Andrew Benson - LMST 340

I didn't have a whole lot of time on my hands to read as much comics as I could this week as compared to weeks past. But I did have the pleasure of reading Will Eisner's graphic novel Life on Another Planet . With this story, Eisner succeeds in showcasing a wide range of unconventional techniques. One thing that really stands out to me about this novel, and all of Eisner's work for that matter is that there is a highly creative departure from the traditional comic layout. Eisner plays with the space on his page and gives the drawings freedom to express themselves. Sometimes Eisner would have no panels at all and showcase a series of drawings clashing into each other all on the same page, perhaps to represent the chaotic nature of the story. The story itself is very interesting and actually quite human in a way. A lot of the comics I've read so far have been pretty over the top and exaggerated in some areas like Uncle Scrooge, Calvin and Hobbes , and definitely Littl...

For this week, I will be talking about two selections of comic books I had the pleasure of reading: Herge's Tintin in The Calculus Affair and Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge in House of Haunts . The Calculus Affair was definitely the biggest surprise for the week. Having never read Tintin as a kid and being pretty unfamiliar with the character, I didn't know what to expect. I was blown away and immediately hooked. The comic featured a wide array of creative formatting, beautiful color palettes that match each new location perfectly, and a hell of a lot of energy and action. The speech bubbles are always on the top of the panel and theres a ton of onomatopoeia that perfectly emphasize each sound effect and action. Tintin and Captain Haddock have great chemistry and the book had a real knack for adventure. I really felt like I was along for the ride the whole time and even felt a little bit of an adrenaline rush, which is never common whenever I read a comic. House of Haunts ...

In class on Thursday, I happened to stumble across a book that detailed the history and the various editorials of The Yellow Kid comic strip created by Richard F. Outcault. I was completely unfamiliar with both the character and comic at the time. Unbeknownst to me, The Yellow Kid was one of the very first comic strip characters and paved the way for modern comics through its influential storytelling techniques. After reading a little bit of the history at the beginning, I was excited to skim through the rest of the book and see what exactly was in store for me. The first thing that caught my eye was that the comic took up almost an ENTIRE page of the New York Journal. It’s very clear that Outcault isn’t interested in sequential storytelling or using panels, but rather illustrating a current moment in time (the now). The pages consisted of absolute chaos and mayhem, almost like a look-and-find book. This was a very effective mechanism to illustrate what life was like ...

This last week, I had the pleasure of looking through a whole bunch of comics, including the wondrous realms of Little Nemo, Peanuts, Krazy Kat, and Calvin and Hobbes . I have never read Little Nemo in Slumberland before in my life, but I can say that I was astounded by what I had come across. The comic is nothing short of beautiful, creative, and full of life. It shows us that the comic medium has absolutely no limits and each page I’m constantly asking myself what crazy new adventure are we going on. It also makes me a little jealous cause I feel like Little Nemo’s dreams are WAY cooler than my most recent dreams, especially the Walking Bed, the gigantic elephants, and the gravity-defying palace dream sequences (all from 1908). I grew up on classic Peanuts home videos and animated specials, but I’ve never actually sat down and fully read the comics. They were almost exactly like the videos, with one of the exceptions being that you could see Snoopy’s internal thoug...

Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is not your standard how-to or history book, but a rather brilliant way to explain the art and uniqueness of comics while creatively formatted as a comic itself. In other words, its a comic about comics. From the opening page, I knew I was going to have a ton of fun exploring this book. McCloud constantly comes up with super entertaining and clever ways to inform his audience about closure, icons, and what makes a comic a comic. One major point that McCloud discusses in his book involves the six types of panel-to-panel transitions featured in comics (moment-to-moment, action-to-action, subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene, aspect-to-aspect, and non-sequitur). Using examples from the works many comic artists throughout America and Europe, he concluded that the three most popular transitions in comics are action, subject, and scene with action being the most commonly used by far. McCloud poses the question whether or not these three transitions a...