Late night incoherent ramblings on Manga.

I’d like to start by saying this post is based on a very limited knowledge of manga and anime, and I’m just basing this on my own observations. I’ve been reading Miyazaki’s book - ‘Starting Point’ recently which is a collection of his articles and talks on anime and animation throughout his career. I think it displays intelligent and interesting views on anime that I also think transfer very easily into just about any medium. For the sake of this blog post - I’m talking about manga. He says that the industry today (anime shows, specifically) is like one big steam and that there is so much work out there, if you’re really not making something for a good reason and with the intention of making a progressive piece then it’s just going to become another drop in the steam and it’s going to become immediately lost in the flow. I think this is true of manga and I think this is part of the problem with how manga is viewed. So much of it is catered towards pleasing a fan base that often I don’t think it IS very progressive, or if it is suffocated by the need to show big breasted women with their clothes half off. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that, generally - but I also think that there is a time and a place where it can invalidate some other greater point you are trying to make. As such, lots of people just see anime and manga as an attempt to show cute girls getting into situations where their already skimpy top (or bikini) comes off, some guy oogles and then gets a nose bleed and called a perv. (I’m thinking of Gurren Lagann when I say this, because I just watched it.) I think the genre struggles in that, just as people like to sum up Game of Thrones as ‘blood, sex and incest’ it is easy to sum Manga up in a similar way (without the incest)... Really though, I’m sure there are some fantastic manga’s out there - I’m just talking about how it is often perceived by a western audience, especially those not actually reading it. So these pieces become part of the larger stream, and are lost - only remembered as that piece with the lady with big boobs who did something, somewhere that was pretty cool.

(Kind of irrelevant but here is my short and brief history with manga... ) I used to read some manga and watched a certain amount of anime. I definitely enjoyed it and I even remember I started drawing anime at some point in my early days but I don’t think it was ever REALLY me, I grew up around the classical masters and none of my friends were really very into it. Saying that, I do know I enjoyed it - and watched a reasonable amount of anime. However, maybe I’m just comparing myself to some of my friends who watch it now and I can’t even pretend to say I know the first thing in comparison. I’d like to read some more if I ever find the time.

Web Comics I Sometimes Read.

oglaf - http://oglaf.com/ (NSFW)
I’ve been following this comic for a while and is one I actually like coming back to. It often contains some really intelligent jokes despite the fact those jokes so often revolve around sex. Not to say that is surprising, I’m only saying that it seems like a cheap and easy trick to put lots of sex in a comic and let that mask bad quality gags and strips. But honestly so many of the comics are so wonderfully weird and clever (even the ones without any sex in…) that it’s just a fun, enjoyable comic.

Penny Arcade - http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic
Penny Arcade is another one I’ve been following for a long time. I’m not particularly clued in with everything these days and don’t get any time to play games so a lot of the jokes go over my head. None the less, the ones I do get I always really enjoy. I definitely found myself drawn to it more when I was more invested in popular culture but none the less, fun. The drawing style is iconic and I see it popping up here and there and can always recognize it.

Necropolis - http://necropoliscomic.tumblr.com/post/118905492171/prologue
This is a new webcomic that is currently being written that I’ve been following for a month or two. It’s never far in but I think it promises to be a really interesting and exciting comic about a young girl who sells herself for powers. I can’t wait to see where this one goes. I love the art style and the different styles between the chapter prologue and the main strip. I’d recommend this one, David!

Cyanide and Happiness - http://explosm.net/
I haven’t read this one in a long time but used to love these. Often dark humor they are so consistently short funny gags that I really enjoy dropping in and reading a few every now and then, The simplistic style works for it and is iconic for this particular comic.

Poorly Drawn Lines - http://pdlcomics.tumblr.com/ (For some reason the actual site is blocked at school…)
This is another one I love reading, and I have so many of the panels saved to my desktop. Another comic that embraces its simple style with wonderful and charming efficiency. I really don’t have much to say about this one, it’s great. The jokes often make me laugh out loud (which is rare…) and even the simplest gestures and expressions in this comic are used so well. Infact, I think it is the simple expressions that I often find so funny. I’ve attached one of the ones on my desktop.

