Gabby's Blog

For this week I read "Batman The Killing Joke",  some Black Panther, and "Saga". I have read "The Killing Joke" before and I got to read it again in class, so I really got to understand it more. I have also read a little of the first "Saga" before but never got to really read it fully, so I was glad when I saw it on the list. The only thing I have seen of Black Panther is the movie, so it was cool to read where it came from originally. In class we watched some of the 60's Batman and I was super happy because I love Batman and this show is really funny to me. One of the best scenes to me is the part with where Batman is being attacked by a shark, and I'm glad I could watch it again today. This show is really funky because it takes Batman, which is a more so dark and mysterious character, and adds this whimsical and hilarious element to it. The catchphrases always make me laugh and although it's really different to what is normally

This week I got to look at and read a couple of different stories. Some of the stories were "Persepolis", "Fun Home", and "Ms. Marvel". "Persepolis" was a story I had heard of a lot in the past but I never got a chance to really read it. The style is simple. with black and white panels and characters that are slightly different from each other. The story takes place after the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and it talks about Marjane's life during this time. I like that because her parents were more modern, Marjane struggles with wearing a veil or not. I like Marjane because she becomes more rebellious and speaks her mind as time goes on, and this story is interesting because of the history it shows. "Fun Home" is a story I have somewhat read in the past and I don't know if I love this story, but I do like certain themes in it. I do like how it shows Alison Bechdel's journey of her life and how she figured out her sexuality a

This week I was able to read "Asterios Polyp" which right off the bat is a weird name for a graphic novel and "Every Girl is the End of the World for Me"  which is another title that caught my attention because I wanted to understand what that meant. "Asterios Polyp" was a title that I definitely wanted to read because the name sounded so weird to me. I was immediately intrigued the moment I started reading, one of the reasons being the sort of poetic style of writing. My favorite part was when it is explained how people get along and how the art style was different for how different people are. I like that some were similar to show how some people think the same and how it showed some worlds blending together. After learning the main characters name is Asterios Polyp, there seems to be a sort of underlying mystery in his life. When his home is burning up he says 'not again" which really made me want to figure out what that meant and what his li

This was probably one of my favorite topics to learn about because I already read manga and watch anime in my spare time. I think it was really cool learning more on how these Japanese comics started, and how it displays a different kind of culture. One of the manga I read was called "Dororo" and I found it to be really good. I originally clicked this link because Dororo has become an anime recently and I was able to watch the 1st episode, which I enjoyed a lot. So when reading the manga, they did a very good job so far in my opinion of getting the anime pretty close to the original manga. The style though of the manga and anime is very different but makes a lot of sense because of the time difference. I think "Dororo" the manga is very interesting with its style because to me it has more of a childish vibe to it, but has themes of death and killing people. It's kind of a weird mix in a way but I ended up really enjoying reading the first volume of it. In cl

Heavy Metal is definitely a topic of comics I have never dabbled in at all and I was a little hesitant to. I never really knew it existed but also it doesn't seem like something I would read purely based off the covers. But I did try giving "Ranxerox" a try. Ranxerox to me, just from the first page alone, had an interesting feel to it and the art style was definitely different.  It has this weird way of shading that I'm not really sure how to explain except that it kind of makes me think of airbrushing in a way. But like a mucky kind of airbrushing. There was more explicit scenes and cursing but I think it worked well with the style of it overall. I liked the grimy feel to it and I thought parts of it were interesting, but I don't know if I would read more. Another comic I read was by Moebius called "The Black Incal" volume 1. Off the bat the art style was completely opposite to Ranxerox. This comic by Moebius specifically was a lot brighter. It also

I see stereotypes all the time, in the books, movies, comics, shows, in real life, and I have always felt they were super negative. I did think it was interesting that they can play an important role is how we perceive people or things, and we have this mental image of how something  looks because of these stereotypes. When reading about "Toxic Masculinity" by Luke Humphris, I really liked the meaning it had even though it was very short. I knew already that men do have this feeling of having to be masculine but I didn't know to what extent. I felt sad reading how the author felt all his life that he was never able to cry and had to hold everything in. Seeing that his own brother took his life due to this feeling of having to be masculine made me sad yet angry because it's dumb that they have to feel this way, but also I'm not sure where this stereotype came from.  I think stereotyping isn't ultimately necessary to character design and representation because