Asterios Polyp. Damn.

Oh GOD my feelings. I've got to find the full version of this as soon as possible, as the version I downloaded just up and decided to corrupt about 120 pages in. Perhaps I'll check the library for it. That's neither here nor there, though, as we're here to talk about my feelings towards Asterios. Dude's had some crazy kind of life, it would appear. I feel like I share a lot with this character, actually. Sudden tragedies that don't appear to outwardly affect him, passionately devoted to the pursuit of obtaining knowledge on whatever subject may appear, and kind of up his own ass. Outwardly, appearing to be very up his own ass, but in reality only being kind of up his own ass. I just... want to know more about him.

And oh man, those colors? I love the fact that there's no black to be found, or even a dark shade of blue. It doesn't appear that any of the colors had a value over 50 in a photoshop scale; that is to say, no color was even half as dark as it could possibly be printed. I love the lightness that comes from that, though. Playing with the whites and lighter values makes the work feel airy and ethereal -- like a dream. I feel somehow as though I'm looking into the thoughts of another while reading this comic, though I'm not sure if it's Asterios's or the author's.

I don't think I've been able to empathize with a character nearly as well as I've been able to with Asterios this entire year so far. A whole semester of reading comics and I finally find the one character I feel I can truly relate to... which feels odd to me. He's much older and wiser than I, but for some reason I feel this distinct connection to the poor, strangely stalwart guy. Though maybe I shouldn't be too surprised, considering my favorite television character of all time may just be Frasier Crane, similarly aged and learned.

From the images that I saw on google whilst searching for this work and the introduction of a character that watches the sky for asteroids of close proximity to the earth, I can imagine what may eventually happen in this tale, and I'd like to think that Asterios will be fine. I... kind of need him to be fine, at the end of his story.

-Will Avery

OGLAF... might just have a new regular customer.

So at first I figured "yeah, alright, a little bit of absurdist and sexual humor in a fantasy universe, I can deal with that", and then I slowly stopped being able to deal with that, for some reason. Call me old fashioned, but I've never been a huge fan of the shock gag. Sure, when it's done right it can be great, but most of the time if you build up what seems to be some kind of clever joke and just cap it off with "balls! haha!", I'm not going to laugh. Just isn't something I can do. As there were a good few of these kinds of jokes in OGLAF, initially, I was beginning to think that perhaps this series wasn't for me.

But then, possibly my favorite comedic trope showed up: the running gag. This comic's loaded with 'em. The cumsprite, the two adventurers seeking various fountains, the falcon with laser vision, and my personal favorite, the ghost of the lizard of guilt. I swear to god, I lost my sh*t at the idea of that stupid lizard following people around just trying to rain on their parades (http://oglaf.com/night-shame/). Hearing what it said in a generic ghostly "ooOOooOOooo!" kind of voice just made it too much. What a life that would be.

Then there are the occasional one-off jokes that just seem to work. A time where the shock gag pulls it off right. This (http://oglaf.com/breastplate/) is a prime example. It's not relying of the absurdly graphic nature of the comic to deliver the joke, and its not even that crude. Well, not that crude when compared to the rest of the series. There's just something that really tickles me about how out of place something like engraving "slut" into a breastplate is in this world.

To top it all off: dat art. I'd be interested to know what else this author is involved in; clearly they've been art-ing for quite a while. The line work is great, the palette selection on most of the comics is phenomenal, and even the designs of the various characters and creatures is spot-on. I really appreciate how you can tell exactly what kind of personality or role a character/creature fits into based solely on their appearance. It's all solid A-tier work.

-Will Avery

Crisis on Infinite Earths

Oooh man this had DC clusterfuckery written all over it. While not being nearly as ridiculous as the Marvel universe has gotten at some points (infinity gauntlet, anybody?), this multiverse-shadow-creatures-monitor-antimatter-antisuperhero-heroes business is a little too much for me. I've always been more of a fan of the straightforward "here's your hero, here's the setting, let's watch as some bad guys get beaten up" formula. The furthest I'm willing to go as far as crossovers go is the Justice League, and by that measure I'm pretty tame compared to what I would guess is a majority of the comic-reading public.

I have an immense respect for the amount of thought that must go into the crafting of these things, though. I mean really, there must be pages upon pages upon binders upon file cabinets upon storage units of raw fucking data keeping track of everything in these multiverses. Which heroes are called what, which still exist and which have died, which were never born, who runs the world, whose costume has changed, what time period is it, etc. all must be hell to keep up with. Creating a multi-issue (according to wikipedia, 50+) epic that spans over many universes and many doubles of heroes in a cataclysmic event affecting everyone must be borderline impossible. I know I couldn't do it.

One good thing though: dat art. I've always been a fan of the retro-comic style. Particularly three things: 1) the color palettes -- SO many purples, yellows, and reds. Everything is warmly lit (almost constantly) and even the blues struggle to become a balancing cool tone. It's crazy. 2) The stippling. I know that it's technically not stippling and it's really just the way these things happened to be printed, but I just love being able to see all of those tiny little dots. Hell, Roy Lichtenstein is one of my all-time favorite artists. The concept of having the spacing of equally-saturated circles affect the perceived color and brightness of the much larger image used to boggle my mind as a child. 3) The way that sparkles and flares are illustrated. It seems weird (and it's pretty minor, I assure you -- most of what I like is the stippling and the palette), but using a white splotch with a bunch of thin black lines radiating from the center to illustrate a gleaming surface just baffles me. It seems like it wouldn't but it just works so well.

