MAUS

I had heard a lot of good things about Maus before I signed up for this class. When I read through the syllabus and saw that we'd be reading it I was slightly excited. All I knew about Maus before reading it was that it was about the holocaust, the jews were mice, the germans were cats, and the americans were dogs. When I actually started reading Maus I ended up seeing something I never expected.

It was very clear from the get go that Maus was about itself being made. Instantly that caught my attention. I had no idea this story was an actual telling of somebody's life during the holocaust. I found myself wrapped in the storytelling quite quickly. The story felt so wonderfully real even though every character had become an animal. I felt more interested in learning about the holocaust than I had in a long time.

Spiegelman did amazing things with the way he illustrated his story. He constantly goes back and forth between what is the holocaust story and what is the learning of the story in present day. I feel like if you were to tell someone that the story goes back and forth to present day and flashbacks every other panel they would think that sounds confusing. It does sound confusing, but somehow when reading the story I never found myself getting lost between the two settings. It feels as seamless as a movie.

I found myself enjoying the first volume a lot more than the second volume. There was a really nice balance between the holocaust story and the present day story in the first volume. It maintained that balance all the way through the volume. Even though the holocaust story was more of the before the camps in volume one, it was definitely more interesting to hear. In the second volume the side of the story about the story took over most of the volume and I found myself hating it more and more as I went along. It got old fast. The second volume was riddled with how much Art couldn't stand his father and that all he wanted from the man was his story. The turning point from the end of the first volume shows reason for this behavior, but it's still really over the top and annoying.

There were a lot of small artistic nuances throughout Maus which made it even more lovely. Such things as the masks of other animals when pretending to be something else and the idea that people could just tell that you were a jew somehow. It was all very fascinating. I think my opinion on this whole Maus story has to fall on the line of I loved the first act, however the second act was lacking in that strong appeal the first one had.

Underground Comics

I didn't know what to expect with Underground Comics. It became strikingly clear when I was looking at the titles on the resource page. I remember the first thing I saw was "Tijuana Bibles" and I thought to myself, "Where have I heard that before?" After that I went and downloaded a whole bunch of the titles. Some of them for their name more than others. I feel like it should've been obvious that Underground and vulgar, sexual things would go hand in hand. The comics I read before class didn't really stick with me much. I remember reading the Tits and Clits comic and being very surprised by most the subject matter. When I actually took a look at the Tijuana bibles I remembered where I'd heard of them before, Watchmen. If I recall correctly, in both the book and the movie, Watchmen, Silk Specter is given a Tijuana Bible about herself as a gift and she appreciates the thought. If I had remembered this just a little sooner I'm sure I wouldn't have been as caught off guard with the underground comics as I was. The whole idea of Underground comics got weirder when I was reading some book about a little green dinosaur in class. This cutesy little dino would be going around history for some weird reason and all of a sudden he would be having sex with some random girl. As I progressed further it got weirder when there was even an orgy scene where some of the characters were saying "Hooray for Underground Comics!"

Underground comics are weird... I'm a little confused as who the target market really was.

Blankets

Craig Thompson's Blankets was an strange read. Almost immediately into reading I picked up on a high sense of melodrama. The story kept me constantly on edge of whether I actually enjoyed it or not. Thompson's ability to seamlessly integrate the reality with the imagination in the beginning of the first chapter were very interesting. Specifically page 16 where their Dad opens the bed in the cubby hole and to the child the bed looks like the jaws of a vicious alligator. The idea of furniture becoming monsters was something I could relate to from my childhood. In a way that scene got me enticed in the story very quickly. The page following it Thompson uses the negative space on the page to create a nice stark focus on the last panel which he gave no hard edges to show a sense of despair sinking in.

The realization of how tight Thompson was surrounded by Christianity became very apparent in an odd humorous way. Near the end of the book on page 516 there's a scene where two adults talk about how one kid who went to art school after taking a figure drawing class became homosexual. The panel where the gentleman says "Homosexuality" is so wonderfully drawn. The two adults are so sorrowful and serious and upset at the idea of homosexuality. At the same time in an amazing contrast Thompson's face reads the expression, "Wow these people are ridiculous." What really amazed me was how I could read that expression even though his face is so simply drawn.

Thompson definitely captured a lot of emotion in Blankets. What I think makes me think I liked the book was how he was able to do it with such a simplistic art style, yet at the same time there were moments where the art style was anything but simple. However, I'm not sure if I'm the biggest fan of just how emotional the book gets at points. Especially parts of the end of the book... it just got a bit too... over dramatic.