Antonio's lit and media of comics blog

Assessment Blog: I’ve read the Killing joke before, so, unfortunately, I cannot have a genuine reaction of shock or excitement. I will say that the text holds up really well, and in fact, I feel like in a way, it got better the second time I read it. My overarching reaction was just how well structured the story was, because it cuts so cleanly between the past and the present Joker due to parallelisms of his life of crime. To me, it was also interesting how we all know Joker as this iconic villain, but yet we can not help but feel sorry for him because we know what he has been through. I’m not justifying him doing all the shitty things he has done, but it does bring some enlightenment to his entire situation. Alan Moore does a brilliant job of depicting the iconic villain in a way that makes them more human, so we as readers can identify with. It is kind of weird to say, but I was able to connect with the Joker, and really empathize with how he felt in his earlier life. The idea o

Week 13:  So, this week I had the privilege of reading Arkham Asylum and First off, great read. I could talk about all the aspects that I think make this reading so objectively successful. But, honestly, I'm going to start with the common trend of my blog posts and stick with panel orientation and page layout. It’s not because I’m incapable of any other type of analysis. But, because every week I’ve been trying to choose stories that specifically can only be told by the paper medium in order to reinforce my support for the medium. Anyways, Arkham Asylum once again is a piece that is, in my opinion, only optimally successful if it is absorbed in a paper medium. So, the panel orientation is confusing as fuck, however, they are purposefully like that. From my interpretation, the reading attempts to simulate you going mad and crazy. You are supposed to experience it as if you were going through the asylum going mad and crazy. The orientation of the panels and the dark confusing pain

Week 12:  T his week I read My Favorite Things is Monsters, and I liked it a lot. Immediately, I noticed the interesting way it was drawn. It was drawn on a background that looks like a spiral notebook, and the drawings appeared to have been done in a ballpoint pen. In my opinion, these were really strong stylistic choices because it makes the reading come off as if it were someone’s journal. Because it felt like we were reading someone's journal, it creates this false sense of reality where I felt like I was snooping on juicy secrets, which made it easier to be immersed in the reading. This is a prime example where there is no other medium that can execute this piece to this level. For example, if this were a film, we wouldn’t get that feeling of us reading someone else's personal secrets. We would probably be watching a flashback of those moments, so again, very effective use of the medium. The other thing I noticed, which was very interesting, was the fact that the h

Week  11: So, I read Why I Hate Saturn this week because I’ve never been to Saturn and I wanted to know what’s to hate. Sadly, It was not about Saturn. However, It immediately snagged my attention because of its choice of design. The first thing you should know is that it is beautiful. The presentation of it is really unique, and to me, it kinda looks like the whole comic is on a fancy french menu because it’s pink and has a very intricate border. So, the overall presentation was very appealing and easy to read. What was really cool was the way the text was designed outside the frame. I really like this aspect because the drawings are very beautiful, and are drawn in a bold sharpie style that reminds me of storyboards. Because of this stylistic choice, the classic comic speech bubbles did not get in the way of the beautiful drawings. The order of the text was also very well designed, and the dialogue was always very neat and concise, which reinforced the design by making it look mo

Week 10:  This week, I had the chance to read Alita Battle Angel. Before, I had only known Alita from the CG movie that came out in 2019, which I wasn't a huge fan of because of the uncanny valley of huge anime eyes on realistic people. So, it was really interesting for me to give it another chance. Thankfully, I loved it a lot. I feel like the art style really compliments the dystopian world and adds to the whole intense tone of the reading. I think it is really awesome how they use the hatch shading to elevate the intensity and dynamics of the drawing. I feel like it helps to indicate tone and movement. I’ve seen it prevalent in a lot of manga, and it's a stylistic choice I really admire.  I talk about it almost every week, but an awesome thing I noticed was the choice of panel shape they used in certain pages. Yukito Kishiro decided to make some of the panels slant into each other, and it made the frames really flow into each other, which helped the story. I used to b

Week 9: This week I had the chance to read Jodorowsky Moebius’, What is a Above. It hooked me right away because of its graphic style, and its bold and robust sense of color. In many classic comics and manga, there is heavy use of cross-hatch shading to emphasize tense or dynamic moments. However, in What is Above, I noticed that Jodorowsky Moebius uses very graphic line work in order to highlight these same moments. The graphic line work is then reinforced by flat color, which makes the graphic linework really pop. Visually, its strongest quality is each panel's sense of color theory. There's a strong use of complementary and analogous colors throughout the comic, which makes it very visually appealing. In terms of the story, I liked it a lot. For any Guardians of the Galaxy fans, I feel like this reading is perfect for them. The whole world-building is a bit random and outlandish, however, it is not one that pulls me out of the story. In fact, it is quite the oppos