scott schoenike's blog

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...