Early Comic Books

Reading the first Superman in Action Comics there was one thing that really stood out to me. The dialogue and narration felt very similar to that of which typical radio broadcasts sounded like. It was very apparent in the first page of the comic. The numerous exclamation points made me read the text in the voice of a radio narrator and in the way the narrator would in the old Superman cartoons. The different colored boxes made  me read them in different tones as well. I'm not sure if this was what was planned but either way it effected the way I read it. The fact that reading this comic felt so much like reading a comic from today was astounding to me. I really liked reading the Superman comic and the other few early comic books I read.

When I read the Swamp Thing comic in class I got a different taste of the genres that early comics covered. The idea behind the comic being about you and reading in the 2nd person was something I didn't think would've been used so early in comics. It was definitely a surprise and it made the reading much more enjoyable when I was able to sort of take in the emotions of each character separately, yet as myself.

Comic Strips (Reflection)

Comic strips have a strange sense to them. Before class I had read a bunch of Peanuts strips and the comparison between them and the strips we read in class was astonishing. For some reason the Peanuts strips make more sense to me than those of Krazy Kat and Dream of a Rarebit Fiend. Dream of a Rarebit Fiend definitely had something it was trying to accomplish by appealing to the readers with a situation that they may relate to. Krazy Kat on the other hand just made no real sense to me whatsoever. I tried to grasp the idea behind Krazy Kat, but it honestly just seemed like a recurring story with the same characters. I'm sure if I was alive back when Krazy Kat was being printed I might be able to understand it a little better, but honestly I believe that it really hasn't held up all too well over the years. Peanuts made way more sense to me as most the strips had a much simpler and always relatable meaning.

Comic Strips (Class)

Dream of a Rarebit Fiend

- Last panel always contains a person in a state of having just woken up. They are usually disturbed by their dream.
- The dream panels contain more and more information leading up to the transition into the woken dreamer panel. A build up as if there's about to be some sort of explosion.
- Typically a lack of setting in the dream sequences. No real sense of background or strange background
- First panel usually has a sense of realism that quickly degenerates into madness.

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Krazy Kat

- Lots of setting. It's pretty clear where the characters are in terms of what's around them.
- Transitions tend to go from setting to setting depending on the story.
- More text and speech among characters and in single panels.
- The layout of panels changes with almost every comic.
- Panels are numbered to avoid confusion.
- Text is varying and when there is less text in bubbles it seems to have less importance.

Understanding Comics

Scott McCloud posed a lot of very interesting ideas in Understand Comics. By far out of all the ideas he posed the one that definitely had me thinking differently afterward was his segment on the different types of panel-to-panel transitions. I've read a few comics and graphic novels, and considerably more manga, and have never really thought about what happens between panels. I've always just understood the passing of time or the scene changes as it is something you can easily get accustomed to by watching TV or movies. With this newfound knowledge McCloud has passed onto me I'm sure I'll never really read comics the same way I used to ever again. I'm bound to be re-reading pages to note the different kinds of panel transitions and when I see something rather unusual for comics I'll be some sort of giddy over knowing what it can be called. McCloud had other really good points in Understanding Comics, but none of them really effected me as a reader such as this.

Ernst Trasnlation

Panel 1: Rooster mocks those without balance by easily standing on to of and egg.

Panel 2: Rooster and Rooster-man looking over a dead body. They seem indifferent about the situation.

Panel 3: Rooster-men burying the dead. They are questioning the undressing woman.

Panel 4: Rooster-men are inspecting the items left behind by the dead. They unearthed a body to do so.

Panel 5: The Roosters have murdered the woman. The Rooster-man in the doorway is very troubled and hurt by this action.

Panel 6: Rooster-man is trying to enter the room. The man is pushing a wardrobe up against the door in order to keep out the Rooster-man.

The Arrival

     Words help us understand stories in our own language and culture, but pictures are universal. Shaun Tan's The Arrival paints a strong and wonderful tale of an immigrant entering a world that is unfamiliar and at sometimes a scary place. Every page moves the story along in a very straightforward motion with no real confusion at all. As bizarre as some of the imagery is, the landscapes and odd objects and foreign language really help in expressing how difficult it can be to communicate in and to discover a new city in a foreign land. The changes in tone are clearly expressed through changes in brightness in each panel as the happier moments have a strong glow while the darker and sadder moments are expressed by heavier shadows and bleak scenery. Each chapter has a clear transition and explores a different step in the cycle of immigrating to a new land. Facial expressions become an essential tool to understand the characters and to explore the narrative of Tan's story. By using repetition to show the before and after of events, The Arrival at times feels less like an ordinary comic and more of a movie split into separate stills. Words have never been necessary to tell a story, whether it be in a comic or in a film, because images get across more in just one panel or still than words could get across in several paragraphs. Shaun Tan's The Arrival makes this quite clear in it's wonderful storytelling in the form of a wordless comic.