week 16

I know that I should pick something that I haven't read but I've been looking for a reason to read Johnny the Homicidal Maniac again. I first came across JTHM in middle school and fell in love with the stories' violent craziness and I do believe that it's the only graphic novel that I've actually read through fully multiple times.  That and I love the style and how it's so angular, dark and scribbly, I could believe that there's nothing else like it out there. But for something I haven't read I decided to venture into webcomics and read some Electric Sheep. Although I've never actually read any web comics, I've seen what some look like and this comic has pretty much the same model as all the others with random collections of shorter stories and the style also happens to be close to the other web comics.

week 15

For this week I finally got to read two novels that I've heard of and been wanting to read (so that when I'm with my friends I can be apart of the conversation), Watchmen and Sandman. First of all the story of Watchmen was, well, interesting and strange to say the least and although I liked it I'm not to sure what to say about it other than now I know what my friends are talking about and that if I decide to sit down and watch the movie that I'll probably have a better understanding of it. Sandman however was to me viciously spooky, something that would give a child nightmares for a good week I'd say. But the images also has a grungy horror fantasy style too it. Due to Sandman's erie-ness it's something that I would read again.

week 14

This weeks reading I chose Scooter Girl and Grey Horses. I would have to say that although I found the story for Scooter Girl some what boring I would like to balance it out with the fact that I love the chic/mod vintage style it was done in. I just wish that something that was that visually pleasing to me would've had a better story to it.  Grey Horses however was an adorable novel all together. Not only did I find the story sweetly addicting like candy but the images were so cute and adorable that I had to read so I could see each image and maybe it also has to do with that certain type of innocence that happens when a girl is still a girl but almost a woman. In all honesty if I didn't know any better I'd say that this novel belongs in a cafe that serves tea and cake.

week 13

I guess that you could say that I failed with my first choice this week, Diary of a Teenage Girl was so uninteresting to that I stopped reading with in the first few pages. But on a better note, to finish it I just flipped through it and I did find the illustrations quite charming in a distorted type of way. Luckily my second read was much more interesting. Swallow Me Whole interested me in that erie-disturbing-horror movie kind of way as I enjoy horror stories that involve people who have creepy visions that only they can see and get worse as time goes on. Although the style of the images (which was also creepy) reminded me of the novel Blankets and the style that was used there. The good news is that I was able to get through it with out becoming uninterested plus it also helped that the story and images complimented each other nicely.

week 12

Well after finding out in class that one of my favorite films (Immortal) was based off of a graphic novel, I decided that would be my first reading that I would chose. Of course after reading this first part of The Nikopol Trilogy I noticed the story was almost completely different from the film (no surprise there). The style was also a complete 180% as I thought that it seemed more lighter and colorful despite the chaos that is going on in the plot. The other reading that I chose was Rumble Strip which for me had a strong sense of sarcastic British humor and I also thought that the straight just black and just white for all the images worked perfectly with the nonchalant sense of humor.

week 11

First off almost all of the mangas that I have heard of are newer ones dating back to when I was in middle school so I decided to start off with some thing older. So my first choice was Black Jack and the first thing that I noticed was of course his style which is very curvy and organic like the rest of his works. Although the story isn't like most mangas and I kind of like that, it's just about a doctor that does good with really no superpowers. But the second manga that I read was more of the opposite and was more about the main character and his superpowers. For a second read I picked Mushishi which is another manga that I've never heard of and to be honest one of the main reasons that I picked it was because the style of it looked very elegant and visually pleasing to me.

response #8

For this week I was able to get through American Born Chinese and Stuck Rubber Baby.  In American Born Chinese, the characters definitely portrayed what we think of as the typical Chinese/Asian stereotype. Anywhere from dress, culture the text and was that the characters talked.  Even the style of the novel itself had an asian quality to it with its bold colors and shapes, as it seemed to have a more simple cartoon like feel. I also thought that the three different stories that are suppose to intertwine in this novel worked well also. As for Stuck Rubber Baby it deals with more racial stereotypes due to the fact that it's set during the Black Civil Rights movement and on top of that you have the main character who's trying to deal with his homosexuality.  But although this novel has humor I feel that it's on a more serious level due to the time setting.  I think the style of the images also reflects in the time due to the darkness of it, as the images are cartoon-ish they have quite a bit of detail and line hatching.