Maus

Maus tells the tale of an artist who decides to write a comic book based on his Father's recount of the Holocaust, which, in fact, is what the author is doing based on his own Father's experiences. The book spans about 4 decades from the mid-thirties to the seventies, covering the pre-WWII period to the time when the author is actually exploring the past with his Father and writing this book. There are two stories intertwined marvelously in this book: a first-hand survivor's experience of life before, during, and after the Holocaust, and that of a relationship between an ageing Father and young-to-middle aged son who have a serious disconnect.

The two stories could actually have been written independently, but it is their excellent juxtaposition which is one of the clear highlights of the book, for it has a multiplier affect on the poignancy of both the Father's and the Son's situations. Each of the stories themselves is well crafted, managing to weave together a bunch of incidents across points in time to create a very smoothly flowing narrative. I was particularly impressed by the telling of the Father-Son relationship, for it manages to pick and show very small events which we know can cumulatively build up to create tremendous long-term frustration, but are almost never able to remember, or recount effectively, or demonstrate the impact of, either to ourselves or to others. Art picks his moments beautifully, and even though the setting is completely different.

I really enjoyed the these two Graphic Novels over all, I thought they were powerful and really embraced that hardships of the Holocaust. These Graphic Novel went fast for me and I was actually able to read them in one sitting. These Graphic Novel really impacted me and I feel it was the best Graphic Novel or Novels that I have read in this class.

Need more Love

I thought this was a very interesting memoir it is very different from most. It is part scrapbook, diary, and comic book. It was enjoyable in its non traditionalness. It was so personal and the fact that it was not just a written book made it seem like it was so much more personal to her than a book. It seemed touched, she definitely put herself into the memoirs.

The comics themselves told a story but, I did not like the comics that much. The art was not very good at all it reminded me of something I would have done in high school. Usually I would try to work past bad art id a good story emerges but, the strip was very scattered busy the text was small handwritten and hard to read. It would have taken some kind of crazy concentration to be able to focus on the comic strip and be able to understand what was going on. So with the overall busyness and the bad art it was very difficult for me to appreciate the comic strips in this memoir.

I can definitely appreciate this memoir as personal and very non traditional, but as a comic book I didn't really like it to much. The art work was very poor and very hard to follow.

Mr. Natural

I thought Mr. Natural was very strange. The artist style reminded me of something that would belong in the funnies something that could very easily be confused for a kids comic but, it was most definitely geared for a mature audience. From the first couple of panels that I read drug use was widely and rather nonchalantly mentioned. Mr. Natural advised the other character to take LSD and twist some nipples. In the following story Mr. Natural asked the other character if he was still on acid and the character confirmed. Sex was also a common topic of the comic, Mr. Natural was quite the sleazy old man who lusted for women in a very vulgar way.

It was a very wordy comic, more on the conversation side then action. From panel to panel it was mainly Mr. Natural giving advice to another person. There was no real action and very little actually happened. Each story was short only a few pages long. They didn't really seem to have much of a story to them at all that I could really follow. To say the very least I did not enjoy Mr. Natural it was certainly for "Mature Audiences" in quite the over the top vulgar kind of way.

Plastic Man

Before reading this essay I had never heard of Jack Cole before. I found that through reading he is probably one of the comic books world's least recognized and by far most troubled geniuses. This essay provides a great biography of his life from his childhood to his entrance into the world of comic books. Jack Cole was responsible for Plastic Man one of the most prized strips from the golden age.

I found that Spiegleman's essay was less a biography, and more of a tribute to Cole by S who writes with admiration, and artist's awe. Spiegleman, wisely allows Cole's work to stand-alone. The book contains two full Plastic Man stories and a riveting True Crime tale. The latter part of the book also includes Cole's work for Playboy, which helped shaped the young magazine's artistic style, and his own daily comic strip, "Betsy and Me."

