Week 6 - Underground Comics

            This week I started off by reading Robert Combs’ Mr. Natural. Before I even got very far into the comic the first thing I noticed was its very racist depiction of black people. He gives them extremely large lips and big noses, they almost look like rubber hose versions of monkeys. He also makes them beg for money and gives them ridiculous names like ‘lil Eucalyptus Chile’. The black people in this story also have the stereotypical clipped way of speaking and are just thugs that want to take money from Shuman’s bowl. Other than racism, there is also blatant sexism as demonstrated by Little Johnny FuckerFaster. He assumes, even though it’s a comic, that women will want to sleep with him or engage in sexual activity. He sees the women as just something to satisfy his urges and shoves them to their knees so he can put his genitals in her face. It was also surprising to me that in the aforementioned comic Johnny wasnot allowed to show his genitals but in the comic immediately after, Shuman The Human, Shuman’s are hanging out uncensored. I wonder if that was done on purpose and found it rather funny. In general, it surprised me how sexually explicit they could get away with being like in the Mr. natural comic where he gets oral sex from a mature looking baby and engages in sexual intercourse with it in public. Is the reason underground comic authors write these to get under people’s skin? Probably.

Week 5 - The Graphic Novel

This week I read A Contract with God. What I like about this story is it brings visual interpretation to a now well talked about era. There is also a lot of rhetoric in this story that feels natural, many of the people moving into the tenements were immigrants and it comes across in the language used in the story. Another thing I noticed was the text was bigger and used more than the images themselves. It is clear in this tale that text is very important. When Frimme Hersh yells it has dynamic lines and gets darker and bigger. Sometimes the text bubbles will become black, it can also be incorporated into the background. These text choices are often different to comic books which have a very specific layout and are delineate.

I also read much of the comic Blanket. It definitely was not something I would have thought to read on my own. At first I didn’t think it was all that interesting but as I continued to read for whatever reason I did not want to stop reading. I enjoyed how relatable it was to so many people as it covered a large array of issues many people go through. It talked about issues with parents, siblings, religion, fitting in, love, etc. and while not all people will experience all of those in their life time its guaranteed they will experience at least one of those things. In particular, the point about escaping from reality through art is one that every one in our literature class can all relate to. It was an interesting comic to read especially because I would not have thought to read it otherwise.

Week 4 - The Comic Book

For this week I have read Plastic Man and cannot help but laugh at the name and goofiness of the story. Comic books of this time were cheap and entertaining thin books for children in an age without other significantly available media. In the early age of comic book they all had a very similar style and were an obvious deviation from strips. They are able to more efficiently utilize space and some comic books like Captain America took on a political agenda. Captain America was birthed from a time of political tribulation that resulted in its, and many other heroes, creation. This in itself is a form of propaganda showing that comics can serve more than one purpose. They teach lessons, influence us, and entertain us. In Captain America we even blatantly see him and his side kick Bucky beating up Nazis and on the cover of the first issue he punches Hitler in the face. The Golden age of comics is where comic books specifically make a huge turn-out and also where we see the large influx of superheroes. Now a days superheroes are often an annoyance to many people as they swamp the movie industry but back then they were widely beloved. Despite many people’s dismay of their constant appearances they are still widely read and loved all around the world since its beginning in America.