The end of "Stitches" and the final blog discussion!

First, I'd like to start off by saying congratulations to everyone for reaching the end of this course! It has been a revealing course about the medium of comics. There is way more to comics than I initially anticipated, and I plan to continue my study of comics for years to come because I have become a die hard fan of them. I have enjoyed reading many of your posts. You guys are so creative and articulate that I have been intimidated at times by the complexity of your insights! I wish you luck with your finals and finals papers!

That being said; I'd like to focus this discussion on the last pages of Stitches. I found the dream section between pages 315-325 incredibly fascinating! It is clear that mental illness plays a part in David Small's family history. His grandma being sent to an asylum, and his mother may show similar signs of mental illness as well. David himself seems adamant that therapy did him a lot of good. Would therapy have worked for the mother and grandmother? Why or why not? What are your interpretations of this dream?

Throughout the semester, we have encountered many comics that made use of real life pictures. Stitches is no exception. In the end, we are given pictures and more background of the mother. I found this information helpful in understanding her character. Did it have the same effect on you? What did you make, or get out of the pictures?

Last question. What did you think of the book? Did you like it? Why or why not?

Happy winter break everybody!

Stitches part II

A rather wild and intriguing dive down the rabbit hole we took in the second part of this story. Was not expecting the cancer, the lesbian mother, the rabbit therapist, or the immense jump in time at the end. This book in general just hasn't really gone where I've expected it, and I love that about it. Was there anything in the book that really surprised you?

For being a comic book that uses a lot of images, he uses a lot of symbols. Images that have images that represent something bigger. It's pretty intense. I found it interesting that almost everybody else in the story wore glasses. Is it to be a mask? A lack of vulnerability, perhaps? Or is it something that makes him distinct, different from everyone else, an outcast? What did you guys think it meant? What about other symbols in the book? What were the most striking to you? If you had to pick one symbol, which would you say was most central to the book? And you can't pick his stitches/scar. ;) For me, I felt like the the white rabbit/alice in wonderland references were really key. David was in a world that he just plain didn't fit in. The white rabbit was his subconscious helping him to cope, escape, and understand his life. The tunnels and the alice in wonderland references were almost like passageways to other places, places where he could be free to be himself. This really is a story about a guy who just doesn't quite fit in. Did you catch the Alice in Wonderland references? Did you have different opinions about them?

David had a pretty intense relationship with his family. That scene with the therapist where the rabbit told David his mom didn't love him was intense. Do you think that really happened? Or was that more of David's subconscious helping him figure out what he needed to know? Or something else entirely? Do you think this was accurate? What did you think of the reveal of the mother's issues, or the father's guilt, or the grandmother's insanity? Did it make things make more sense at all? Did you end up liking the mother or not? It was a very touching scene in the hospital before she died. Did he forgive her?

The Bumbling Adventurer's Guide To ...

I have been reading comics since I was in Junior High (1991). I used to write and draw them as well – occasionally selling them for a dollar. I must admit, until taking this class I had never delved too deeply into graphic novels. I particularly enjoyed how personal the medium could get, as I had never read a memoir in comic book form. I wanted to bring a little bit of this angle to the extra credit assignment. 

I originally had the idea of writing a series of “Bumbling Adventurer” guides to different National Parks I’ve hiked. I never appreciated the outdoors until I was 29-30. I’ve done a lot of traveling and hiking and I consort with a number of guide books. I find most to either be for advanced outdoorsy types or complete beginners. I thought it would be great to have a series of guide books for the Average Joes and Janes out there that could be one part trail information and another part humor. I used this extra credit assignment to explore this idea a little further.

Having drawn comics before, (although not in the last 20 years) I already had an idea of panels, gutters, and such. Transitioning my idea to a two page comic proved rather difficult and I’m not satisfied with the end results. I find I was trying to do way too much with the 2 page project and it’s very heavy in the exposition department. I knew I wanted a cartoony feel as I believe this conveys the fun and enjoyment (at least I get) of the outdoors. Also, I am far from a serious / hardcore backpacker and I thought this was a great way to capture that as well. 

