I totally agree with Greer on this one
The old super hero origins stories ROCK
They were super entertaining and even if a little out dated, made you want to keep reading.

Captain Marvel was my favorite too, mostly because of its tendencies to over explain everything, kind of like the Stardust superhero strip. kind of like what Greer said it was almost like the artist didn't expect the pictures to explain anything at all so they had to tell what happened as well. I was talking to friend about this and we decided it had to do with Radio broadcasts and how things where pretty deeply explained there as well. Either way it made my day on cheese factor alone.

I also really liked Plasticman. I've only ever seen him on random batman episodes from when i was a kid, so to see his how he started out was fun, that and he's an awesome character with pretty sweet abilities.

i regret to say i wasn't able to read Wonderwomen, every time i went to the library i couldn't find in on the shelf or in the hands of a fellow student, SO i'll have to see if i can find this this week. though i would like to know what YOU all thought of it?

Let me begin by saying I loved reading these old superhero origin stories. I love origin stories in general and I'm glad to be learning more about superheroes and the superhero genre in general since I feel like I know virtually nothing about it (and I really need to for my paper!)

First, I read the origin of Superman. I thought the first page was hilarious--is this old couple SO old they don't realize the baby they're looking at is in a weird rocket capsule?

The rest of this comic was also fun to read. On page 61 Lois tricks Clarks so she can steal his story...I thought this was pretty clever and I was glad to see she went out and did something after her boss's sexist comment ("This is no job for a girl" p.60). Throughout the comic there are other small actions/lines tossed in that are entertaining. For example, Superman whizzes past a speeding train, saying "Hello...and--goodbye!" (62)

The dialogue was also pretty funny in some places, though perhaps it wasn't intended to be. I noticed a lot of exposition going on in this and all the other Great Comic Book Heroes stories; characters would simply state what was happening, how they were feeling, etc. Instead of the pictures SHOWING the reader what is happening, the characters TELL us what's going on through mono/dialogue, often comedically directly.

The Captain Marvel strip certainly won the prize for most interesting origin story. Shazam tells the young Billy, "Merely by speaking my name you can become the strongest and mightiest man in the world--Captain Marvel!"

Powers just from saying some old guy's NAME? Too cool. It feels very tied to mythology and I'd like to do some research on that.

As for the Batman strips, I enjoyed them a lot but can't compare them to later Batman since this was my first time ever reading a Batman comic! I heard some other students found it to be weird and totally unlike modern Batman comics.

I thought the Joker was the typical evil villain in this, stating his plans very clearly and expecting no one to interfere (if he could just keep his mouth shut, maybe he'd get away with it).

Just as in the Superman strip, the artwork is supplemental to the dialogue and written parts of the story because characters are always blatantly stating their feelings and what is going on in the world around them. Makes it easy to follow, but it also feels a little dumb.

Also: forgot to mention this last night but of all the readings we've had so far, I definitely want to recommend the Smithsonian Book of Comic Strips to the rest of the class. I really liked this collection because it had so many different and interesting things in it. It's quick and fun to read; if there's a strip you dislike, it's not so bad because you don't have to read too much of it and you can move on to a strip you might enjoy more.

To be honest, I was actually mildly offended by the Prize Comics #3. Those were blatantly racist, without trying to hide it at all. The Power Nelson comic seemed to embody the whole Yellow Scare that was happening. The evil ruler and his son were both depicted as scrawny, bucktooth cowards. When Power Nelson comes back from outer space with the cure for the big plague that was happening, the ruler's son, which he had to drag along and babysit the entire time, took all of the credit for it. So now they are depicted as helpless liars. Jaxon of the Jungle was just as bad, if not worse. The big strong white man, taking advantage of the black people. He also at one point fools one into believing his lighter was magical so he would burn himself. I mean, seriously? Storm Curtis wasn't that bad. didn't see anything major going on with it. It very much reminded me of Doc Savage, without the whole being 7 feet tall with rippling muscles thing.

The story we read for Pappy's Golden Age Comic Blog was funny as hell. An evil scientist who controls a hollow tin can robot to rob banks, and no one can seem to just follow it back to the scientist. It also showed how the whole "Rich playboy superhero" is also completely unoriginal. My personal favorite part of the comic was when the main character hid INSDIE the robot to follow it back. Apparently, completely hollow robot minions are the most reliable. When I saw that, I thought of Bender from Futurama, with his door he has on his body.