Daytripper

Comic: Daytripper
Writer: Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá
Artist: Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá

Daytripper is a comic written and illustrated by two brothers about a man, Brás and the different pivotal moments in his life. It jumps from these different moment and at the end of each chapter he dies. It follows his friendships, his relationships, his childhood and eventually parenthood. It does a fantastic job at showing the truly important moments, and manages to do so in a non consecutive manner which actually aids the story. I don’t think us seeing him as a kid in the first sequence would have worked anywhere near as well. I am sitting here thinking about the individual chapters and it does sadden me, especially those with his family - like when his son is born, or when he is away because of the success of his book. Those really struck me hard and are some of the saddest chapters.

However, saying all that - I found that despite all the death and sadness, the comic was ultimately a celebration of life. Life and death often go hand in hand but with such a strong focus on death for so much of it, the ending was ultimately all the more rewarding. To see the version in which Brás made it through everything all the ups and downs and lived a full life was incredibly rewarding. I thought visually it is very appealing, their style appropriate to the themes and feel of the comic. It lacked the hyper realism of the superheroes but still was realistic enough that it never felt like too much of an ‘internal’ piece.

Daytripper really is of my favourite comics and I struggle to find anything that I don’t like about it. Maybe I need to spend more time examining it, but there is something about the theme that I just love. I love the feeling I get from reading it, like I need to go out and live life, that life is precious and life is fragile but whatever choices you make you just have to live your life and make the choices and mistakes you’re going to make because you never know unless you live them. I don’t know if this is the optimist in me, because it truly is a sad comic in its individual pieces. I just loved the feeling I got upon completing it for the first time.

Transmetropolitan - Totally forgot to post this one!

Are there any prominent symbols in the story?
If so what are they and how are they used?

Both parts of his name seem like they are representative and are used symbolically. Spiders are creatures that have very obvious symbolism. The idea of a ‘spider’s web’ is particularly pertinent to a journalist. Who has to connect the dots to from some larger picture to write about while crawling through the underside of the city. He is only a small player in a much larger game, but much like spiders, their reputation is far more powerful than their actual physical size. He represents something that is greater than himself, his words inflicting more damage than any physical threat he could really impose. Jerusalem is an interesting choice for a name too, the City a religious center and in biblical terms, a perfect city of God. It is of great contrast to Spider’s character and almost funny consider how dramatically the city has fallen but seems appropriate consider his ultimate intentions. He seems to be, as far as I can tell from this first book, a sort of Messiah figure.

What connections did you make the story?
Discuss the elements of the work with which you were able to connect.

I think I connected most with the bustle of the city. Not in a way that was necessarily similar in its extremes but in the constant claustrophobic bustle of people that flood cities and the ways in which everyone goes about the daily life, spending hours sitting in a car to get somewhere they don’t really want to be. I also find with all the crap going on at the moment with the US political system and Trump’s reaction to ‘Aliens’ it is a scary mirror to what I hope never comes to pass in humanity's future.

What changes would you make to adapt this story into another medium? What medium would you use? What changes would you make?

I feel like this would fit well in a live action world with a good amount of well integrated CG. I can see similarities in what they did with Watchmen, a world that still feels very “comic book” but creates a world around it that feels natural. You need to be able to feel the claustrophobia of the city and the dirt that inhabits its world, you need to feel the shittyness of it all and how he fits into that world and how in some weird way he thrives (as much as he would hate to admit it) on the crappiness of it all. would suit it well but I think I see a closer resemblance to what is currently being done with ‘Deadpool’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr_Ta6NS3-g

Big Hero Six - The Film that came from Marvel's comics.

I just wanted to write a small piece on Big Hero Six because it is one of my favourite movies and i think did a wonderful job at taking a relatively obscure comic and making an excellent film about it. I also learned a little about the film during my time at Disney. They first decided to make a Marvel feature when one of the Directors (I can’t remember if it was Don Hall or Chris Williams) went to John Lasseter after the acquisition of Marvel and asked if they’d let him pick through the Marvel archives and make a film. He eventually settled on Big Hero Six for its potential but also its lack of notoriety. The fact no-one really knew about this obscure comic of a couple of episodes meant that they had the luxury of being able to adapt it in their own style and could take the characters much further from the comic book counterparts.

