FlemingLinportfolio

Week 11 Literary Graphic Novels                         I read the Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli this week. I have to said it is the kind of comic that you can reread many times. I really like how the artist break the characters into different geometric component to emphasis the character’s characteristic. David cut between the past and present life of the professor to show his inner conflicts and the reason he gets lost in his life and don’t know what to do next now. The artist uses some very interesting technics to show character’s mental status. These include but is not limited, change the line weights, use warmer color in those good-old time memories and colder color in present time.             But those aspects all belong to the artistic skills side in my opinion, what really touches me ...

Week 10 Tezuka             I have already read the mushishi and Rumiko Takahashi before, I was, very surprised by the fact that this course would include these manga. I means, I read them for fun, but didn’t realized the educational value in them. Now, after I change my point of view and starts to read them from a different perspective, I found some very interesting question that I would like to discuss.             The first one is what cause such a big difference both in the art style and story between western comic and eastern manga? The first idea that comes to my mind is the differences in industry structure. Based on my personal experiences, western comic and animation industry worship the value of cooperation. In this way, the final works get produced much faster and smoother. However, I found this kind of workflow tend to erase the “individual pe...

Week 9 European Comics Tradition             I read the Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. It is basically a self biography which shows how Marjane grow up in Iran and reflects the struggle and oppression Iranian woman had in those years. I know this idea may sound crazy or even evil, but the first thing that come to my mind after the story is even Marjane are barely allowed to do anything due to the various social problems in Iran, she is still an outgoing, optimistic girl, full of curiosity for the outside world, and also hold the ambition to challenge the various unfairness in society, and keep questioning the dogma which doesn’t really make sense to her. But what happened after she gets to French? Without these “controls” (either from religion or her parent), I was surprised by the fact that she seems to degenerates under the temptation of “freedom”. I mean, she doesn’t used this chance to do something for her...