Wrapping Things Up

Well, our mini-comic is due to be presented on Monday, and we should be done...I think. The rough copy was finished with dialog as of our last meeting, so that's good. Everyone seemed fairly pleased with how things turned out as far as the story goes. Hopefully it makes sense and we won't have to explain every panel to the class.

Fun House represents somewhat of a departure from the comics we've read up to this point. The art definitely seems like the kind you'd expect to see in the newspaper funnies. On the other hand, the writing takes on a stronger role here, as in Watchmen. Writing separates literally every panel in the book. The dialog is not as stressed because the narrator really carries the story. The writing and the art seem particularly separate; I think you could just take all of the narration in between panels and turn it into a short story on its own. The pictures provide additional details and sometimes some dark humor, but the words are what drive the story forward.

Speaking of words and writing, I was a bit taken aback by the more intensely literary tone of the story. A great deal of the story seems devoted to finding parallels between the narrator's father and other characters and authors from past works of literature. The author is clearly very well read and seems to want to make sure that the reader is aware of this fact. As an English Major reading this, I can appreciate at least most of the references and allusions, but I have to wonder if they wouldn't turn off some readers. Maybe it's just not meant for a broad readership or something. I like the story so far, though.

A Not-So-Mini-Comic

Allow me to preface this post by saying that I am in better spirits than I was when I last wrote. The reasons are several: I've gotten more caught up on schoolwork in the last few days than I thought I would; I stopped listening to emo music; I realized that I'm actually ahead in the reading for this class; and most importantly, my group's mini-comic isn't due until Monday. Yay!

On that subject, my mini-comic group met after class today. Nichol and I had roughed out most of the story elements in class before break, but we basically hadn't even started on the art or paneling stage. After spending a few hours just filling out the story and sketching the panels out, we decided to call it a day and reconvene to hopefully finish things up on Thursday. In theory, a little ten page comic doesn't sound like too much work, especially if you're not going to agonize over the art. However, there is a deceptively large amount of time and effort that goes into even the smallest of comics. Simply figuring out the story was a task unto itself. In such a project, there is a great deal of evolution and change that occurs to the story, even as the comic itself nears completion. There's always some other element that you could introduce, something that you want to explain better, or go into greater detail on. But when working in such a limited space, you just have to accept that you're not crafting a masterpiece.

For our comic, we made a conscious effort to include some more complicated forms of paneling. I'd say a good half of our comic eschews the traditional page of four to six rectangles arranged in neat order. Instead, we have a few cases where the entire page (or sometimes two) is devoted to a single, continuous scene. Interestingly, though, since our comic takes place in a mall, we realized that the multistory, side-by-side stores almost resemble the panels of a comic. This lends the effect of creating a page that almost looks like it's divided up into normal panels, but upon closer inspection, one can see that they are the individual stores. Anyway, I think it's pretty neat.

Back to Reality

So I arrived at the fair U of I feeling pretty good last night. I had a fairly fulfilling break: I slept better than I do at school, I ate better than I do at school, and I got to see people that I don't normally get to see at school. I also did not do a lick of schoolwork (Hey, midterms were hard and I earned a break, right?). Turns out that may create problems in the very immediate future.

I look over my syllabuses and realize, "Wow, I have crap due in all my classes the week I get back from break." A paper here, some reading there, and--oh, a group project for this class that's due this Wednesday. Not cool. Nobody met about the mini-comic before break because, well...midterms are a bitch and people had enough on their plates as it was without trying to worry about a project due in the seemingly distant future. Of course, nobody is going to work on the thing over spring break--not that we could. People are literally scattered all over the country, making the creation of a comic a wee bit difficult. So now we're looking at a Wednesday due date, giving us Monday and Tuesday to, you know...actually make the comic. To make matters worse, I'm pretty much booked solid Monday. At this point, I'm basically praying for the due date to get pushed back a week or so. Something tells me that other groups are in a similar boat, and the only other major assignment we have left is the final paper, so I'm hoping an extension on this one isn't out of the question.

I should be discussing this week's reading, but I'm still out of gear for academic discussion. I'm basically operating in whiny rant mode, if you couldn't tell by now. I might expand on this post later with some actually relevant material and my typical humorous image, but right now I'm too busy feeling salty and embittered over the end of spring break.

So that's what it means...

The mystery of the title is revealed. And...I'm a little bit surprised/disappointed, I guess. I wasn't exactly expecting some deep secret of the universe to be unraveled, but it just seemed like a throwaway line to me.

Other than that, I found the latter half of the book to be about as enjoyable as the first. The story follows a nice arc, moving from personal recollection, to a wider view of the social problems of the time, and then back to a more individual level. The overall pacing was good, but towards the end I began to get frustrated with the main character's slowness to accept his homosexuality. I know that the whole point was he felt confused and unsure of his sexuality, but it was painful to see him shun his gay friends when they had been supportive and understanding to him. I have to question how much Toland actually changes or matures over the course of the story. For a main character, he seems a little flat, which is probably because he is narrating a story that encompasses far more than his own personal tale.

