One of the topics that Scott McCloud discusses about in his comic, Understanding Comics, is that we use a variety of styles and symbols to represent humans, and he talks about how far we can go in simplifying the human face and still recognize it as a human face. He goes on to talk about how simplified cartoons of ourselves and in general are more universal, and therefore, more pleasant to their audience. Being someone in the art world, I get to experience this theory on a day-to-day basis. Most times when viewing self portraits of my friends, I find that they use a stylized version of themselves. By drawing a caricature of themselves, they open up the appeal of the drawing to more people, and it becomes a desire of others to see themselves in that style. McCloud also explains that, when we see a realistic face, we do not see ourselves represented in it, yet if we see a cartoon of anyone, we can see a bit of ourselves in it. While he explains this as being a result of never truly seeing ourselves but having a good understanding of an abstract of our face, I believe there is another reason for this occurrence. When we see a cartoon, we do not get the full picture of it as we would in realism, therefore our minds interpret the gaps we do not see. And while our interpretation of a 'real-life' version of the cartoon might not look like us, it looks like how we think it to look, giving it our personal stamp on the drawing. It is what makes us want to see ourselves in that style and why so many artists will make themselves in a popular art style.
For the week that we read these, we were asked to discuss whether the comics we read should be considered literary or not. My first reaction was to break down what made something 'literary'. I was inclined to say that as long as something had words and was telling a story with some amount of depth, then that was what I considered literary. However, I realized while talking with team members about this question that I had a new consideration of literary comics. I like to think of comics the same way I think about art, and that is that anything can be art. I do not think that we have to tie down the constraints of what is and is not literary because that can put writers who just want to create into a bubble. Whether I used my old definition or my new definition, I think My Favorite Thing is Monsters is definitely a literary comic. It masterfully uses its media to tell a fantastic and relatable story. Everything about the comic felt real and was very engaging, the art felt in sync...
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