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Week 9 - Wide World of Comics (Persepolis)

I remember being in high school and watching the film Persepolis  after school with some friends in my filmmaking class. I had no prior knowledge of the creator's background or that it was a graphic novel beforehand. Truthfully, I don't remember anything about the film. All I knew was that it had a very visually appealing style, it was nominated for an Oscar, and it left me utterly depressed by the end. So I thought this week, I would take a trip down memory lane and go to source of it all. Persepolis  is the autobiographical story of the the author, Marjane Satrapi, and documents her childhood through early adulthood during the Islamic Revolution in Iran. As a child she has a wide imagination and becomes increasingly invested in the world of politics. She's oblivious to just how dangerous her environment/surroundings are until war between Iran and Iraq forces her out of her home and to Europe. The book is unlike your usual graphic novel. It's tone is very serious ...
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Assessment - The Killing Joke

1.) What is your reaction to the text you just read? As a Batman fan, I've sadly never read The Killing Joke before. It was very powerful and pretty disturbing. Each panel is exceptionally well drawn, the compositions are all stellar, and the story is very compelling (despite reading a while back that Alan Moore was very disappointed with this book). The most interesting part of the story was that it centered primarily on the Joker (the antagonist) more so than Batman (the hero). To see a monster character like the Joker be given a very human backstory (and very sad) was intriguing, given that the character's past was almost always a mystery. 2.) What connections did you make with the story that you read? Discuss the elements of the work with which you were able to connect. I was able to connect this story with Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight films and Tim Burton's 90's Batman movie. In Tim Burton's film, the Joker seemed to be the center of attention a...
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Week 15 - Stereotypes and Representation REDUX

For this week, I wanted to go back to a graphic novel that I read, and thoroughly enjoyed, in the middle of the year, My Friend Dahmer. I learned a whole lot more about Dahmer and had the chance to see the film for myself. I added a little further commentary on the story/polished it based on further findings. "This week I decided to read  My Friend Dahmer  by Derf Backderf, which I actually had no idea was a graphic novel before it became a film just a few years ago. The book tells the story of the author Derf throughout his last few years in high school and his "friendship" with classmate Jeffrey Dahmer, who later went on to become one of America's most notorious serial killers. Personally there's not a whole lot that stands out about the graphic novel visually. The drawings are fun/get pretty exaggerated at times and it's formatted like a normal graphic novel.  The drawings are rather flat and evoke the look of a bizarre television cartoon. However,  a...
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