Joeanna Steuber's Comics and Graphic Narrative Blog

 For this week, I read two manga: My Lesbian Experience and Ghost in the Shell. I had not seen or read anything about Ghost in the Shell, but I recognized the name and had seen the advertisements for when the live action movie came out, so I was interested in reading it. I felt that it was difficult to read at first for several reasons. The art style, at times, felt noisy to me. This, and the large amount of text on certain pages, made some of the pages a struggle to get through. Additionally, I felt that the story through me right into what was happening without explaining anything, which made it difficult to follow along with the plot. I found myself going back to reread certain part just to remind myself how the character related to the protagonist. This is both a good and bad thing to me. It makes reveals more exciting and it does not bother treating you like you are any different from the expansive world that it has created. It gives you the opportunity to learn as you read. H...

 For this week, I read two manga: Ghost in the Shell and My Lesbian Experience. I was surprised about how truthful and open the author was with the work. There were a lot of emotions and feelings that were put into the manga that made it feel very real and open. I went into the manga somewhat expecting some unrealistic version of love between women, but it was actually a really realistic experience of someone that dealt a lot with mental health issues. Additionally, the simple style with the simple color scheme is very effective for the subject matter for this comic. If any more simple, it might not have been taken seriously, and if it were any more complex, I feel I would get to caught up in the art style. The addition of the color pink, rather than just doing a traditional black and white, kept a soft theme to the comic, even though the comic was not especially gentle. Finally, I think that it was an interesting story. Although the story is based on real life, I expected some sor...