Promethea

1.Are there any prominent symbols? It so what are they and how are they used?
2. Discuss elements of the story you were able to connect with.
3.What changes would you make to adapt this story into another medium? What medium would you use? What changes would you make?

While reading Promethea a few prominent symbols occurred. One was the golden sun shield that appeared on most pages when Promethea was around in ancient times, which then fast forwards to modern times the sun becomes less detailed as if trying to simplify itself for the weaker minded modern world.

The main character depicts an average college student wanting to get a paper done for class, which by far is the most normal thing anyone can relate too. The comic its self is a heroine type story, rather then a male stereotype, which grabs the female audiences attention even more so then other comics. The way the language is written for the comic is interpreted easily into modern times, theres nothing crazy or obscure in the way the characters speak to each other making it very easy to lose one's self in the comic. Basing a story off of real world mysteries is a very easy way to grab attention, and the fact that the story starts with Egyptian era aesthetics and builds a myth off of it, has already won my attention.

If the comic were turned into film, I would either dive right into the beginning in rush to build the audiences anticipation or give then more history of why this horrible death had to happen. For the viewers sake I'd have to simplify the amount of camera shots so the viewer doesn't have a seizure while watching. And although the sun is prominent on every page of the comic, the easiest way to keep it in the picture is to sneak the images onto buildings tattoos or other areas that it could be drawn or carved into. The modern age where the story begins would have to be modified to what our current designs are for the futurisic world. Alien based ships for police is a bit concerning. And some of the darker scenes i would use a heavier low light to really give depth and use the contrast to build on the confusion and tension in the moment. The images are full of exciting camera angles that most the work is done for the director.

week 9

This week I read Hugo Pratt's Corto Maltese. Although the comic was in Italian, and most of time while trying to decipher the material, I found myself just trying to figure out each illustrated panel rather than continue attempting to read the text. The illustrations were clear and highly detailed like a animators sketchbook. There was a definite era time difference, From the way the people held themselves to the the ships using large sails to travel, along with the type of clothing the characters were wearing. I had to reread the comic several times just because the imagery suggests a faster pace in movements when a fight begins to brew. Altogether the comic was enjoyable to read in a sense. Stories that have a historical semi-plot can usually grab a readers attention faster just because of the years of history we take while attending grade school. The imagination can develop the pacing faster and what the rest of the environment may look like just based on few artifacts in the comic.

week 7

Maus was a very easy read in itself, but emotionally difficult. The story starts out in a sweet manner of son visiting his father and his new wife, but asks his father to tell him the story of the war with the nazis. You follow his story from the moment he meets his wife into marriage and having their first child, all the normal everyday life stuff. But when he starts to tell the story of how he became a prisoner of war, I felt myself getting anxious knowing death and torture would soon enter the storyline. He stayed strong while living in the cold tents, until he was able to be relocated to a place that had warm beds and food to eat as long as he worked each day. He was able to sneak upon a train and convince a polish officer to hide him from the germans, using their disgust of germans to his advantage. When he's finally reunited with his family, as is well for a moment. Soon he finds himself working on the black-market for whatever he can find to help bring in food for the entire family. Then the camps start, and the grandparents are being taken away, the family starts to be split up. The family had been hiding where they could in bunkers or attics with secret compartments where the dogs couldn't find them. Even when people had protected them in their homes, the germans would raid it and he and his family would have to leave to find another safe place. But as things became worse he set a plan to escape to Hungary, but his wife nervous as ever, felt they didn't need to leave because they had a safe house. And eventually the police figured out he was hiding his gold watch in the bottom of shoe polish and arrested him, sending him to a camp. The second volume continued on with the son going to visit his father again, but this time in the summer home. The father assumed his son and girlfriend would stay for the entire summer. And then the father continues his story of the camps, how at first he had complained the shoes were too big, and he got hit. But he was thankful that the showers were not gas showers, it was another day to try and live. He began to lose hope in life until a priest had explained the numbers of his arm each a had meaning, bringing life back into him. One of the officers was interested in learning english and kept him to the side while feeding him a feast of food. And through his connections he was able to help friends with getting items such as belts or shoes. During his time in the camps he did various other jobs that benefitted both hims and his wife, when the germans needed something fixed or done. But eventually he lost his jobs, and had to begin help with building the gas chambers. As the war came to the end the people from the camps were taken to woods or other random places and let nature take its toll, or even some soldiers would shoot them on the spot.
The comic is very fluid in its design and storytelling, but on a more personal level it was difficult. I have heard too many personal stories from my own family members when they're parents and grandparents were in the camps and trying to fend for their lives. But the story does give you a deep sense of sadness by the way the story cuts back and forth to the son and father discussing little things going on in the daily life and how the father would rather not tell something so sad for a book, but does it anyway for his son.

