Is this a comic?

Today I read three comics (two of them being a complete story together) and was asked to define if these three were comics and what the definition of a comic is. To me a comic is something that tells a story with pictures, but also provides a lot of dialogue. In my opinion the comic that was used here was definitely a comic because (even though it was in a different language), there was clearly a story and it had dialogue along with it. The other selection, although it being in English, is far from something that I would define as a comic, rather, I would put it more in the category of a picture book.


photo by aussigall
Although this particular reading, did tell a story, there was not a lot (if any, that I can remember) dialogue, and was not like a classic comic in which has been reviewed in class. In my opinion, neither one had a more successful format than the other each brought something that I can say that I liked. The foreign comic was enjoyable because it was much like a classic read and had a very simple layout. The other was cool as well because not only had I not seen anything like that before, but have the picture inside of a picture added a form of movement to the story that was not actually present. In addition, by allowing the reader to press the button page by page adds a little bit of excitement to see what is next rather than the basic scrolling down of any other page. I also favored this one a little more because it made the reader try and figure out what was going to come next by looking at the picture in the middle. By having the picture zoom in definitely adds a layer of drama. However, what I did not like were the awkward scenes where the picture would be in the middle of someone’s face and/or it was not as cleverly placed in the frame (such as it acting as a picture on the wall) and caused it to look slightly awkward in the reading.

Overall, these were both good pieces of work, and I could definitely see myself reading more from these authors or using some of their styles in my own work!

Graphic Novel Review

Today I will be reviewing two graphic novels that I recently read. I highly enjoyed both but for entirely different reasons. First, I will talk about "Brain Noodles" by Todd Cotgreave. One of the things that I liked about this story was that it had a basic story structure (beginning, middle, end), however, it was not like every other story that you would see. This story was about two college students who were out to find the answers to life using LSD. This was a pretty easy read and the creativity used in the photos showing as if you were looking through their eyes was one of my favorite parts about the story. If I were to change anything about the story I would like to have seen what the devil looked like in the car! Once the girl sees the devil, it seems like the story just kind of drops off and they don't really find any answers (which I guess in a sense, if there isn't one, is sort of an answer). But I would have really enjoyed some type of more rounded off conclusion-- but, hey, you can only have so many conclusions with LSD in the picture.

The next graphic novel I read was "Daddy Issues" by Konrad Turnball. This story was definitely a favorite with all of the twists and turns throughout the story. My absolute favorite part of the story was when the son and one of the dads that he met were talking about two different things, but they thought that they were talking about the same thing. I love when the reader has omnipotence in the story and can still be surprised-- that takes a lot of whit-- and I like whit! The only thing I did not like about the story was maybe the level of vulgarness in it. While I did not mind, I can not see everyone enjoying it to the same level as did I. It certainly takes a certain type of sense of humor to enjoy something such as this. Regardless, a good read.