I think they manage to an excellent job with this film. The film shifts between highly cinematic emotional moments to contrast with much more ‘comic book’ like action sequences. The action scenes were intended to have a lot of color and the epic comic book feel. As someone who wants to go into Lighting and Compositing, The color choices in this movie were great. From the unique colors and designs of all the Characters to the different kind of city lights that stemmed from the merging of San Fransisco and Tokyo. They used to present different moods and for different sequences in the movie. If you look at the picture I attached you can see how the yellow lights of San Francisco roll of to the sides in a golden yellow light whereas the high rises of Tokyo produce an intense white light in the center of the city. You’ll also find that during the car chase sequence the lights are a haunting green color as they look straight at the villian.

 

Another fun little tid bit is that the after credits scene in Big Hero Six was very last minute. When the directors went to see another Marvel movie about a month before the release of Big Hero Six and saw the after credits scene they realized they had to do one. As such, they got a few particular artists in the studio and secretly made the end credits scene where Stan Lee shows up as Fred’s father. Most of the studio didn’t know it existed until they watched the movie in theaters.

Short post on... World of Warcraft: Ashbringer

World of Warcraft: Ashbringer

A standalone arc from the original series it focuses on the Mograine family and the history of the legendary sword, Ashbringer. It has the same artists as the original comics and overall it just really feels pretty… Epic (for lack of a better word). As I mentioned in my last post, I don’t know how much of it is my relationship with the series but this one did a really good job at using its lore and just making an exciting and involving story around it. It really was never anything too deep (and this applies to my last post too) but was much like something like pacific rim. You don’t go in expecting to have your mind state altered, you go in expecting to see giant robots fight giant monsters and that is exactly what you get. It is the same with this comic, you go in expecting to see heroes fighting the demons, the undead or some other baddie and that is exactly what you get. It does deal with religious fanaticism which I suppose does approach an interesting topic but it is two separate things entirely to use it as a device and then to address a topic in a way that gives some important commentary on the subject.

This is a large tangent to world of warcraft, but I had an interesting talk with Shiyoon Kim (Lead character Designer on Big Hero Six) over the summer about the future of the industry and how it’s going to change. He was talking about how he thinks our generation will be one to change the game, but was also talking about how although (certain) films can make a statement, or make some social commentary they can lack the method of change, they don’t necessarily broach the subject in a way which can help identify the core of the problem or how it comes about.

ANYWAY, the comic was ace.

World of Warcraft Comics

Comic: World of Warcraft
Writer: Walt and Lousie Simonson
Artist: Mike Bowden and Pop Mhan

What was the comic about?

I decided to write a little bit about this comic series because it was one I read a long time ago and revisited more recently. It was a monthly comic for a while, and I followed it for a year or two. It is hard for me to disassociate myself from the lore of the world because I’ve been a big of Warcraft for a long time, so I don’t know how much of my enjoyment stemmed from my love of the the games and how much of it was purely just because the comic was good. I played the old Warcraft Games and then World of Warcraft on and off since I was 13 till about 18, so I know the whole IP incredibly well, the world is so immersive and has such amazing and thorough lore that it really was an amazing thing to be a part of in its heyday. I think the new trailer for the Warcraft movie helps me identify why I liked this comic so much and why I’m not really very excited about the movie. In the game, each location has a feel - it has a certain color pallette, shape language, art direction and I think I could probably identify any of them with a screenshot even so many years after I stopped playing. The comic definitely stuck to this and some of that nostalgic feeling would come back when I read it, I think this was a great success on the part of the writers. (On the flip side, I couldn’t tell any of the locations in the trailer by these same criteria, which to me is a massive failing considering its really meant to be pandering to its fan base.)

What did you like about it?

