The Last Hurrah

Well, this is it. The last class and the last post. I'm sure there's something profound that could be said about the end of the year, but right now my brain is too fried from paper writing to think profound thoughts. I've already had discussed Palestine in earlier posts, and I'm afraid there's not much to say about my final paper at the moment, so I thought I'd use this space to reflect on the course as a whole. I'm sure we'll do course evaluations in class, but those things are silly, and I always feel too pressured to finish them quickly to really say anything of substance on them, save for simple comments like "too much reading" or "too many papers". You know, that sort of thing.

I guess I was pretty excited coming into this course. I mean, it's an advanced level English course about comic books. You can't really ask for much more than that at college. Of course, I had only heard of one or two of the books on the reading list, but then again, I'm not a huge comics aficionado. I suppose I was expecting more stuff like Batman, Spider-Man... you know, comics comics (apparently Spider-Man is supposed to by hyphenated?). However, the course is called "The Graphic Novel" and not "Serialized Comics of Your Youth". That said, I didn't dislike the books we read. In fact, this was my only class this semester that I actually did pretty much all of the reading. I will say that my favorite graphic novels were the ones we read at the beginning of the semester, though. Alan Moore is one of the eminent names in comics, and Watchmen and V for Vendetta were fantastic. The book I connected the most with, though, was easily Blankets. Like many people in class, I finished it before we were supposed to because I didn't want to stop reading until I finished it. I wrote by far the most about Blankets--my later posts probably seem half-assed and disinterested by comparison. It was a beautiful story, and although I didn't like the "ending", it definitely proved to me that not every graphic novel has to be a superhero comic in order to be engaging.

That basically covers how I feel about the reading we did for this class. As to papers... Meh. They're papers; it's pretty hard to have "fun" papers. I probably came as close to enjoying writing my manifesto as I have to enjoying anything that I've written. It was rather refreshing to be able write outside of the typical academic prose that I've become so accustomed to. I got to write in first person perspective, address the reader directly (sometimes with naughty words), and pretty much break all of the rules and conventions of formal academic writing. Plus, it was an excuse to talk about two of my favorite webcomics. I don't know if my manifesto would actually convince anyone to read webcomics, but it actually got me more interested in them. So that's good. I think.

As for the final paper... I don't know. I've been having trouble with it, but that has more to do with me not being able to find the sources and research that I want than it does with the assignment itself being bogus. I will say that I found the amount of writing in this course to be very agreeable. I mean, with a course name like "Writing About Literature", you'd expect to be a writing a paper every other week, but we've only had two "papers" as such. I like the blog idea. It lets you say however little or much as you want without worrying about satisfying some arbitrary writing prompt. I bet I've done more written literary analysis in this class than any other without even realizing it because it's been in blog form rather than response papers.

Being anti-social and lazy, I'm not generally a fan of group work. In a way, having to arrange a time and date that everyone in the group can meet on to work on something probably helps me because otherwise I'd just wait until the last minute to do it if I was working by myself. The comic book wiki assignment was alright. I felt kind of silly looking up stuff about comic book characters on the internet and then posting information about them... on the internet. It was nice being able to do everything online, though. I was sick at the time that I was working on it, so I only actually met with my group once or twice. It worked out pretty well, I think. I liked the idea of making mini-comics. It gave us an appreciation of the work that goes into even the smallest of comics. Thankfully, there was someone in my group that had artistic talent and was willing to draw. I didn't like drawing when I had to do it in grade school, and I'm not about to start doing it again in college. I was impressed with the quality of some of the comics, though. Hell, ours turned out pretty well, all things considered. The one request I would make for future projects would be to always have a clearly written assignment sheet that people can refer to when starting out. People like direction and it can be a little nerve-wracking to be given little more than a general idea of what you're supposed to be doing.

The classroom environment for this course was really laid back--in a good way. I think we still got a lot of solid discussion and analysis done without the stuffiness and formality in some other classes. I'm sad to say that I've missed my fair share of classes towards the end of the semester. I feel pretty bad about that, and that's definitely something that I would change if I could do it all again--which I would, since I really liked this class overall. It's been a pretty crazy semester and I'm ready for it to be over, but I'm definitely glad that I took this class.

Crunch Time

One of the major drawbacks to taking three advanced level English courses (four before I dropped one of them) in the same semester is that you tend to get slammed on papers at inopportune times. Right now I'm sweating the ten page research paper that's due for my 461 class on Tuesday, and immediately following that, I'm supposed to have rough drafts of papers for this and another class ready on Wednesday. It's the most wonderful time of the year...

Whining aside, I actually read through most of Palestine. Maybe it was the chance to distract myself with something other than paper writing, but I found myself surprisingly drawn in by the book as I continued to read further than the initial chapter or two that I started last week. I'm fascinated by Sacco's method: he's a journalist basically trying to do a story on the hardships that the Palestinian refugees have faced since the formal establishment of the nation of Israel and the arrival and expansion of Jewish settlement in the area. Like any other good journalist, he talks to eye witnesses, conducts and records interviews with all kinds of people, and of course takes photographs. However, rather than turning this multimedia collection of information into a book, or an article, or a TV report, he creates a graphic novel. At some point the question must be asked: why a graphic novel? Part of it could be that any journalist could go to Israel and do the same thing he did, but he's the only one that's going to try to sell his story as a comic.

