Blankets

I have already previously read Blankets, so this time I am viewing it with a different eye. The first time through you are taking in mostly the story, but also the art. This time around, I am taking in mostly the art. One thing I neglected to notice my first run through was that in the beginning of the story, Craig has almost no definition when he is drawn. He is very cartoony, and often lacking features like a mouth. He is poorly drawn, where as near the end he looks like a full detailed character just like every other character. I think this is probably intentional, to show how he grew throughout the story. 

Fun Home

This is my first time reading Fun Home and I must say, I am very impressed. The well written story turns fun home into a page turner. At first, I was put off by certain aspects, which later grew on me. The art style initially did not appeal to me. I felt that everything was a little to lifeless. However, through further reading I am beginning to get a sense that the lifelessness is intentional. Another thing I did not like is how she just blurts out key important things. With no preparation for it, she just blurts out "My girlfriend drove me home."  or "There's really no evidence my father killed himself. You do a double take at a line like that, and wonder if you missed something. At first this bugged me because I felt like I was missing something, but later on it began to appeal. Life is kind of like that, there isn't always preparation for things. Some times things just get blurted out like that. I can't wait to continue reading.

Understanding Comics

After finally finishing “Understanding Comics” I can say that I respect McCloud for attempting this type of comic, but it is a misuse of the medium, in my opinion. Comics simply don't work to convey large amounts of information. But it could also be that I am not a fan of McCloud's writing and the medium does work in this kind of situation but the writing holds me back from enjoying this book. I'm really not sure why I didn't like “Understanding Comics”, especially since I love comics and would love to learn more about them. I don't think that by reading this, it has at all altered my view on comic books, which is something I expected. I expected to look at them in a new light, yet I still see them the same. 

Understanding Comics Ch 1-4

This isn't my first attempt at reading "Understanding Comics". My brother has lent it to me several times in hopes that I will finally just sit down and read it. However every time I try, I find myself getting bored very fast. This time is no exception to that pattern. Its not that the topic at hand doesn't interest me, quite the contrary it deeply interests me. However, McCloud is to wordy to get his point across. Something he takes a chapter to convey could be summed up in a few pages. The problem is he tries to stretch it hoping to make it entertaining to the reader, but fails. I look at this on my stack of comics and all it makes me want to do is crack into the other ones sooner.  I have to say though, I am curious as to what the questions on the reading quiz could be. This seems like a really difficult book to get questions for a quiz from.

The Fishing Story by Beth Richards

You really feel like you can see in your mind her Great-Grandmothers place. In the beginning, you feel like thats what the story is going to be about. But then, it turns into a story about her grandmothers failing memory, which I can relate to. My own grandmother for the past few years has been getting progressively worse, and my great-grandmother has terrible Alzheimer's, and is likely not to live to see next year. We are all surprised that she even lived past the summer. Richard's perfectly captures the devastating experience of watching some one fade away. 

Blog posts due September 16th.

Bendson

I don't know why I liked this piece. The subject matter was uninteresting to me, the characters did not entertain me, but the description of the events hooked me in. She could have just said “I thought about boys kissing me and touching me” but she said “I imagined those boys hand on me, their spit in my mouth”. Though the subject was weak, her descriptions were strong and really took you back a little bit.

Gopnik

I felt bad for Olivia. It seemed like she created the imaginary figure of Charlie Ravioli because she is lonely to the point an imaginary friend wont even hang out with her. However, once the aunt informed the Gopnik that this was quite normal, I went from pitying Olivia to viewing Charlie Ravioli as a satire of her perception of adults. However, I did not really enjoy this story. This is an example of telling and not showing.

Orlean

This story had a really good, cute, funny attention grabber. However after that it wanders for a while, telling and not showing. Why should I care about Colin? Why should I care about him wanting to go to OCSCU or wanting to be an fbi agent? Why do I need to know about his friends? I figured that after that paragraph it would be the end of it, but it wasn't. It just kept on going and going. I will say though, the part about street fighter made me smile because that was something that was a part of my own child hood (and I will take any one on as Bison :) ) If this was not for school, I would have stopped.

Ashes

“Ashes” by David Sedaris is a terrible story. In fact, I wouldn't go so far to call it a story because it has no plot. First its about him realizing he is gay. Then its about him not wanting his siblings to ever get married. Then its about him not liking his father. Then its about his sister getting married. Then it is about cancer, and you can see why by that point I was about ready to stop reading. The story has no idea where it is going, and if it weren't required reading for a class, I would burn the story and flush the ashes down the toilet to ensure that this piece of garbage never got in the hands of any other person who would come by my desk and notice it and decide to pick it up.. Maybe thats why its called ashes. Because it makes the reader want to burn it. This story has no plot, and is poorly written.