Robert Crumb

This week I read Mr. Natural By Robert Cumb. I thought this was a very entertaining comic although it was perverted, racist, sexist and just all around wrong. I found myself shocked by the content and images in this comic but I thought it was funny so I continued reading it. The first strip I read was sunny side up with Mr. Natural this strip gave me a completely different view of Mr. Natural than what I got when I read on. Sunny side up was a fairly friendly strip that rhymed about being sunny and happy and that was basically it. When I continued reading I saw Mr. Natural meditating and that was pretty funny, it seemed like he was there for so long! Once I got to Mr. Natural and Shuman the Human I started to notice very obvious signs or racism. Right away when the little black girl showed up in the strip she spoke very poor english, she said "Gimme dat money" and the way he drew her and her family they look like monkeys! As I continued reading Robert Crumbs comics they became very sexual and perverted. I have to say I found it hilarious but I can see a lot of people getting offended by these comics. The images themselves are quite vulgar.

As far as the illustrations go they definitely work well will the comic and the style, he drew grotesque people doing very strange things. His characters are interesting looking and well developed and he keeps the backgrounds very simple. Every once in a while Crumb played with the shapes of the frames, making them wobbly, or more vertical or horizontal but for the most part they were pretty consistent and the view was pretty straight on.

I thought Robert Crumbs comics were very interesting and it really gave me an interest in reading underground comics because I didn't know that comics with this type of content existed. Robert Crumb must have been a very crazy man I would like to know more about his life.

Blankets

This is the first graphic novel I have ever read and I have to say when I first picked it up off the shelf I was a little overwhelmed. I never knew graphic novels were so big! Luckily Blankets was a completely captivating experience. It wasn’t just like reading any other book the images and the text are combined into this emotional, dream like tale that I could relate to so easily. While reading I was tossing and turning through the pages and immediately connected with the characters.

The illustrations in this graphic novel did not disappoint me in the slightest. The drawing style, line work, textures, compositions, and the movement and mood of the images were a perfect fit with the text. The various shapes and sizes of the panels seem to flow together so well and yet each turn of the page was a new and exciting layout, just another one of the reasons it was so captivating.

In the Book Craig Thompson tells the story of his life experiences when he was in his young adulthood, the weird stage in life where you are changing and realizing new things about yourself. He uses a lot of flashbacks in the novel to make connections with what is happening in the present, which I think also helps you develop a stronger connection with the character. He falls in love for the first time, goes through many emotional stages of happiness, loneliness, love and confusion, which results in him finding himself.

With the combination of this heart felt story and fascinating magical images Blankets would be easy to fall in love with for anyone and I would surly recommend it. I am completely satisfied in the fact that it was the first graphic novel I have read because now I am tempted to buy the whole bookshelf.

Little Orphan Annie

Little Orphan Annie was about Annie an outgoing young girl who escaped from her orphanage and set out for adventures with her doll Emily Marie and a little later in the comic her dog named Sandy. Little Orphan Annie is the oldest comic I have read so far, Harold Gray created it in the 1920’s way before the play and the movie and all that stuff. Back in the 1920’s comics were a little different than they are now they were printed in a much larger format sometimes one strip would cover the whole page, and the strips were like TV shows are to us now people would follow the adventures for months. Little Orphan Annie wasn’t your everyday little girl (this may have been because Harold Gray was first intending the character to be a little boy) she was a crime fighter she was always set out to find no good people, politicians and gangsters to stop. I have to say Little Orphan Annie has a lot of history and I really enjoyed reading about it and about Harold Gray. But I didn’t find the comic very entertaining or humorous although Im not sure that it was trying too hard to be funny, the comic seems to be very political and seemed to be targeted towards an older audience and that may have been what turned me off to it.

Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes written and illustrated by Bill Watterson was a very entertaining and funny read. I can remember briefly reading it when and I was younger but I wasn’t into comics as much as I am now so I didn’t give it enough credit as I should have. The comic is about Calvin who is extremely intelligent for a six year old which only adds the humor, and his tiger friend, which is his stuffed animal that comes to life only about 95 percent of the time. Calvin and Hobbes are always getting into some kind of mischief if it’s throwing darts at his dad, messing around with girls at school, getting into trouble in class, pestering his mother for things, or just going on crazy adventures. No matter what the circumstance Calvin’s out of this world imagination is always present.

Although Calvin went on some crazy trips inside his own head some of my favorites of the strips were ones where Calvin and Hobbes were just doing their somewhat normal everyday stuff. I feel like Calvin is a pretty smart kid so he chooses to cause mischief to entertain himself, in doing so he is always coming up with unique and creative ways to trick his mother into giving him something that he wants or letting him do something (but he rarely secedes). Some of his adventures are so simple and silly but yet so easy for me to relate to I find them very enjoyable and I think this is what interests a lot of readers of the time. Even If you were a parent reading this when it first came out in the mid 1980’s I’m sure you would relate to the mother or father and find a lot of humor in this strip.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this comic I found it humorous and intelligent and in my opinion it is defiantly targeting to a wide range of ages early teen to adults. It is easy to see why this comic strip was so successful and loved by so many. ehgvwedvdvcfdfsdfsdfsdfdsf