But surely the graphic novel medium adds something to the story itself. I guess illustrations add something that even photographs can't capture. Creating a graphic novel really allowed the author to both depict the lives of the Palestinian people in a graphic and moving way, and also to tell his own story. I have to wonder how exactly he did most of the illustration. I mean, did he sit there and sketch what he saw while he was there? He doesn't make it sound that way. Did he draw from memory, or did he take pictures as points of reference and reminders? On a certain level, I guess it really doesn't matter how he created the book: the fact remains that it is a composite of his experiences in Israel. Of course he could be taking some artistic liberties and illustrating certain things selectively or suggestively--that's part of the whole point of the book. He's trying to show the world through his eyes what it is like to live as a Palestinian. Like a few of the other graphic novels that we've read, there are times when the action takes a backseat to narration, and there are only a few images that decorate pages of text. These are usually longer stories narrated from the point of view of the interviewee. It seems somehow appropriate that the author doesn't try to over-illustrate other people's stories. The illustrative style in this work is just all over the place: in some sections (like those described above), it's almost like reading a journal with illustrations due to all of the narration; in other sections there are so many little images in sequence that it's practically like a flipbook.

Adventures in Paper Writing

This is why I hate writing research papers: you have to do research. It's not that I mind reading through stuff and learning more about the subject--that's the whole point of writing such a paper (and I'd rather read about something than write about it, anyway). What I do mind is when I constantly run into brick walls during the research phase. I get into a vicious cycle where I feel like I can't come up with a solid thesis without some good sources to back it up, but I can't find good sources that will help me come up with a solid thesis. I thought that I'd be better at this by now.

Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. For my final paper project, I want to write an essay that focuses on the unique history and evolution of the manga art form as opposed to western comics. Of course, I looked up "manga" in wikipedia for some general ideas to get started. Then I went to the UIUC library website and started looking for books and articles that deal with manga. Turns out we have lots of actual manga here, but apparently relatively few books that discuss manga. The few that do exist are of course checked out. But hey, I can rest secure knowing that if I ever feel the need to learn how to draw manga, the university has several books that can help me. I'm supposed to have something of substance to bring to class, but I'm still sitting here without even a definite thesis. Bleh.

In other news, I started Palestine, perhaps as a way of atoning for my utter lack of progress with my paper. It's very...political. I mean, Fun Home was maybe a little bit controversial on some issues like suicide and sexuality, and Berlin touches on issues of ethnicity and nationalism during a very turbulent time, but the tone of both works seemed sober and politically conscious, if not politically correct. The narrator in Berlin makes no such effort to hide his convictions and beliefs. He's writing the story for a specific reason--he wants to make people see what he sees. I guess if Berlin is a historical research paper, then Palestine is a persuasive essay. I'm not used to graphic novels having such a stated purpose. The book is unique in other ways, too, of course. For one, the art is...not pretty. That's not to say that it's bad or ineffective, but I suppose it's less aesthetically pleasing. To me, anyway. The author also does interesting things with the placement of the captions and narration. They're kind of all over the place. Sometimes they're kept in the margins, almost like footnotes for the pictures. Sometimes they practically obstruct the pictures and spill out all over the page. And it has the feeling of a journal, with the snapshot-like pictures and the scrawled handwriting commentary. It's less "clean".

Alright, I've broken down. To be perfectly frank, I've shared the contents of my humor folder that are both worksafe and unanimated. For some reason, the animated .gifs don't seem to work correctly when I post them, which is a shame because they're hilarious. To this end I've decided to just start pilfering and appropriating webcomics for my usage here. I'll probably use this space to showcase some more of my favorite webcomics for the rest of the year. This one is called Dinosaur Comics, and though it's not for the impatient, it has a wonderful intellectual charm to it.

So, how 'bout this weather, eh?

I'm afraid this post may not be up to my usual standard of quality. I finished Berlin and wrote about it in my last post, but I haven't started on Palestine, yet. At least I already have the book. At least, I'm pretty sure that I do...

I really haven't gotten any work done on my final paper yet. I wish I could say this was because I was far too busy working on stuff for other classes or because I was out of town for the weekend or something, but I'm afraid that's not the case. I've been out of it lately, but that's no excuse for shirking my academic responsibilities, so I'm going to have to get my crap straightened out. I want to be able to bring something substantive to class on Wednesday, so I guess that means that I've got my work cut out for me over the next two days. I'm sure that I'll figure something out by then. I always do.

Conspicuous Absences

I would just like to state for the record that I really do not like Mondays. That said, I've been missing too much class lately, and I feel pretty bad. This is not the time to be slipping in classes, so I need to buckle down and finish the semester on a good note.