The team reading I have to recommend is is The Great Comic Book Heroes. It gave an insight into the actual origins of Superman and Batman, and much much more if you kept on reading. I thought it was interesting that even though they were so hokey, they were perfectly fine with brutally murdering people, like the Joker did. The string of robberies he pulled were damn clever, doing them the night before he announced it to make himself seem like some mystical criminal genius.

I had a hard time following along with the transcripts for if only because I had no real idea as to what the entire lawsuit was about. the website had the transcripts, sure, but it didn't say why they were taking place and exactly what for. Other than that, if was pretty crystal clear.

Week 2 Readings

Krazy and Ignatz in Tiger Tea was by far the best read of this week! I loved the style of images in the book (last panel on p.37 was just gorgeous).

The phonetic spelling of the characters' speech really appealed to me as well. It was very easy to become immersed in the characters themselves; I could almost hear their individual voices. I also really liked the names of characters that were puns, such as Dr. Y. Zowl (wise owl, get it, get it?)

The storytelling, too, was funny and often made great social commentary. The very first strip (p. 29-30) made me chuckle and they just got better from there. As for the catnip/tiger tea in the story, I immediately thought of this as a drug reference but doubted myself for a few more strips ("No way is this about weed!") but when the characters begin discussing different variations of catnip tea, "kitten, kat, wild kat, kooger, panther and [...] tiger" (p. 62) it became pretty obvious that this was definitely a reference to drugs, if not specifically marijuana. I did a small bit of research on this and found that marijuana became outlawed around the 1930's and 40's in America and was misunderstood as having effects similar to cocaine. What I'm unclear on is towards the end of the story, Krazy is having trouble getting anyone else to drink his tiger tea, though throughout the story earlier everyone wanted some. Why is that? What does this represent?

And on that topic of representation, the scene with the ill tiger lily and the violet stood out strongly to me. I wasn't totally sure what this symbolized, other than the lily is generally a desired North American flower and the violet (also a North American flower) is sometimes considered a weed in gardens. If anyone has other thoughts on this, I am really interested in knowing what you think.

As for the Disney Treasures, I didn't enjoy these strips as much as the first ones I read. The Donald strip was pretty funny, I especially liked how Donald is always getting falsely blamed for the antics of his nephews. I was not fond of the strip written entirely in (sort-of) rhymes; I found it a little boring and childish for my tastes. Well, what do I expect from Disney?

Milt Gross was visually very interesting to me (is that photo-emulsion screen-printing?) with the layered CMYK palette. Some of the jokes made me chuckle, like when Doc is poking fun at Dickens, but a lot of the humor was really slapstick, something that doesn't appeal to me too much.

Can't wait for next week!

Readings

Our group was assigned He Done Her Wrong, and I was honestly impressed. For not having any words in it, its was able to convey its story clearly and keep the reader engaged. Tiger Tea was also fun to read. I do have to agree with the author, I believe Tiger Tea was a marijuana reference. There were times when it was hard to understand what Kat was saying, due to his completely broken English, but it wasn't difficult to figure out. It's generally hard for me to laugh from something that I read, but there were a few times in both He Done Her Wrong and Tiger Tea that gave me a good chuckle. Seeing Hal Foster's work in The Comics Before 1945 was pretty cool. compared to other strips of the time that we have seen, his backgrounds are stunning. I stared at the scene with Prince Valiant on his horse before the castle for a good while. Also, seeing the action scenes he did for Prince Valiant, you can see how action has changed in comics. When he cuts down the viking, nothing is really shown, but it shows enough to be dramatic and interesting. Sometimes, the most impactful things are what you don't see. I believe that things can be more graphic when it is left to the imagination as to what has happened. Anyway, that's my take on the readings.

Walking Dead

Hey guys. I know this has nothing to do with our readings, but I was curious anyway. If any of you are familiar with the comic The Walking Dead, you'll know that there is going to be a TV series of it on AMC. Robert Kirkman, the writer of the comic, is on board for the project. Is anyone looking forward to it as much as I am, or do you think it is going to flop?