My complaints about the end of Stuck Rubber Baby are similar to those I had about Blankets. In short, I felt that there was an insufficient amount of closure for many of the characters. In both cases, the story ends with the last chapter flashing ahead to the present, or at least a later time in the main character's life, but without filling in all the details of what happened to the other characters. In Blankets, we never hear about Raina or her family ever again after Craig breaks up with her. I suppose this is more understandable because the story is at least somewhat autobiographical. You don't always get closure in real life. However, in Stuck Rubber Baby, we get very selective information as to the fates of the characters at the end of the novel. We don't know what happens to Riley and Mavis after Toland leaves the Wheelery, we get a throwaway line about Melanie when Toland meets Orley years later, and Ginger and Toland don't stay in touch after she leaves for New York. Hell, we never even find out who the guy that the narrator is ostensibly living with is! Nor why he has that creepy beard. The only characters that really seem to get closure are the ones who die, like Sammy. Even then, we never get the chance to find out whether his family was going to do anything for him.

But I did like the book. For the most part.

Stuck Rubber Baby

I actually bought this book ahead of time so I didn't have to go rooting around bookstores looking for it today. Yay! I think the only book I don't have yet is Palestine, but we're reading that last, so I should easily be able to get my hands on it by the time we get to it. Hopefully.

I found Stuck Rubber Baby a bit easier to get into than was Portraits from Life. I guess that confirms my pronounced preference for a true "graphic novel"--a long single narrative told in a fashion reminiscent of that which you would expect to find in a novel. I was reading the comments printed on the back of the book, and I noticed that one compared Cruse's work to that of Faulkner. After reading the first eleven chapters, I'm inclined to agree. There are a few parallels with Faulkner's work: the southern setting, the focus on a relatively small and isolated community, and the stream-of-consciousness style of the narration. The chronological skipping around was slightly disorienting at first until the story sort of "settled down" into a more or less ordered narrative. However, it is still jarring when there are scenes of the protagonist "narrating" his story alongside a guy who is ostensibly his partner. I think it's the beard more than anything, really. Every time I see it, it reminds me how long it's been since I shaved and how I really should do that before going out in public again. With all luck, I'll manage to do so before class in the morning.

As far as the art goes, I guess I'd place it somewhere between Collier and Thompson. There is a little more playing around with the panels and scenes than there was in Portraits from Life, but Blankets definitely still trumps it in terms of creative use of the space both within and outside of the panels. That said, I felt the art doing a good deal of work in helping me to get into the story. And I think the illustrations are helpful in reorienting the reader when the narrative jumps around in the timeline. I still like Blankets better, though. That's probably because I felt I could personally relate to a great deal of its story, and the notion that it was sort of a pseudo-autobiography made me want to keep reading to find out what happened to Craig, even if I was kind of surprised and disappointed by the ending. It's odd that the biographical angle worked for me in Blankets, but not in Portraits from Life. I came into Stuck Rubber Baby expecting another true-to-life story, but I have to keep reminding myself that not every graphic novel is the author's autobiography.

Portraits from Life

As promised, I have since my last post procured a copy of Portraits from Life. It's amazing what you can find when you go to a bookstore during normal business hours.

To be honest, on the whole I'm kind of indifferent about this book. I mean, Collier uses the comic form to pretty effectively deliver several different vignettes, but I guess I've come to expect a long, unified narrative after Blankets, Watchmen, and V for Vendetta. In that sense, this collection reads more like a "comic", I suppose, but I find myself wondering what the draw is here. Blankets may not have had the political significance of Moore's works, but you could see its value as a sort of graphically enhanced autobiography. Portraits offers biographical stories, but the art here does not seem to enhance the stories in the same way that it did in Blankets.

I don't know--maybe I'm missing something here. The panels are very traditional rectangular affairs and offer little in the way of variety. The illustrations seem less stylistic and more realistic in many cases. I suppose this makes sense given the biographical nature of the work, but I find myself wondering just how much is added by the art. Furthermore, I question the overarching purpose and significance of this work. I guess it's supposed to be a compilation of several interesting slices of life represented through a unique medium, but without the fictional storytelling elements present in the other comics we've read thus far, I didn't feel as motivated to keep reading. Like I said, maybe I'm just missing the point, but this has been my least favorite book thus far in this class. I realize I'm coming off as being awfully critical here, but I'm open to debate and my opinion might change after more class discussion.

Excuses, excuses...

I want to get this out of the way right away: I don't have Portraits from Life at the moment. I was planning on buying it this weekend, but...well, it didn't quite work out. Friday was Unofficial, so suffice it to say that not a whole lot got done. Saturday was my 21st birthday, so again, not much productivity there. Today, I woke up in the middle of the afternoon, and by the time I was showered, dressed, and decent, TPS and the Union Bookstores were closed. Follett's was open, but they didn't have what I needed. Hopefully I'll be able to find it at the other bookstores tomorrow, otherwise I'll probably have to order it online or something. I'll work it out somehow.

Anyway, that means this post is now about the mini-comic. At first, I had no idea what I would want to do. However, as I was sitting in class, listening to the description of the assignment, I remembered a conversation that my friend and I had last semester. We had been talking about how his dad and his dad's dad had both gone to U of I before him, and there was a sort of legacy expected of him. Both men had left their mark at the University, and the same would be expected of him. In particular, his dad told him a story about him and his friends venturing into the underground steam tunnels. We both thought that was a really cool idea since there are openings to the steam tunnels everywhere and you always wonder what's down there.

So we got to thinking: what if there's something down there. Some sort of Cthulu creature that has been lurking down there since the school's founding. Maybe generations of my friend's family line have sworn a blood oath to slay the creature and that's actually why they've always gone here for college. I don't know. We were bored and we have overactive liberal arts major imaginations. But I think it might make a decent enough hook for a mini-comic.