Lainey has opinions on comics

The first comic I opened up (after putting on the appropriate music of course) was Cheech Wizard. I was familiar with Vaughn Bone's art style because I've read some Deadbone Erotica, which fascinated me. While Deadbone was a psychedelic trip, Cheech seemed more like a satire. I also read a selection from Tits and Clits. My favorite story was about a female sex addict who had to resort to selling and doing heroin to fuel her sex addiction. It was an excellent satire of role reversal, challenging the stereotype of the beautiful but fallen addict who turns to prostitution. What was interesting to me about this early feminist work was that all the women were feminine and sexual. In other works that feature strong women, like Tankgirl for example, I feel like the author tries to repress the characters feminine side to display their strong side. A women doesn't need masculine features like a bald head, scars, and gritty clothes to prove she's strong. Out of the comics we ...

I read the Will Eisner novel Dropsie Avenue. One of the fist things that struck me was that the art style seemed almost Baroque. Steep contrast using lots of absolute black to convey drama. Tense compositions. The subject matter of the first scene could be baroque or biblical, hatred of another clan causes a man to do an unspeakable horror, leaving two graves under the same family tree. The subject matter that takes up the majority of the novel isn't exactly what you would expect from a classical painting or a pulp comic book. It details the squabbles and relationships of a neighborhood. Not exactly the mundane details of their lives, but the events and arguments that define them. It was fascinating to me how he didn't need to stick with the same characters to have a consistent story. A vignette would focus on one family and after the conclusion of their main drama we would hear characters a generation later lightly gossiping about their great horrors that befell them. I reme...

Maus is story of the Holocaust, but also a story of remembrance and the relationship between father and son.  Maus's framing device makes the tragic story seem eerily familiar. We all have dark family tales, and Speigelman is telling us his. We are able to digest the story as a memory, and cutting away to the present gives it vitality. A generation away is almost more accessible than if the story was actually told from the fathers perspective, day by day. We see Vladek as a flawed and idiocentric man rather than the stoic hero. One of my favorite moments of interaction is when he nonchalantly throws away his son's coat because it's too shabby. It's an excellent moment of characterization that I relate to with my overbearing grandmother. Vladek seems to at once be hoarder and a trasher of cherished items. The biggest one and key element of the story is Anja's details notebooks that he burned. His character is so confounding, having contradicting feelings and act...

It's hard to separate our perceptions of classic comic heroes with the polished movie icons they've become today. While some consider this franchise trite and derivative, one cannot deny they are an accepted cultural staple. I find this perception interesting in comparison to the view of comic books in the 40s-60s as illiterate pulp. On the course resource page, I read some Captain America and Donald Duck. Captain America is very pro-military, with simple good/evil stories often centered around military scenes and fighting Nazis or Japanese. The Ringmaster of Death was interesting to me because it contained characters and references to the military throughout while being a story about a circus! Some generals attend, and the evil ringmaster hatches a plan to murder one of them. His "wheel of death" in which he chooses his targets has a swastika in the middle even though the character isn't explicitly stated to be a Nazi and it never comes up again. I think the ...