Seriously Comical

The comic reader generation seems growing in the last 10 years. Manga, DC & Marvel, Comic Strips, Graphic Novel, and the other form of sequence drawing has already become a popular culture. People-children to adult- read comics everywhere. However, not all of people love reading comics. Some of the think that reading comics only for lazy people, wasting time, and make you dumb or pervert. I was confused when some people told me that reading comics don’t make you smart. I asked myself, “Should I stop reading comics?”. Well, I was only asking the same question to myself for years. And I keep reading comics. Out of a whim, I found out a book titled, “Understanding Comics”, by Scott McCloud.  I read his book and found a new way in seeing comics. I can say that he is a comic-guru, sequence art master, or whatever suits him.

I am not writing a review about the book because I know you can find better review than mine on Amazon.com. I just want to write about what actually we ’see’ in comics.

As a human, we are all undoubtedly an egocentric  animals. It’s not a new story. A long long time ago we imagined God in human form. We always believe that we are the most perfect living things. That’s human nature, I guess. And this similar kind of egocentrism has revealed by Scott McCloud’s explanation in that book.

He wrote that “We humans are a self-centered race”, and yeah, the picture below has justified that.

And this one as well.

And thus he continued, “we all added  the identities and emotion where there’s actually none exist”. And again, the picture has justified his statement.

Finally, he stated that we all see our own image on everything. But what these all have to do with comics? It’s related to our behavior actuall. But how? Please look at the picture below:

This picture explain that we all se ourselves even while we are facing with someone else. But because we cannot really ’see’ ourselves in other people’s faces, we are creating our own image. And of course, the image is not that vivid. The image is only eyes, nose, mouth, and the other basic parts of our face… as a cartoon image. Because we can identify ourselves clearly when we see other people (who has different faces from us), we are not losing our sense of identity. As a result, we don’t really put attention to what our friends saying or someone else. We know we are different. I know that there’s “I” and there’s “you”, “they”. But the different story happens in comics. Let’s see this image below first:

Yes, when it’s about cartoon universe, we see ourselves. Why? Because almost all of the main character of cartoon or comics only have the basic parts of faces. Line representing mouth, dot representing eyes and nose, and etc. Manga is the best example for that: while Manga has a detailed background setting, they keep the main characters’ faces simple. Just simple lines and dots. So what’s happening if we see ourselves in comics? If we see ourselves in comic character, we become “one” with the character itself. We unconsciously losing our identity yet we feel what the comic character’s feel. We both consciously and unconsciously absorb the moral story of the comics. So I can say that by reading comic, we’re not only reading it, we are absorbed and thus we learn everything in what the comic is trying to explain.

After I found this insight, I can say that comic has contributed in my education. I cannot  say that I don’t get anything from comic books. On the contrary, I can say that I find something. And it’s only by reading comic books.

The Strawhat Pirates has eight crew and each of them has their own special ability. From the beginning Luffy searched for his crew members (nakama), he always said that he wants a crew who can do the job that he can’t do. For example: When he needed a navigator, he found Nami. When he needed a shipwright, Franky joined. But he doesn’t always recruit someone who has special ability. He invited Usopp without any reason. He simply let Robin teamed up just because he believed that Robin is a good person, although Robin considered as the most knowledgeable and experienced one (moreover, she’s the only person left who can read the Poneglyphs). Among all the members, I found some of them has the characteristic that make the team solid. Read the rest of this entry »

Tom sez, “Our Stanford Creative Writing class wrote and illustrated a 224 page Graphic Novel this past quarter, and now it’s up on the web. The story concerns the phenomenon of acid attacks in Cambodia, especially against women. We made the Graphic Novel in 6 weeks, with a collaboration among 17 students in creative writing, art, and design.”

-taken from Boingboing.net-

I am always wondering why all of my studies’ assigment has never made me excited to do it. Sometimes I really want to create something interesting and enthralling that I can show everyone what I’ve learned and what I can create, but the moment has never come to me, at least until now. While I was reading Boingboing.net, I found this article about 17 students at Stanford University produced a graphic novel, I was wondering why I couldn’t do such thing. Well, enough whining, and for you, read Shake Girl please.

One day one of my friend asked me, “If you’re stuck in elevator, which would you prefer: Stuck there with one comic in your bag or stuck there with three novels without pictures?”. “One comic book, I guess.”, I answered. “Why?”. I replied, “Well, I don’t know actually why I’d choose a comic book, but one thing I know for sure is I love the way a series of pictures tell me a story than the way words telling me a story.” Then my friend just raised one of his eyebrows and walk away.

Actually, the story above was not an interesting story to tell, but I just want to tell that in my opinion pictures let you ‘create’ the story itself. And, never bored me. Here I give examples of pictures that tell you more from my favourite comic writer, Derek Kirk Kim.

I put a lot of interest on cartoonist, whether it’s Manga, DC/Marvel, or comic strips. Here I show you drawings from one of my favorite cartoonists, Jen Wang: The Dance of the Flight Attendance.

She made the safety explanation as if it was merely a dance and the stewardess doing it just because it’s a ritual dance before the flight.

And she ended this short comic by elegantly showing this ‘dance’ is universally understandable.