dense. Again, this whole idea lends itself well to the comic strip format because it's a story that can be continued on without end.

--David

Comic Strips

This week I read bits and pieces of Little Nemo, Boondocks, Peanuts, and Calvin and Hobbes. To state the obvious one of the common themes between all four of these is the idea of a child's point of view on the world that they live in. However, they do each have their own ways of exploring their imaginations or at least how they interpret their worlds.

Little Nemo's biggest concern was getting to Slumberland, and the things that happened while he was sleeping. I found it interesting how many pitfalls and road blocks he had put in his own path. It's as though Slumberland is this all-too-perfect world, and he can reach it while he's sleeping but he doesn't want to wear out his welcome there either. What's genius about this particular series is what also lends itself so well to the comic strip form: he uses the base idea of going to Slumberland but can create countless stories that fit in between falling asleep and waking up.

With the Boondocks Huey and Riley are trying to cope with bigger issues stemming from moving from Chicago to a white suburban neighborhood. However, they give complete polar opposite reactions. Huey is portrayed as the kid who is mature for his age and is well educated, while Riley wants to try to enforce his own stereotypes, going so far as to refer to himself as "Riley Escobar" and change all the street sign names in his neighborhood to make them seem less wimpy. The other half of Boondocks is the focus on how their neighbors react to them. Growing up in Suburbia, I have seen people who act in such a fashion to something that breaks the norm of their world. The half-hearted attempt at connecting with the Freeman family is quickly noticed.

Peanuts was something I even remembered reading in the newspapers; Schultz was a household name. Using a small set of characters and defining their personalities quickly through a series of four panel comics, the reader can figure out the characters really quickly, although I noticed that at least in the panels I was reading names were not used too often. The comic revolves around their small disputes within the group of characters, and their quirks and personality traits show through very quickly in each, never to change or develop out. There is almost some comfort in knowing that as much as the rest of the world changes there is always a constant in Peanuts.

Calvin and Hobbes deals more with Calvin's imagination, more importantly how overactive it is. The main problem that comes up is that he's the only one who sees Hobbes as a real, living tiger, and not just a stuffed animal. He daydreams in class about being a space pilot, fighting evil on other planets. This comic really focuses on how Calvin portrays the world, but at the same time it takes glimpses back into reality to let the reader know that he isn't just living in a fantasy world, he just prefers to be living with what he imagines to be real. The comic strip format works well with this idea since Calvin will always have fresh ideas and stories to live out as long as he still has his imagination intact. Even the day-to-day standard conversations he holds with Hobbes can keep the series interesting, because that's Calvin's norm and it feels perfectly fine to him to have things play out that way, even though his family doesn't ever seem to see Hobbes as anything more than a stuffed tiger he keeps with him all the time.

--David