Mr. Natural

Simple and a little crude humor (as warned). I can appreciate the humor of what I read, minus how people of color were drawn. The main comic I read was of Mr. Natural bothering Shuman the Human as he practiced meditating on the side of the road. There isn’t any context as to if Shuman was looking for handouts or if he has a job, so I don’t know if Mr. Natural was bothering him because he was unjustly asking for handouts or if that’s just because that’s who Mr. Natural is. The first would be morally funny, the second would just be funny. Mr. Natural is incredibly annoying, until the point that Shuman becomes the crazy one and gets put away for it. And to boot, when released, Mr. Natural asks if he’s doing better and how his stay in the nuthouse was even though he is responsible for it. I’m not sure if Mr. Natural is supposed to be that incredibly annoying, stubborn, has-no-boundaries character that people still for some reason but that’s kind of the vibe I got from this one.

As an aside, I looked at all the little drawings submitted for the draw Mr. Natural section in the PDF and I really enjoyed looking at all the different styles and all the young kids who drew them. Reminded me of getting into drawing comic strips when I was a kid, I created a character named Mr. Fuzzy.

A Contract With God

The art style of this was very beautiful, each line expressing the underlying sadness of the story told. What I relate to personally from this story is how no matter what promises you make, what good you do in life, nothing is promised back to you. Not to think of it in a negative way, because that isn’t to say that good things won’t come your way, but it is to say that it does the mind no good to do positive things in the hope that they will be returned to you. Do good things in the hope that they will help those that you do it for. But also, don’t forget about yourself. If you want something, you have to work for it too. And along the way, bad things will happen, at possibly no deserving cost of your own. A Contract With God focuses on the religious aspect of the same situation, promise to God that you will do all of the good things in life, live selflessly, and ignore your own wants and desires. In return, God will make sure you keep the things you love in life, that no harm will come to you. Nowhere does anything say this. As a comparison, I took a big risk coming to Ringling; I spent the money, I owe the loans. I may want a job out of this education and experience, but I have no idea where life is going to take me. Maybe I don’t get a job for a six months, a year, maybe I change career paths. Nothing was promised to me except the education I paid for.

Tintin in Tibet

The language in Tintin is really funny to me. An expression used multiple times to express surprise was “billions of blue blistering barnacles!” All of the dialogue is very proper, I’m guessing as a manifestation of the time it was written? I enjoy the squared off panels fitted very well onto the page and the colorful art. The art style reminds me of everything that I’ve looked at from cartoons in the 20’s and 30’s, especially with how the faces are drawn; dotted eyes, simple features, over exaggerated arched eyebrows. What’s really nice about Tintin to me (and I can only speak for this one comic I read) is how pure and wholesome it is. Tintin is just trying to save his friend, the negative emotions are even lightened, like anger and how they could be rescuing someone who died, but you aren’t really lead to believe that he’s actually dead. The dog is always saved, Captain and Tintin are always saved, the end up saving Chang. What’s classic is how Captain is always getting the short end of the stick. The poor guy gets run around by a cow/bull, gets stuff in his eyes, eats a pepper thinking it’s a fruit, crosses a bridge successfully only to find out he crossed the wrong bridge, gets caught in a small avalanche. Captain is the added humor to the story, an element that is still used today, like Groot in the marvel movies. He doesn’t really have a point, and most of his screen time is for laughs.

Defining Characteristics

Why I Hate Saturn

- Limited color palette
- Crude language
- Conversational
- Marker - scribble artwork
- The page border
-Text outside of panels
- Honest

Bone

- Cartoon style
- Heavy, varied width outlines
- Specific dialogue
- Established grid and page layout
- Expressive typographic choices
- Water droplets used to express emotion

American Splendor

- Heavy body type
- Black and white
- Realistic art style
- Detailed

Love and Rockets

- Black and white
- Attention to background detail
- Motion
- Swears
- Conversational
- Heavier text