Fun Hizome

Well we finished up our comic and I'm pretty sure it's safe to say, ours is by far the best we've seen.
Brian's artwork was seriously ridiculous and captured our story perfectly.

Anyways, so for the first time in a while I'm actually enjoying the novel we're reading. Fun Home has some of the typical graphic novel themes we've been dealing with, ex: nudity, homosexuality, but for some reason I'm enjoying it much more than Stuck Rubber Baby. Maybe because Bechdel is constantly referencing Camus, who is one of my favorite authors, and maybe because her family owns a funeral home, which reminds me of my ex-boyfriend. His dad owned a funeral home, and his mom.... was a clown. seriously. She went to clown college. Needless to say, that was an interesting family. They had fourth of July parties at the funeral home and they used caskets as coolers for the brewskis. Anyways, Bechdel's attitude towards death reminded me of my exes family and seemed real and kind of funny.

I also like the art in Fun Home. It's alot more 'comicky' than the other novels and I think it just sets it up as a more comfortable read. It's also interesting that the narration occurs above the frames most of the time rather than in them. Overall, I'm enjoying this novel. One of my only complaints is in the frames that have written letters in them. Most of the writing is illegible and it's frustrating not being able to read it. At the same time though, I think that's kind of a clever technique.

Stuck Rubber Baby

So I'm pretty sure I'm the only person that actually enjoys the art in this novel. I really enjoy the pointilism and cross hatching the artist uses, it shows such a wide variety of different shades with only black and white. I'm not as freaked out by the ridiculous jaws on some of the characters as other people seem to be, but I can't help but notice that the narrator's sister keeps getting bigger and bigger.

The storyline is interesting and I like how the internal struggle of the narrator's homosexuality parallels the external struggle of the civil rights movement occurring around him. So far I'm kind of apathetic to this novel. It has interesting work and a decent storyline, but I'm not really interested in any of the characters. Plus, the present day narrator looks like a scary bum. And I'm spent on this topic.

Finishing up Portraits from Life

Well the second half of Portraits from Life was significantly better than the first three stories. Possibly because drugs and murder mysteries are slightly more fascinating to me than fake Indians and old war vets. But really, when reading the fourth story in Portraits I couldn't help but be interested as I kept thinking back to the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where they take most of the drugs the narrator talks about. The story was more interesting because the visuals in Fear and Loathing are way trippy and sparked my interest in the narrator. This clip is a scene where Depp is messed up on mescaline and other intense drugs.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=b_EvWIlEix4&feature=related

The last story was also pretty interesting because it has the whole overlapping of storylines that I've grown to love about graphic novels. Plus, I'm obsessed with Law and Order and the whole mystery was reminiscent of that kind of plot. I started to pay more attention to the type of art in these two stories, such as the crosshatching lines and what not that we discussed in class. Very cool technique. I also found the stories somewhat more interesting after finding out that they were all based on true events. Overall, Collier redeemed himself for the first three stories.

Portraits from Life

So it took me awhile to get a grasp on Portraits from Life... and I still don't like it. A compilation of short stories that have absolutely no point? Not so much. At first I was kind of into the whole style like on the first 2-3 pages that had overly comic-stylish elements. I really liked the whole 'CAYUGA!' bubble and whatnot, but then the story ended without ever really going anywhere.

The second story was a little more appealing as it had a bit more substance, and definitely kicked the shit out of the third story which just sucked. Seriously the end of the third story? What the hell was that girl doing to her grandpa? She was like singing and jumping on him? Weird. But thats not the point. The point is, while although the art of this graphic novel is pretty intricate and interesting, I found it hard to even want to look at it due to the lame content of the stories. Short stories are sweet, but not when they are about old men becoming senile and reliving their glory days to younger people that really don't want anything to do with them.