I actually really enjoyed the main first arc of the story, but it definitely lost a lot of its appeal after that. The original arc had a nice amount of characters and told a story that revolved around the human character Varian Wrynn. He soul split in two, he wakes up to with amnesia and is immediately captured and taken a slave, forced to fight in the arena. He and his team becomes renowned for their skills before they manage to flee. His memory begins to return and he must return home to save his city and his people from the clutches of the Dragon Onyxia. This was an awesome ark and a great story, however - after this they started introducing a number of other characters and flooded the story with new people and introduced a number of elements that were foreign to the original. Steve Hickner was at our school the other day and did a talk about story and how if we present something to our audience that they think they know and are excited to see then you break that without giving them a satisfying alternative then they are going to dislike it. So when they introduced all these new elements it really began to feel further and further detached from the original games. I also think it suffered from what I am calling ‘Heroes’ syndrome. Where they began to introduce so many characters that all the storylines began to get weaker and weaker and there were too many threads to keep hold of at once.

The Pride of Baghdad

Comic: The Pride of Baghdad
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Niko Henrichon

What was the comic about?

The Pride of Baghdad is a comic about four african lions escaping from a Baghdad Zoo after an American Bombing. It is fictionalized version of a true event that happened in 2003. The story starts off in the Zoo, most of the captive lions wishing of freedom, especially Nala - the younger female of the group.  Safa, the old lioness has no fond memories of life in the wild and has no desire to leave. Before long, the zoo is destroyed by a bomb, and the pride heads out into the “wild”. They find a land torn apart by war.

What did you like about it?

It was visually stunning and I liked the views it had on war. Often it is worth finding a reason why a story has to be animals (if that is what you are going to use) and I think while obviously it is important to THIS story, I think a similar story could be told about a real human family and really would hardly need to be changed. I think that is why it is so impactful and why I think this comic does what comics do best and show us a little bit of our own world in a digestible bite size chunk.

What didn’t you like about it?

For me, the only real issue was how quickly the end of the comic came about. The four lions were shot dead almost instantly and I just felt like the payoff could have been a little better. I’m fine with the lions all dying, but you’ve got me to care about them and now I felt a little like I was cheated out of an ending. It wouldn’t involving change the plot at all, just drawing out those last few pages a little more. I know that is easier said than done, but hey, I’m writing a blog post not having to make any changes myself. Overall, however, I do think they did a wonderful job at portraying the horrors of war in a human way without making it too intense or purely depressing but by masking it in a unique and interesting story.

What themes did the comic have?
All of the different lions have a different take on the war, which I think is one of the most interesting elements of the comic. The young cub, who has no experience with war or the outside world in comparison with the experienced older lioness - the disconnect between the generations as well as the gender differences between the Male and Female. The male, domesticated by captivity finding his wildness in defense of those he cares about.

Maus - I

The book is really about two things, the first - a father/son relationship between a young man named Art and his Dad, a holocaust survivor from the Second World War called Vladek. The second part is a recollection of his Father’s experiences during the War for Art to use as inspiration for a comic book.

