Art Spiegelman's Maus

As a story about the Holocaust in comic form, Art Spiegelman’s Maus accomplishes the seemingly impossible. Maus tells the story of Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, and his experience as a Polish Jew during the Holocaust. Running parallel to the story is the story of Spiegelman’s interactions with his father as he visits his father on numerous occasions to record his memories. All of the characters are represented as animals: the Jews are mice, the Germans are cats, the Americans are dogs, and so on. Within this seemingly simplistic framework, Maus confronts the terrifying reality of the Holocaust, the systematic genocide of millions and millions of Jews carried out by the Nazi regime during World War II.

Maus is considered a representative work in second-generation Holocaust literature, literature about the Holocaust written from the perspective of the survivors’ children. As the critic Arlene Fish Wilner explains, “In the Jewish tradition, the transmission of familial and communal history from parent to child is a sacred obligation”. Inheriting and preserving their parents’ stories is a way for children to connect with their families’ pasts. This becomes especially important when you think about the fact that whole families were wiped out during the Holocaust.

Spiegelman exploits the comic form in Maus to unsettle the reader, playing with panel frames and arrangements and with his own animal motif to unsettle the reader’s expectations. Within the comic, Spiegelman reflects a lot on the making of Maus, inviting the reader to inhabit his creative process. In using a form of popular culture to talk about serious historical issues, and by reflecting on the form within the text itself, Maus is also considered a postmodern text.

I also liked how he used black and white instead of color to set the mood of the comic since it tells a more serious piece of work. Using rodents as people shows how he wanted to represent how jewish people felt like pest and rodents compared to everyone else during that time, basically alienated.

I would recommended this.

Robert Crumb

Robert Crumb's, The Book of Mr. Natural, has a main character featured through out the whole book, heck his name is in the title, Mr. Natural. At first appearance, Mr. Natural is a mystic guru who spouts aphorisms on the evils of the modern world, and the salvation to be found in mysticism and natural living. He has renounced the material world and lives off anything he can get in exchange for his nuggets of wisdom. Mr. Natural is always depicted as slightly overweight, bald with a long white beard, and wears a gown which makes him resemble a prophet.
Crumb's bearded guru is too unapologetic to be called a con man. Despite his renunciation of the material world, he's an unrepentant sybarite. His straight talk, while refreshing, can get him into trouble, as when he was kicked out of heaven for telling God it's "a little corny" in "Mr. Natural Meets God". The stories that contain the character Mr. Natural always seems to keep things fresh brining a wittiness to the pages. 

Need More Love, a graphic novel by Aline Crumb, was a fun book to read. For one thing, along with text, there were comics to read, photos and paintings to enjoy looking at. Aline Crumb had a totally dysfunctional childhood, with a father who did not hold a regular job, but always looked for a way to scam a buck. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, she explored free love, drugs and rock 'n roll. She had a baby when she was young and gave the healthy boy up for adoption. It does not sound like their paths ever crossed again. After her father died, her mothers wanted to share a flat with her, and she married a nice Jewish boy instead to get away from mom. That marriage did not work out. After attending college as an art student, Aline eventually moved to San Francisco so she could explore her craft. She got involved with such feminist artists as Trina Robbins. She worked on "Wimmen's Comics", where she wrote autographical comics, which was very new, especially for women back in the 1970s. Due to some conflicts with some of the other cartoonists, she eventually worked on her own comics with other artists called "Twisted Sisters." 

In San Francisco, she met artist Robert Crumb, who already had a great following as a cartoonist and they started hanging out. Eventually they lived together and got married. They lived in Central California for many years, worked on comics together called "Dirty Laundry" and had a daughter Sophia. During one of their many travels, Aline fell in love with France and convinced her family to move there. They are presently living in South France in a beautiful home. Aline shows off some photos of her home in this book. Robert and Aline are still very involved in their writing and cartooning. 
I loved reading this book and learning about Aline and her family. Aline has a great sense of humor throughout her book. She makes fun of herself, her art and she emphasizes how difficult it was at times for her daughter to grow up with parents who are artists and had such a liberal past. I highly recommend this book for a good time. 

Tijuana Bible Blondie, is a very graphic piece. I did not expect to be reading such vulgar things from a comic book. I just thought this would be a good comic book since I never heard of it and I wish I did not. I do not understand the purpose of this, it was like the comic version of porn. To add to it, it looked like a young boy drew the characters making it even more uncomfortable to read it. Basically if you have not gotten it already, I did not enjoy it and do not think there should be much to say about it.