*** Please forgive this posting for being a day late ... I could totally have done a 2 page comic on the hoops I had to jump through just to post this - 3 villainous, uncooperative, dysfunctional scanners, a wild goose chase around town to find a means to turn my physical drawings into jpeg form, and finally a super heroine and her bat-gadget (aka: iPad) that saved the day by taking a picture of the above images. Sheesh. ***

EXTRA CREDIT - ".05%"

When it came to working on the extra credit assignment for this class, I knew that I would want to spend my time working on something of actual meaning and merit, as opposed to a disposable, slice-of-life kind of narrative. After reading through some of the novels that were assigned - Maus, Fun Home, Stitches - I realized that the closer a work was to being emotional true, the more it resonated with me. To that end, I decided to focus on a very deep, emotional issue from my own personal life: the death of my mother. Though it has been two years since her death, I have found that the grief I feel from it has a habit of morphing and changing, constantly restructuring itself. Even two years on, it still feels somehow "new" in certain ways. It is my belief that the circumstances surrounding her death - which were sudden, unexpected, and statistically unfair for a better lack of words - are what has given the grieving process an added longevity. That was something I wanted to explore here.

In terms of the actual structuring o the comic, I knew I wanted to use some form of minimalism. By paring down the use of color to only specific elements, I would give those things a kind of special power. When it came time to put the actual page together, I first wrote out of the script in word. Then, I opened up my art program (Manga Studio, a cheaper, more illustrator-friendly version of Photoshop), and began to place the panels and text. Once I had a general feel for how the flow of the page would go, I began to sketch in the art. After a couple of hours, with some minor post-production editing, the page was finished.

**note: if you're having trouble reading the text, right click on the image and open it in a new tab to see it at the full size **

Extra Credit assignment: Mikeyy Evans

http://mikeyyevans.com/comic/​

The comic is an anniversary gift for my parents, and represents in very short form the battle my mom had with breast cancer, and her ultimately becoming cancer free. I made a rough outline for the comic, which was originally going to be a bit longer, and then had my roommate in DAAP illustrate it. He emailed the files to me, I threw them into photoshop, did coloring, and pieced them all together. I did make two prints for my mom and dad, but also decided to put it up on my website for easier access. It's a short comic, and it's pretty straightforward I feel as far as narrative structure goes. I think and hope the gutter does a lot of work, specifically in transitions, and enhancing a lot of the movement that I really couldn't show in what ended up being four pages. I wanted to utilize the full splash page for the attack by cancer to emphasize it's heaviness. Even though this is a pretty light-hearted comic, it does deal with heavy subject matter, and a pretty heavy time in our life. But I wanted to take it from a different perspective, because looking back, it was good, fighting through it together as a family, and for my mum and dad too as a couple, growing us all stronger together. The form is a little more typical of superhero style comics, and a little distant from most of our other comics. But I thought it fit with the ideas that some of the comics have of having trouble dealing with issues, and not quite creating metaphors for what actually happened, but maybe a "simile" if you can make a visual simile. 

Extra Credit Assignment: Alexander Westcott

 

I apologize for the poor quality of this (had trouble downloading), but this is the extra credit assignment we had for today. Below is a description of my comic. Feel free to leave comments that might help make this comic better. 

The Crying Wolf

Graphic Novel Edition

            

          Out of all the creative works I have done, this has been the most emotional piece I have ever done. Before I go into the details about how I brought this comic page to life, allow me to explain what this is. The page is from a novel that I am writing called The Crying Wolf. It a story about a young girl named Caitlyn who is growing up in a post-apocalyptic world torn apart by Werewolves. Society has collapsed in a short matter of days and humanity must do whatever it takes to survive. Between the long nights of the Wolves’ hunt, to the insanity consumed by the remaining human population, Caitlyn must battle these obstacles if she hopes to be safe. But growing up in a chaotic world where she will discover her homosexuality and battle her insanity.

          The page here displays the end of one of the chapters. Caitlyn is writing down one of the most memorable moments of her life. Her father had been bitten by a Wolf (what they’re calling werewolves) and is on the verge of becoming one soon. Wolves cannot die once they transform, so Caitlyn must kill her father before he turns when night comes. The emotional struggle is too much for her, but she succeeds in doing the job. Her father has taught her ways to survive and is confident that she will live without him. The page/chapter ends with him being put out of his misery and Caitlyn being forced to fend for herself.

          The comic page that I made here was inspired by the works of Persepolis and Fun Home. The page starts with the older version of Caitlyn in more detailed style with the rest of the imagery simple and childish. The childish style was inspired by Persepolis and how Satrapi had her style. This symbolizes Caitlyn’s childhood and how she saw the world at a young age. The text above the images were inspired by Fun Home when Bechdel was writing her text in a more literate form. I did this so was to differentiate between her narration and the dialogue going on in the memories. There are only a few areas of color, but they draw a symbolic reference. The blue color on the tears refers to the title Crying Wolf, where she goes through a lot of emotional struggle in her past. And the colored blood represents the horror that she has endured. I have not decided yet if this will be an actual graphic novel, but this would be an idea of what it would look like.