The comic itself is drawn in a simple style, with the characters all represented by different animals. For example, the Jews are mice, while the Nazi’s are evil looking cats. It is not a subtle tool that he is using, but its clarity makes the point clear and unambiguous. Later, masks are utilized - for example, when Vladek recalls a time in which he had to pretend to be polish, he is shown wearing a pig’s face as a mask.
The comic begins with young Art who is rollerskating. Vladek’s reaction to Art’s friends leaving him when he skates break sets up the dynamic between the two of them quickly. For Vladek, everything after his experiences can only be seen through the eyes of a man who has seen and experienced the things that he has. He compares the problems of a child losing his friends to his experiences in the Holocaust, to friendship being only truly determined after 5 days of hunger. It really shows how prominent it is for Vladek and how much time he spends thinking about the past. He really can’t move on. It seems apparent that Art feels a level of guilt for the neglect of his father on his part, but at the same time neglects him for a reason - that he really can’t stand him so when they talk it quite quickly becomes apparent that all Art really wants to know about is the past, specifically the holocaust. We also see during this chapter Vladek take large amounts of pills, mostly vitamins to keep himself healthy. This seems to tell us that one of the things that Vladek took from his experience is that survival is not easy, and you can only really rely on yourself to get through it all.
From here on out we begin to learn more and more about Vladek’s experiences and we pick up a few more traits, his resourcefulness in the war has now manifested itself into a inability to throw anything away. It represents the way, which is different to that of Anja and Mala, that he managed to survive. He will continue to use them, but they have outdated themselves in modern times, when he no longer has to use his wits just to survive. It is part of what makes his relationship with Art so strained.
For me, one of the most interesting things about this whole comic is the style choice and visual language that is used. It is a very symbolic piece and I can understand why as a work of art it got a large amount of coverage. It has a lot of depth to it, wrapped up in a story that is not an easy topic to do well. It is all too common to approach works on the holocaust and automatically resort to the tragic victim and I think while no doubt Vladek is a victim, he is not particularly likeable either. As such, I think it was a brave choice, but ultimately is what makes the character interesting and real.
Pt. 2 Based on Book II will be coming. (I only just managed to find a copy!)
P.S. God damn backstabbing smugglers am I right?

Elric of Melniboné

When I saw this on the reading list I got incredibly excited, so I’m sorry if this is somewhat preemptive. I’ll probably end up writing about this again as this post is likely to be less about the history of it, and more why it is important to me as a piece of literature and as a comic and what I loved about it.
Reading the tales of the albino, Elric of Melniboné, his sword Stormbringer and the tragic tales that followed him are some of my fondest memories. My dad collected the comics before I was born, so as I grew up I had an entire collection of his stories available for me to read. I don’t think he was missing any - I remember how proud he was of it. I think he still has them in their plastic sheets, hidden somewhere in his house. Before that, however, I remember my dad reading all the books to me, and this must have been before I could read well enough to do it on my own so I must have been quite young. Whatever my age (and I now question if they were entirely appropriate considering how old I must have been but I think I turned out well enough so it can’t have been too damaging…) I loved them and they hold an important place in my heart not only because they are an epic and wonderful collection of stories but because it makes me smile thinking about sitting in front of the fire, or in bed while my Dad would read to me. My heart also feels a little heavy too, because it has been so long since I got to sit and do the simple things with my family. I see my Dad maybe twice a year now, and I feel the weight of that now as I think about all the things we used to do together.
So, I’m sure you can see why this character means a lot to me - and I think that is the power of art and literature, and I think that is also why sometimes these recurring comics and books (and I’m sure the same applies to movie sequels), who follow one character for a long time can be both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, the characters become real people to us, each story exploring them more thoroughly, testing them and showing us more about them - about how they choose to deal with a situation. At the same time, it has potential to be milked, the same stories wrapped up in different paper for the sake of commercial gain or just pressure to appease a fanbase. I think the way they went about approaching an Incredible sequel is the right attitude towards the whole thing. Before they announced Incredible II I remember reading that when asked if they intended to make a second one they said something along the lines of  ‘Only if we find the right story to tell about our characters, we resolved the family problems they were having in the first one, we can’t retell that’. Either way, I think the stories they told of Elric were fantastic ones and if that has a slight bias on it because of its personal relevance then so be it.

The Strip, The Comic and the Web Comic

So why did the comic book come about? It offers the audience something that the strips don’t and in a time where the internet was not a resource everything had to be bought. If you were a big fan of a particular character and you brought a paper just to read his little strip each week then the chances of you spending a couple of bucks to grab the collection at the end of the year was incredibly likely. As such, financially it was a way to resell work that had already been produced. You could even advertise in the very same paper in which you placed the comic. Storing all the newspapers would be a waste of space and I’m sure would get annoying incredibly fast. So, in that regard shifting to the book makes sense. There are other practical reasons however. If you ever missed a week, you’d be stuck if there was ever a running, long term narrative so the comic book made that viable. The short panels also weren’t set up for it, they suit gags far better and to have a narrative would mean that it could take weeks before any resolution was found and I would imagine it would get incredibly frustrating week after week just to find out what happened to a character.
The comic book market already has it’s top dogs up there with Marvel and DC and is predominantly overrun with superhero books in the mainstream. So, while you can try and get funding to publish a comic you’ve made (and some people do), it’s unlikely, as a much greater financial risk, that they’re going to get funded. Unless you’re someone like Neil Gaiman and then you can kind of make what you like.  A comic is an incredibly large feat to undergo, it is a lot of work and there is no guarantee that once you’ve finished it that anyone will even give it the time of day or will even like it.