From all reasonable accounts, Cole was good-humored, and possessed the wherewithal to endure the long hours of the early comic book industry, perhaps evident by his creation Plastic Man, a criminal who reforms when a chemical spill makes his body rubber. However, Spiegelman also demonstrates Cole was a man at odds with himself, brewing an internal conflict that would eventually prove too much a burden to live with. Though he could earn greater respect, and wealth, from his own comic strip, and watercolors for Playboy, respectively, the freeform page layouts and fun evident in Plastic Man give way to art which, when seen in a full collection such as this, evoke a great sadness.

Blankets

I really liked blankets, it was a very nice coming to age story with theme of it's better to have loved and lost then to never of loved at all. The art was expressive with its bold black lines. Blankets told a story that almost everyone can relate to your first love as a teenager.

The story starts out with the main character Craig and his brother sharing a bed when they are young children, the fight over the blankets. You then follow Craig through school, he is an outcast and is often made fun of and beat up. As he grows older it shows that he attends a church camp every year, through faith he expects to find salvation but he finds to be in the same situation he is in at school. Made fun of because he is different because he is poor. One year he meets other outcasts that he enthused about until he finds out that two of them do drugs and pressure and judge him like all the other kids but this time for not being different enough. Among the outcasts he meets Raina who he is instantly taken aback by, their friendship blossoms when they are at camp. After camp they continue to talk through letters and on the phone everytime Craig talks to her he falls more and more in love with her. He convinces his parents to let him visit Raina for a few weeks. At Raina's their relationship blossoms even more, and Craig finds out how stressful and how much baggage Raina carries through her family. She sews him a quilt. After Craig leaves Rainas house to go back home not to long after they break up becuase Raina needs some space she still wants to be best friends, but soon after there communication stops all together. Craig burns everything that reminds him of Raina except for the blanket he made for him. Craig moved out of his house and established a life elsewhere. When he finally returns home for Christmas one year he reconnects with his brother and feels he still has the universe in front of him.

I was disapointed by the ending of the comic, probably because I am female and wished for some sort of reuinon from Craig and Raina but no such thing happend. It was then that I realized the moral of the story its better to love and loose then to never have loved at all. It was a sweet graphic novel that I enjoyed reading, I was also suprised that I was able to read through it in one sitting since it is around 600 pages. It hit home with me as well, I went through something just like thi story in high school. First love one of the mandatory parts of growing up.

Family Matters

Family Matters was much different then what I had expected. I was expecting something light and colorful but I was surely mistaken this Graphic Novel was dark and explored what it meant to be a family. The opening quote read. "Families are really physically indistinguishable from each other. They wear no badges. They are after all, tribal units to which their members belong by virtue of a biological event. And they are held together by a magnetic core that sometimes seems to be neither love nor loyalty." This quote in its essence describes Will Eisner's Family Matters.

The story begins with a man asking for a loan to go out of town to go to his fathers 90s birthday that on of his sisters is holding. As the story progresses each family member is introduced they each have there issues and back story and they are all headed to there fathers birthday party. As each family member shows up at there sisters house it becomes quite clear that none of the family members actually like each other, they are just obligated to be there because they are indeed family. Arguments and drama persists heavily through the family paying no attention to the reason why they have actually have gotten together to see their father. They have no concern of their father except when he will die so they will be able to collect on his will. Flash backs are also placed through the novel none of them being positive, all negative memories that each of them have with their father. The story ends with the family arguing over what to do with their father and they finally decide to place him in a cheap home because no one can take care of him. When they go to break the new to him they find that he has over dosed on his medicine and died. What they don't know is the quite nephew gave him to many pills to put him out of his misery and let him leave the awful family that he belongs to.

The style of this Graphic Novel was also very interesting it was black ink on white paper with an orange wash over it. The interesting part being that there are no distinct panels the entire page flows from one scene to another overlapping each other. This gives the graphic novel more of a modern feel and defiantly breaks away from the old tradition a rectangular frame around each panel.