[Week 4] Comic Strips ~ Various Library Readings

So, from the field trip that we had to the Library and the various amounts of comic books, I'll just share a few of my thoughts on what I managed to read in the time we had.

The first comic that I managed to read bits and pieces of, was a comic that I honestly don't remember the name of. It was large print and was mostly a comedy, social commentary type of comic, and all of the pages were in color. 

It mostly consisted of the older father character and his old wife, taking care of their daughter and her would-be suitor. Hijinks between the father wanting to not be home much and wanting to hang out with his co-workers mostly, the wife constantly trying to fix things, and his daughter wanting to be pretty. 

Most of the time the humor comes from the husband, but other jokes from the comics mostly result from insulting other characters or the women characters. There was also a mini version of the comics called 'and then they were married' or something along those lines, that usually entailed two wildly different situations, only being changed by the characters being wed. 

Other comics that I managed to read were just things like the old Superman comics, Little Orphan Annie, and some random comic I don't remember that was about space and random stuff in space and people being lost in space, or something like that.  The only one that felt like social commentary was Little Orphan Annie, without really relying on making the main character look dumb. 

General impressions is that while there were definitely comics of the time that weren't mostly dependent on degrading characters that weren't the main character, and also didn't contain a lot of really bad caricatures, the comics that I managed to read were all of the variety that relied on that for their humor.

[Week 3] Comic Strips ~ Peanuts

So for the past week or two, I've been reading the Peanuts series by Charles Schulz!

The things that surprised me about these comic strips, since I read the book that had all the first runs from 1950-1952, is that the humor is still very, VERY funny-- at least to me. The humor of the Peanuts strips doesn't depend entirely on either being stereotypically heroic like some other comic strips at the time, and also really doesn't rely on making female characters the butts of jokes.

The best part about the humor of the early Peanuts strips is that their humor comes from the fact that it feels like a real life instance. A dog being annoying for candy or other food he's not supposed to have and constantly showing up the second you open something is incredibly relatable, more so than someone asking if women are people because she forgot her bathing suit.

The other surprising thing that I found from the Peanuts strips is just how much is actually packed into relatively short strips-- most of them only really being 4-5 panels long. The occasional large page of comics was also really nice, and gave me lots of memories of Calvin and Hobbes.

The last thing I'll bring up that surprised me about the Peanuts strips, is how late Lucy really comes into the game of the strips, and the fact that she's so much younger than Charlie. I also had no idea how much backstory the little piano kid, Schroeder, had, and that's only one of the characters that I had no real idea about prior to really reading the old Peanuts strips.

[Week 2] Translation ~ "A Week of Kindness" (Max Ernst) (In class)

Panel 1:
A woman appears to be doing some sort of summoning or appeasement ritual after it looks like shes killed someone, or at least someone has fallen down the stairs. Unsure if they're dead or not. A statue of a rooster is nearby. She might be asking for some blessing, maybe a cure?

Panel 2:
A woman is lying on an alchemists table, with a large rooster-person standing nearby. Rooster nearby on the ground. The woman is lying on the table while the various alchemists tools seem to be working. The rooster might be trying to save this woman?

Panel 3:
It seems that despite the rooster's efforts, the woman has died anyways? A statue of a woman and another rooster-esque figure is nearby, and they appear to be pulling the woman's body out of a sarcophagus in a mausoleum.

Panel 4:
The roosters seem to be collecting something from another grave, perhaps clothes and other items of interest. Grave robbing, possibly? They're in a large catacomb that has other large burial chambers and coffins in it. They might also be harvesting organs and bones, but I'm not sure.

Panel 5:
A rooster man has entered his bedchambers to find a maiden dead on the floor, with a large puddle of blood and a mangled figure of the woman. There are two roosters nearby. The rooster is in distress, either over the presence of two other roosters, or the dead woman on the floor. Maybe both.

Panel 6:
A woman is trying to hide and/or prevent this rooster-bear creature from entering the room with her and another woman. She's pushing a heavy object against the door in a vain attempt to prevent this monster from entering the chamber.

Panel 7:
Two women consult what appears to be a rooster soothsayer, perhaps to get their fortunes told by this magical rooster, or get some sort of ailment cured. The rooster is either holding up a burdock root, or a bone.

Panel 8:
Two women appear to be fleeing or trying to evaid the detection of another rooster-bear creature, while a goose threatens to give away their location from behind one of the women. The rooster bear simply lurks in the background while a candle burns on the floor.

[Week 1] The Arrival ~ Response! 🐸

With this comic, I feel the thing that helps it be the most successful in it's form of storytelling is the fact that it's got such great formatting with the panels and the specific amount of panels. With this being a wordless comic, the amount of story that can be told heavily relies on how successful the illustration and it's sequence is.
Another interesting thing about this comic is the fact that there isn't any onomatopoeia, which makes it a truly wordless comic.

This comic manages to succeed amazingly because of how it lays out the story in an easy to follow manner, as well as having very successful illustrations to tell us the mood, what's happening, and the flow of the story.

Overall, I found this comic to be a very enjoyable first read, especially with such fantastic pencil (?) illustrations to follow along with!