week 6

Robert Crumb, The book of Mr. Natural is interesting in the way they design the characters so simply, but then give the backgrounds and or environments more detail. But also in this comic, they illustrate the black people very crudely. The stories are very quick to read and understand but have a almost messy disorganized feel to them especially in the 3rd comic with the man on the street meditating while Mr. Natural gives away his money and he becomes more agitated.  The messy-ness that i feel could be just the amount of black in certain panels. Reading further the comics became explicit and downright revolting, the drawing of the genitalia was bad enough but for the story to continue and him getting off on a baby looking person was the point where I had to stop.

week 5

Reading The spirit #2 issue, I immediately realized the era in which it was wrote. The design for the assistant was extremely racist. The small uneducated blackman was depicted almost as a monkey like creature. The story begins with a masked man know as The Spirit, crippled walking down the sidewalk when a man throws his entire body into hims and knocks the spirit down. Realizing the severity of the injures the man phones one of the mobsters up to let them know its the time to attack since he's so weak. The spirits sidekick runs off to the detective to tell him whats become of Spirit. They both set off to wait for the mobsters at one of the known locations. The spirit meanwhile was picked up off the street and thrown into the back of the car of the mobsters. where they twist his arm in pain. They bring him back to one of the other locations where the mobsters keep their loot. Once the Spirit is in the building he throws a punch to one of the mobsters. He had fooled them into thinking he was injured so they could lead him to their hiding place. He knocks out the mobsters and ties them up and drives them to the detective to be thrown in jail. Besides the racial depiction of the characters, the story is very fluid and very easy to read. The story takes an unexpected turn to save the day.

week 4

Unable to find Art Spiegelman's Jack Cole and Plastic Man  comic without purchasing something online, I opted out and read The adventure of TINTIN adventures on the moon. Tintin  and the group wake up on the rocket mid space. They had fell asleep during takeoff and as ground control tries to call on them, Snowy the dog hears and the voice and wakes Tintin. Two detectives had stuck aboard the ship and thought they were being clever only to discover that the ship had already taken off before they could get off. The captain upset with the two knuckleheads yells at them for coming aboard the ship since they had only contained enough oxygen for four people and now theres six. The captain sends them off only to drink whiskey in the cabin with snowy.  The detectives seem to be the catalysts for things going wrong on the ship as the story continues. The captain is so drum he decides to climb out of the ship and Tintin must go outside and retrieve him. Towards the end they land of the moon and explore it and find the bad guys and capture them. The comic has a lot of text to read, which draws out the story to be longer for the viewers,but some of the panels aren't different enough to really show a movement thats important, leaving very little to the imagination to bring the story to life even more.

The Haunt of Fear, the first comic tells the story of the werewolf who fell in love with a vampire. The werewolf who was once a man had been traveling through the woods only to fall and be scratched by wolves bane and by the next full moon he changed. When he was feeding on his victim, a beautiful  woman came around and started to drink the blood of the victim. Instead of fighting, they shared their first kill and fell in love. Eventually the towns people found them, thinking they had killed the two brought them to the devils graveyard where they lived in the moseleum  where they married with the dead around them and they gave birth to a baby. Who turned out to be the witch who tells the story.

week 3: Little Nemo

I read a majority of Little Nemo in Slumberland, not just the Palace of Ice. In the beginning I found myself reading word for word and then scanning over the page again to look at the images. After a while I began to just look at the images and quickly scan the word bubbles. The imagery flowed so well that my mind was able to create its own dialogue to match the imagery based on the past pages. Nemo would go to bed and be asked to hurry to the Palace because the princess was crying and needed to see him, only to get scared by something and get into some trouble ultimately calling to his parents where he'd wake up to himself fallen out of bed and one of his parents/grandparents scolding him for eating something before bed that resulted in the dream.