scott schoenike's blog

 1. my reaction to the killing joke is not really anything too extreme. However I'm not going to view this as any fault of the comic itself, this more comes from the fact that these concepts and this story has been told through so many different means over the years that it's effect on modern audiences just won't be that strong. we've seen all this before, through people referencing it. 2. I'm a little confused about what this question is asking. I didn't feel really that connected with the ideas. The characters were entertaining I guess, but again this story just can't wow me any more. These ideas of breaking someone and making them a villain and the differences between good guys and bad guys started with the killing joke, however they are much better explored in the dark knight, mostly because unlike the killing joke, that movie shows how one bad day was about to break Harvey Dent. 3. any changes i would make would be to essentially push it more. I found i

 It is impossible to cover the work and wonders female comic artists have done in one simple lesson, however I do see the sad necessity in needing to dedicate and focus on the topic of female artists because of how far into the background they have been pushed. with that out of the way, i read "Pretty ink." I feel as though this is a little harder to analyze because it is more of a collection of comics and a history book with art in it as opposed to a comic itself, but I would still talk to talk about the stuff I read and what I learned about. i knew a bit about Rose O'Neil before this, but i never realized the uphill batter she had to face to become the artist that she would become, and not only that but how screwed she was once she became that. i also never realized how earlier she was in the history of the comics, coming around at about the same time as the yellow kid. while it wasn't very much, she was still there at the start which is pretty impressive. The creat

This week i read "fun home" it was an extremely powerful story with some very moving story telling elements in it. The story is simply an autobiography of Alison Bechde's childhood and early young adult life. She talks a lot about her life in regards to her father, mother, her sexuality, and her personality and how they all mesh and tangle with one another. one element I found interesting was how many things seemed very narratively appropriate in her life. though that probably has to do with the fact that the reason people do these things in narratives is because that's how they shape out in real life. for example; how the father was so focused on image. He was much more concerned about the look of their house and the furniture within more than the emotional state of the people inside. and how in many cases he would sacrifice their well being to ensure the image of stability was maintained. This paradoxical nature is common in people who are full of self loathing and

There is so much to talk about relating to manga, and in some ways it can be a challenge for us, cultural Americans, to fully understand. Japan, much like the US, has many many many many problems in its borders and faced by its people. As a result, much of their media focuses on discussing and critiquing problems and elements of the culture they must live in, not different at all how American media acts, or realistically any media from any culture really. Japan, like the US also has a very patchy and terrible past, that many inside their respected countries feel their leaders are trying to downplay or cover up. As a result, there are a lot of similarities in the social commentaries of media produced in both places. There is something so interesting in seeing a media created in a place which has different cultural inspirations, different religious inspirations, different legends, history, social contracts, and so much more. And yet much of what is at the core of these stories can connec

 For this reading I read the works by Moebious. I actually knew about this artist before reading, however I was only familiar with his impressive fine art and not so much the comics he apparently created. His works are very colorful, trippy yet tangible in their style. let me explain; they are hyper expressive worlds which make some sense once you get immersed in them and start to read them, however still keep a sense of abstract strangeness. it is not abstract enough to where you cannot identify that a person is a person or building a building, but the worlds are so strange in how they operate and look that they are hyper expressive. Moebious in his series offers us a strange look into the future, drawing from 80's and 70's sci fi. The look he gives us is one which is kinda difficult to describe. i also thought of it as Distant future stories, where the narrative is so far in the future it is completely out of touch with anything we are used to today, both in the way the world

 one of the first things I noticed about the comic march is the artwork. simply put: it is extremely good. The gestures are clear and easy to read, the facial expressions relay every little bit of emotion, the camera angles are dynamic and every panel aids in the visual storytelling. Even the more comic-y elements are amazing: the way that panels are used to express space and time is extremely successful, not to mention the clever things they do with the word bubbles. They change the shapes and fonts we see in the word bubbles to express a certain voice of the person talking, making it clear how a person is delivering a certain line to make the impact of it hit harder. The style is also extremely successful too: its very very real, why still being expressive enough to have personality, but not so much that you cannot take the matters seriously; which you could imagine is extremely important for this kind of story. I talked about this in the last entry and I am starting to think it is j