Spiney's Comics

For this week, I read  Persepolis by  Marjane Satrapi The story is set in 1980, Iran. She writes about growing up during a time of religious turmoil and social reform. She grew up thinking she was the next prophet, here to rescue humanity. She desired fairness and justice. On one hand she is very religious, on the other hand her parents are progressive and actively participated in the protests. She becomes close to her Uncle as he teacher her a lot about the world. However, he was believed to by a spy by the Iranian government and was executed. This affects Marjane a lot as a child. She goes through hardships and is separated from her loved ones. The story does well to capture the life of a child growing up in social unrest. It captures the conflict she feels because she wants the best for her country but and the same time disagrees with how her people are being negatively affected. The style it is drawn in is simplistic and graphic, in almost a child-like manner. It only has black and

This week, I read March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell. It is a memoir of the congressman John Lewis as he recounts his upbringing up until the day of inauguration of President Obama. John had a strict upbringing. And it was clear that he was an oddball unlike the rest of his family. He valued education and even went against his father's demands to go to school instead of staying at home to help with the farm. He also was a preacher. He preached to his chickens ever since he was young, and held funerals for them when they died. He becomes one of the youngest preachers and goes to meet Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He participates in the lunch counter non-violent sit ins to desegregate America. And after much tension, on May 10, 1960 six Nashville restaurants served food to black people. This was a great triumph for desegregation. His story proves how difficult freedom can be, and how resistant people can be to change when they hold themselves superior to others. Racism i

Maus is a graphic novel by Art Speigelman. It depicts his father's experiences during the Holocaust as a Jew. The story is written in an interview style, where it interlaces the dialogues with his father in the present and his father's accounts of the war. This type of writing gives the narrative a second layer. When the story gets too dark, we get a moment of relief from the bleakness and get an insight on the characters peaceful lives now completely different from the horrors of the holocaust. It also suspends us mid action and makes us want to know what happens next. Although moments like this become less as less frequent as the story goes on, it becomes more of a continuous narrative with his father as the main character. Maus gives us a new lens to understand the Holocaust through the medium of the graphic novel, using unique visuals and storytelling techniques. The interesting element of Maus is how it uses animals in the place of human characters as a metaphor. He port

Underground comics was a movement between the 1960's and 70's that diverged from mainstream comic books. These comic strips often contained offensive, sexual, and violent content. Reading the comic Zap, I find that   a lot of the humor is satirical and quite dry. Oftentimes the punchline did not hit for me. It could be that times have changed and what people found humorous back then is not what we find humorous today. There are stories that seem to be offensive solely for the sake of being offensive. I also found that many stories did not feel very linear and did not have a clear beginning, middle and end. The stories were mostly text heavy, and did not have a clear focus. Underground comics did allow for comic artists to not be censored, and publish stories not accepted in the public eye. The comic Girl Fight, for example was an early feminist comic that centered around strong female characters. There is still sex and nudity in the comic, but it portrayed women as being in con