This week I chose to do Hergé and the Adventures of Tin Tin. I know a film version came out recently, but I didn't see it, however that is what created my interest in the comics.  I looked them up shortly after the movie came out and I remember reading a few online, though after i started classes I stopped reading them.

I've always liked a mystery, so it's not surprising I enjoyed this. 

One thing I noticed about the comic was that all the panels were regular, rectangles, no overlapping ones or diagonals, any yet because of the variety in panel size and shape, as well as the detail within the panels, it feels more dynamic and visually interesting.

I also noticed that he used a lot of text in the panels, mostly dialog.    I know this is an older comic, back when people actually had attention spans longer than 30 seconds, it it was still surprising to see how much of the story could be told just through spoken words and images.

For this week I chose one of the newspaper strips I found last week, this one by Charles Schultz.  All of those, including this one, were found in my mom's box of newspaper clippings.  This one in particular is her favorite.



I have hardly read any newspaper comics before, and of the few I have read I don't think any of them were peanuts, so this might be my first experience reading the comics.

compared to the graphic novels we've been looking at and the action comic books, this one seemed pretty boring at first.  I noticed how the top half is a mirror in framing and panel placement of the bottom half.  The shots are all fairly stagnate, but that actually helps draw attention to the part that is changing, the snow.  If the framing were changed too much, I might not notice how the weather was differing.

The speech bubbles also help to break up pattern a little.  While the panels with speech bubbles are mirroring each other the sizes are not, making the comic more interesting.

Got five newspaper comic strips, all from printed newspapers. 

This week, I chose Manga artist Naoko Takeuchi and her work Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.  I remember the TV show from when I was a kid but I never really saw the Manga it was based off of until recently.

One of the first things I noticed about it was how some of the panels had different boarders.  I never would have thought about doing anything besides a solid line, but I can tell just from looking at the page that the different boarders are helping, particularly in the bottom right corner where the jagged line goes with the cat scratching.

I also see how she used diagonal panels to help show action.  And, though it's hard to see in this picture, I noticed how the backgrounds are often made up of the pattern technique.  Very rarely are the actual environments drawn into the frame.

I saw this exhibit a few weeks ago, but it took me a while to collect my thoughts on the matter.  I am not much of a comic reader in the first place, knowing very few mainstream comics and probably none of the underground comic artists.  I had never seen anything like this before.

I can’t say I really liked it; the images seemed too real and the fragments of story didn't make much sense to me. Part of it might have been because they were fragments, perhaps if I had seen the entire comic I would have understood it, but I’m still doubting I would have liked it. (yes, I saw they had comic books, but I chose to spend my time looking at the images on the wall, since there was no chance I would be able to access those at home.)

I didn't feel that way about every comic on display though, there were a few I liked but overall everything was just a little too weird and realistic for me.

The image I chose to analyze was a panel from mosquito, and I did not realize until I got home how out of focus the camera was.  I picked this image because it seemed to be a one page story, so I didn't worry that missing pages would change my understanding.

 The panels have nice flow, I was never confused about what came next, but the content of the panels confused me.  I’m still not completely sure what’s going on, it seems that a boy is complaining to his brother about a sister, but I didn't get that until I reached the last panel, because of the way the main character is drawn, I wasn't aware that he was supposed to be a child until I got to the part about a sister, which confused me because I had assumed that he was an adult at first.  The dialog also seemed more like an adult talking.  Also, I have no clue why Clowes chose to title this Mosquito.

 I agree with Clowes that the art is in the books, not on the wall.  For one, if it’s in a book, you get all the pages, and context of the story.  Two, the way you read it changes. Looking at the art on the wall I was trying to see meaning behind it, and understand it, far more than I would have if I had picked up a book at home.  With a book at home, I would probably not be expecting much, so the parts that I did like would have stood out more.  Also with a book, I could reread it as many times as I wanted, and let the parts that did make sense sink in and return to the rest later, as opposed to seeing them at a museum where I felt rushed to see it all, even spending hours there, I did not have time to really formulate a cohesive opinion.

Since the books are the official art, that would make the stuff we see on the wall rough drafts.  Even when the drawings are complete they can’t be understood the way the artist wanted them to be until they are put into book format. 

Having the book as the art object, it changes how art travels, and who art influences.  It makes it so even people who do not consider themselves interested in art (those who would avoid a museum at all costs) able to be influenced by art.  It makes art accessible to everyone, not just those who can get to museums or galleries.