So: Berlin. Upon finishing the book, I noticed a few things that I hadn't earlier; namely, that this is the first book in a trilogy, and that it has the subtitle "City of Stones". I didn't realize that there were very many historical fiction graphic novels, let alone series of them. The subtitle takes on an ironic significance at the end of the story, when rioters throwing stones at the police cause them to open fire on the crowd. I get the impression that I would probably get more out of the story if I was a little bit better versed in my history. I always remember Berlin being associated with its infamous wall, and its subsequent destruction reuniting Germany and ending the Cold War. I'm not used to even thinking of its existence before World War II. Of course it makes sense that the city--very much a melting pot on the edge of Western European civilization--would have seen violent conflict between political factions long before the war broke out.

I'm still a little bit lost by all of the different characters and plotlines, even after finishing the book. I have to wonder if the same characters persist throughout the entire series. That would probably help my understanding of the story. I guess the whole point is to show the incredible variety of people that live in the city. Kurt Severing makes a good point about Berlin being incredible as a city where you can see all different kinds of people "rub shoulders" every day. It kind of reminds me of America, in a way, which reminds me--there is some weird dialect stuff going on throughout the novel. I mean, most of these characters are ostensibly speaking German, but most of them also have a sort of accent. It just feels kind of strange to be reading dialectically unique English speech while still feeling like I've been drawn into the city of Berlin. Also, the songs rhyme in English, even though they're supposed to be singing in German. I don't know why, but I guess stuff like that bothers me. It must be the inconsistencies between seeing a bunch of German names and titles, but then seeing heavily accented English. Maybe I'm just subconsciously questioning the authenticity of a contemporary American author writing a story about Berlin before World War II.

Berlin

Yay for not having to go to the store to buy the book this time! This one has such a snazzy cover, too. Not that the other books that we've read didn't--I just think this one happens to be extra neat.

And I guess the actual inside of Berlin is pretty neat, too. At this point in the class, I'm noticing all of (well, at least more of) the artistic techniques that define great graphic novels: unique scene transitions, unorthodox panel sizes/shapes, panoramic full-page panels that depict one continuous scene, etc... And it just seems like the stories keep getting more and more complicated, too. Blankets was very straightforward and easy to follow from a narrative perspective. Stuck Rubber Baby was slightly more complicated because of its ensemble cast and occasional time-traveling. Fun Home, though not hard to follow, per se, made even more liberal use of non-sequential or chronological story telling. Each chapter was more of a self-contained unit--one isolated aspect of the author's story of her life. It got to the point where I had to question whether or not the whole thing formed a cohesive story, or rather just a loose collection of thoughts and after-the-fact reflections on incidents in her life delivered in a stream-of-consciousness fashion.

And that brings us up to Berlin. I may have said this before about an earlier work, but I really do not know what the hell is going on yet in this book, and I'm halfway done with it! There are so many characters and so many different intertwining plotlines that I can't keep track of it all. I can appreciate that the "messiness" of the narrative runs parallel to the themes of chaos and turmoil that are prevalent in the city at the time, but it sure doesn't make for an easy read. I suppose I still have a rather typical narrative bias--I want to see a main character, a conflict, some rising action, a climax, and a resolution that ties things up for the reader. I've really yet to learn my lesson that most of the graphic novels we've looked at thus far have defied at least some of those basic story telling conventions. In a sense, it's all still there in Berlin: the main character is the city itself, the conflict is comprised of all of the bickering factions within its walls that are vying for political advantage, and the rising action consists of all of the little individual episodes of aggression and intolerance of others' ideas that happen on a daily basis. We haven't seen a climax yet, but I'm going to put faith in the story that there is some larger point that all of these individual stories connect to.

A Modest Paper Proposal

Did you catch the title of the post? Pretty clever, eh? I bet nobody has ever thought to reference Jonathan Swift's infamous essay on the subject of baby eating in order to promote his own work. I'm so original.

Unfortunately, I may have missed a class or two, so I wasn't there when the final paper was discussed. I have the assignment sheet from the email, but it's rather...vague on details. In any case, I an initially tentatively planning to choose the historical research option. Yes, I know it seems dull compared to the other choices, but I figure, hey--I'm already going to be stuck in the library doing research for other English papers, so what's one more in the pile? Believe me, I'm not terribly excited at the prospect of writing another research paper, either, but at least I (sort of) know what I'm doing by now. I did have a friend offer to provide illustrations if I wanted to do something more graphic, but I'd rather not trouble her, as this is my project and all. I was thinking that maybe I could write my paper about the Japanese tradition of manga. Back at the beginning of the semester, some of the chapters from McCloud made cursory mention of manga and its influence on the development of western comics, as well, but he devotes very little space to what could easily be a book unto itself. In fact, I'm sure that many such books exist, and I intend to find them and write a paper using the information I obtain from them. What a novel idea! I'm supposed to have the paper proposal ready for today, but I'm not sure if that means I'm supposed to bring anything actually written to class. At any rate, I've got an idea, and that's a start.