Will Eisner's Works

Will Eisner's Family Matter tells the story of a day in the life of a typical family gathered for a birthday party. In the span of twenty-fours hours, the darkest family secrets are revealed. Long suppressed memories surface like betrayal, abuse, greed, incest, and worse. The strained family comes together, only to be torn apart. Will Eisner's novel The Name of the Game traces the parallel lineages of three Jewish families from the late 19th century to the 1950's: an old money family, the Arnheims; a more modestly striving family, the Obers; and the social climbers, the Kayns. By turns, it is poignant, maddening and sobering in its depiction of how people use marriage as an avenue to preserve appearances, rise in social class and sometimes just survive. While I seem to recall Jeffrey Archer's Kane and Abel novels covering some of the same territory, I found this deeply affecting and resonant. The Dreamer, another Will Eisner's work is a semi-fictional story of a young man who dreams of working in the world of comic books in the 1930s. Along the way he meets those who share his dream, and others who have dreams of their own. 

Blankets by Craig Thompson is wrapped in the landscape of a blustery Wisconsin winter, Blankets explores the sibling rivalry of two brothers growing up in the isolated country, and the budding romance of two coming-of-age lovers. A tale of security and discovery, of playfulness and tragedy, of a fall from grace and the origins of faith is a small description.Blankets in my opinion is the coming of age story of Craig. It's a story of love and self-discovery, and of family and parenting, and the scars the smallest of brutalities could make. But most of all It's the story of Craig's struggle with art, love, and sexuality on one hand, and his faith on the other. Blankets is, in short, about life. Craig's journey from the darkness of Plato's Cave, to the light of the real world; his liberation from dogma and ignorance, through love and reflection, was so relatable to me, since I went through a very similar journey.I never thought that a graphic novel could be this meaningful—not taking away anything from graphic novels, but the ones I read, so far, were more entertaining than anything else. But Blankets changed that very mistaken impression; it made me reflect on life, and feel so many emotions. Would recommend, if you can read more than 600 pages.

Art Spiegelman's Jack Cole and Plastic Man

Art Spiegelman's Plastic Man series of comic book bended the rules of a regular super hero. When going into reading this comic book I was expecting a generic super hero and a common scenario were this man saves the day. Though I was surprised to find out what this Plastic Man really was. Plastic Man is a man that can shift into anything that he needs. For example he can stretch him self like a rubber band from panel to panel, or he can shift into an object like a ball. He can even shape shift into a female. It was interesting take on a super hero, and how his powers changed out the layout of a comic book. It also gave leading lines and movement when he stretched himself, making the viewer know where to look next or where to look. It standard traditional color scheme did not hold back the red jumpsuit and yellow belt though. The reading was great, but my only negative about this comic was that its scenarios were border lining predictable and commonly seen in other comics. The new super power of this hero defiantly helped the comic in the long run. 

Herge created many comic book series of Tintin and his adventures. Tintin travels to exotic places in every comic book. Tintin is a famous reporter with Le Petit Vingtieme. In one of his comics he departs for the USSR with his faithful friend Snowy, a white dog. Tintin is on a mission to find out, and report to his young readers back home, in one of his comics, the state of affairs in Soviet Russia. This adventure was the birth of a legend and the first edition of the book that had achieved legendary status among collectors. 

While in class, we read a few comics of Carl Bark's work. Carl is the creator of all of Donald Ducks comic series and his adventures. In one of the comics that I read Donald and his nephews are competing on who can catching animals. Donald says he can catch anything and to prove it he will catch a fox. His nephews though decide to prank their uncle and have him catch a faux fox scarf he gave daisy. Donald though catches his nephews in their little act and decides to find a "wolf" from the pound and claim he caught it. The nephews are shocked from this catch and try to catch themselves one. Though Donald seems to get caught by their trap when trying to show his nephews that their trap stinks. When the nephews go for help they get caught in Donald's other trap. leading them later to be cut down later by bystanders. Then a mouse sales man tries to sell Donald a mouse trap and Donald does not find this funny, slams the door and leave the sells man confused. 

Carl Bark's gives these little critters many gestural poses and facial expressions that  bring the characters alive. The bright colors adds a cartoony feel, and less realistic colors like some comics we saw about wars or batman by DC Comics. The jokes found in the comic are generic, but still makes me crack a few chuckles here and there still. Lets face it you can not beat a classic joke.