Min Kim LitComics

My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris is definitely a hefty read with 400 pages loaded with immense detail in drawing and descriptive texts. Despite not being able to scrutinize the details yet, the book is such a work of art as it weaves so many things together. It is very non-conformist in style and more expressive, shifting tones and mood as the author sees appropriate. The subject matter is very dark, and it creates an interesting tone being drawn on a notebook paper. The whole book is crosshatched beautifully, and she experiments with creative layouts. She crosses between exaggerated stylistic drawing and realistic, detailed sketches which create great contrast and are astonishing. I think her usage of color is beautiful, especially the cover arts for different chapters. The style kind of reminded me of underground comics, mixed in with fine art and pop art. The story was very deep with a lot going on. The main story was following the mystery of murdered neighbor, but with ...

I remember reading the Arrival by Shaun Tan when I was young, being inspired by the visuals and the storytelling. It was most interesting in the fact that the book had no words in the story, yet gives readers full understanding of what is going on. I think the wordless images support the story because the it is about the struggles of the protagonist to settle into a new world where he can't communicate, and the surreal visuals helped with the perspective of being in a foreign place. The wordlessness also engages the readers more into observing the gestures and expressions of the characters more carefully rather than relying on words, and I think this is what the artist intended. Even though there were no usage of notable colors, there is a gradient mapped over the pencil drawings that depicts mood shifts which works on a subconscious level since the whole book is monochromatic. These elements all play a role in creating empathy with the protagonist's circumstances and it feels ...

I read the first volume of Buddha and six numbers of Battle Angel Alita. I never read a single book of manga before, but watched several Japanese anime. When I started reading these early forms of manga I was expecting something similar to what I've watched, but they definitely felt very different. It might be because reading doesn't involve hearing and I noticed I read the speech bubbles in a regular plain voice rather than the animated voice. Other reason might be because I'm too used to modern anime. The setting in the film for Alita was visibly influenced by popular American science fiction, where as the book felt a lot darker with comic elements seen in anime. I was immersed in the world and all the characters were interesting. Buddha had a lot of good elements of story telling revolving around the society and culture of India mixed with fantasy. The story was very intriguing and I did not know where it was headed. I only read the first volume, but it communicated the ...

I've always been aware of Moebius's influence in modern sci-fi and fantasy, but I have never looked into his comics before. After reading his work Incal, I felt like I truly witnessed the master of the genre. It drew me into the world that he's built from the first page and kept my attention with bizarre and intriguing visuals and story. I thoroughly appreciated the intricate and fascinating details and his compositions were astounding. He utilized the text to guide the viewers eyes and the colors while simple, showed great depth as if watching a movie. I looked into the life of Jean Giraud (Moebius) and he started off his career with Blueberry comics with Jean Michel Charlier, using an alias Gir. He later wanted to become himself and re-brands his work with a new alias Moebius, inspired by Mobius Strip. With abstract and mathematical visuals, he developed his own world full of new enviornment and civilization with rich, vivid imagery. He said that his strips Metal Hurlant ...

Stereotypes and representation in media is such an interesting and very complicated subject that I never put much time into thinking about in the past. I think as humans it is too easy to accept things rather than be critical about anything. I watched the videos on "Damsel in Distress," "Women in Refrigerators," "Smurfette Principles," and got interested in the subject and watched more videos relating to tropes and stereotypes represented in games and movies. I feel like many times the dangers come from unhealthy misrepresentations being excused, rationalized, or romanticized. However, I watched many of Feminist Frequency's videos and even though they do have some good points about the limited range and cliches of female representation, not all points they covered seemed to communicate cohesively about the correlation between representation and underlying message and its effects on cultural view of women. In class we talked about Will Eisner's use ...