As a result, artists turn to webcomics in order to provide a cheap medium for people who are already having to pay the bills somehow, at college, or just with a passion to create a chance to pursue their dream of telling their own stories through a visual medium. Then, if that becomes successful the chances of someone putting funding into the webcomic becomes much larger as there is already an established fan base. They also, much like the strips, much better suited to gags, giving you a short and sweet place to tell your joke. In a comic book, you cannot shift between a narrative and then gags, but I’ve often found that webcomics can afford to do both. They may have multiple characters, some that are story driven while every so often having one comic be a specific character whom they just have a short gag about.

Peanuts

Peanuts has played an interesting role in my life, not a particularly large one, it was mostly confined to coffee side tables for light reading and I think a lot of it went over my head. I think at that age, I was looking more for the cheap gag than really trying to understand what it was the comic was really trying to say. I find myself fascinated with just a little research about how much darker some of the content seems. Lucy and Schroeder, for example - her pestering while he sits at the piano consumed by his work draws from his own relationship with his first wife and their damaged relationship. I thought it interesting that Steve Martino, director of the new movie from Blue Sky said that from what he’d heard that Snoopy was the character that Schulz always wanted to be and Charlie Brown was the person that he really was.. Suddenly, Charlie takes on a whole different meaning. From an awkward cartoon boy to an adult who isn’t happy with himself, wishing he were the confident and funny snoopy. Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, said that it was a ‘model of artistic depth and integrity that left a deep impression’ on him. To me, this is what makes Peanuts such an impressive comic, that it is drawn from something so genuine and has someone’s entire being poured into it. Left on the page under a thinly veiled guise for the mass market to see if only it looked hard enough. That must be quite intense, to tap into and then to share your deepest insecurities and thoughts and feelings with such a wide audience. Anyway, I think it is no wonder that Peanuts is such a popular and loved comic, the simplicity lends itself to the internal thought provoking nature of the comic without distracting from it and is a wonderfully charming to look at it. Added to this, the themes it deals with hits something real and I think that any comic that does this well has the potential to do well. I also think it is the hardest part to do right. Neil Gaiman said something in his commencement speech to the University of the Arts in 2012 that really struck a note with me and that is the following. -  ‘The moment you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself - that is the moment you might be starting to get it right’.

The Arrival

There were multiple things I loved about The Arrival. I thought it was an effective and relevant use of the lack of dialogue considering that it was ultimately a story about a person that doesn’t have a voice. They come as a stranger to a place where they don’t know the language, and while he can communicate through basic symbolism he manages to make individual connections through basic human kindness.

I thought the symbolism was incredible. The sharp demonic shapes in his home town tells us so much about what that city is like without giving it any particular shape or time. It lets the reader imprint some of their own understanding and experience onto the story while also not showing us a particular place or time. The benefit of this lack of specificity makes the individual representative of the greater. He is not one immigrant in any one period, he, along with the others in the book serve to say that everyone has a story, that they are people and that even through the darkness and the hard choices there is a brightness to be found in life. The use of strange unknown shapes and fruit puts us in the shoes of the protagonist, the world he knows is recognizable to both him and to us but as he travels to a place the he doesn’t know we see a world that is alien.

The pages that showed a passing of time were (like the rest of the book) really well done. Not only visually beautiful but I thought they were a simple but incredibly effective way of portraying that. The amount of drawings that he did for some of these pages was not a necessity, we could have understood what was going on in less, but the impact of those pages was incredibly valuable to the experience of reading the comic.