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...

      Andre the Giant has a very different style than what I thought it would be before reading. After taking a quick look at some of the other styles, I feel that the Andre the Giant comic stands out. I think, by using this particular art style for this comic, the creator has created both negative and positive connotations for the representation of the real people of the comic.      While I think that making the style for this comic simple could create some negative connotations, I also think that this style had more positives than other styles would. The negative aspect of creating this topic and depicting these people in this style is that it could be interpreted as taking away some of the struggle that Andre dealt with. It made his appearance a caricature of what he was, and it sort of made it difficult to comprehend what he was going through. However, If we turn this idea around, It would be equally as bad, if not worse, to attempt to draw this st...

 41 reading points+ 7 class points

      Maus Part 1 is not what I thought it would be going into the graphic novel. I had never read it before, and I had little knowledge of what it was about. That being said, I think that Maus is one of the most effective graphic novels I have read in this class. Although I was thrown off at first by the amount of content unrelated to the Holocaust, Maus presents this subject in a way that draws the reader in to the story through art style, anthropomorphic characterization, and by creating moments that are in the present to give the characters more life.      Maus very successfully communicates it's story through the art style. The art style, despite depicting a horrible real life event, was charming and allowed the reader to get through the text with ease. The simplification of forms and panels alongside carefully thought-out compositions and line weight helped me when reading Maus. Additionally, the style of the characters helps to simplify AND ampl...

 For an additional personal reading that I did this week, I read Luisa: Now and Then, a comic that deals with a girl realizing some truths about herself. I felt that this related to some of the underground readings that I read this week, so writing about this feels relevant. In the comic, Luisa in her teenage years finds herself somehow transported to the future after riding a late night bus to the end of the line. After some confusion, she meets her older self, to which both find each other upsetting. Younger Luisa finds older Luisa upsetting because she wound up alone with a different career path than what she wanted, and older Luisa is upset that younger Luisa acted like her mom by barraging her with many questions about her life. Along the way, we learn that Luisa (both younger and older) has feelings for women, but younger Luisa has a harder time admitting it because of her mom's and friends' homophobic beliefs. The story turns into a coming out story with the realization ...

 Air Pirates: This set of comics were very uncomfortable to read. It took many famous cartoon characters and turned them into what is essentially porn. In most cases, the women would take the brunt of the sexuality in these comics, yet they would (most of the time) end up 'wanting it'. To me, this shows the horrible mindset of the artists making these comics. In addition to being super raunchy, the comics were also just difficult to read along to. The panels were laid out in a way that was counterintuitive to where my eye wanted to go. I do not see much similarities of this comic in comparison to comics today other than the characters,  Gay Comics No. 1: This was much more pleasant to read than the first link of comics. One important detail to remember when reading this set of comics is that it was created by and for gay people. Keeping this in mind, these comics were actually relatable as well as enjoyable. These comics, while still having sexual themes and scenes, came off m...