-Will Avery

Diaries and Dominatricies?

"Warning, sexually explicit."

HA! Pah! Ptooey. Meh. I'm a 21-year-old male who spend most of his adolescence as a less-than-ideal-looking sexual outcast; I'm pretty sure Diary of a Dominatrix can't show me something I haven't seen before. Aaand... normally this is the part where I say "BOY WAS I WRONG" but to be honest, I was expecting something a bit more graphic with the written warning. Oh well, on to analysis.

Aside from presenting me with a myriad of things I'm probably going to try, this comic also introduced me to a character in a role I'd never really thought about before, and that was definitely the hook for me as far as whether or not I liked it goes. I did like it, by the way. Whenever I've seen a dominatrix in another medium, be in a film (hell, maybe even porn), a book, or a game (oh, GTA4...), I've never wondered what kind of person that character really is. If there's a police officer set as a primary character in a story, you can bet your ass we'll be hearing all about him/her and his/her personal life. Doctor? Done. Businessman? You bet. Criminal? Throw that shit in there. Not a dominatrix, though.

That's strange, you know? I'd argue that most people would be more interested in a fictional character's sex life than family or daily life. If those three lives are mingled into one a-la this character, why would I not want to know more about the person? I mean damn, talk about letting an opportunity fly by.

Anyway, I think the quality of this piece that I'd have to point out as my "favorite" would be the tone. The narration is thick with aloofness, sarcasm, and sometimes loathing -- three of my favorite things! The dominatrix's "shut the fuck up and take it" attitude is just so gosh darn lovable.

-Will Avery

Tezuka's Buddha.

So I'm going to start with this: I CANNOT wait to finish Buddha. As someone who has taken a keen interest in the relationship and history between Buddhism and Hinduism in the past year or so, this kind of story is right up my alley. Especially considering that I've always loved a good underdog story, and the two primary characters I've met thusfar, Chapra and Takka, are pretty underdog-ish. One, a slave who seeks desperately to rise in the ranks of their infamous caste system to bring a better life to his mother and the other, a pariah with special abilities that make him more powerful and valuable that probably any Brahmin. Clearly they've both got a lot of developing to do, character wise, and I look forward to seeing them overcome their respective obstacles.

Another reason I've become a huge fan is the art style. Though proportions can get a bit wonky at times and some action poses can look a bit stiff every now and then, I can't take off my nostalgia shades. It reminds me of the work of Akira Toriyama, creator of the "Dragon Ball" series, which was a huge part of my childhood and initial introduction into Japanese art next to Miyazaki's "My Neighbor Totoro". Of course, I'm sure it's blasphemy to compare Tezuka to Toriyama (and I must make it clear, I'm comparing Buddha's art style to Dragon Ball only, not Dragon Ball Z), but I'm positive Toriyama must've been inspired in some way by the father of manga, so I think it's appropriate. On a side note, Kimba the White Lion's style also comes to mind, though I've only seen trailers for it and never the actual movie. I believe it's also a studio Ghibli film, so that might be another comparison to Miyazaki.

Now then, theming. I've already mentioned the fact that I think it's great for the development of Chapra and Takka that they both belong to such low classes, but I'd like to harken back to that really quick to talk about what I speculate may be a recurring theme in this manga: equality amongst classes. We're shown some bad people from the pariah class, and people with hearts of gold from the slave class. The general of the soldier class was a bit of a bastard, but rewarding Chapra for saving his life was surely a sign of good in the man. Hell, the monk from the brahmin class was a pretty great dude, and quickly cast off his doubts about Takka upon seeing his exemplary morals. All in all, regardless of what social class the characters belong to, there appear to be good and bad sides to every one of them -- I think it's pretty clear that this says "we're all on the same level". It's certainly a Buddhist point of view, so I believe it to be appropriate, thinking that might be a recurring theme.

-Will Avery

"Seriously? It's Called Tits n' Clitz? You're sh*ting me."

The title of this post is, as I remember, what I said to my dear friend and classmate Cassidy Aquilino-Berg upon hearing her describe that week's reading for our Literature of Comics class. Naturally, I couldn't not be excited about whatever zany and ridiculous things I was about to read in the impractical realm of "Underground Comix".

So. First off: weird stuff. Or at least... weird as far as the intent of the content was concerned. I was thinking that the blatant sexuality would have a deeper purpose; some ulterior motive along the lines of making a statement about our prudish society or accepting some of the stranger urges we may have. Alas, I found no such thing -- these appear to exist mostly for entertainment alone, possibly with the exception of "First Lover", a love letter to, well, loving yourself!

Monogamy was just constant one-up gag, Bosomic Woman was a parody (albeit a initially funny gag for those of us who believe the male body to be objectified in super hero comics just as much as the female body), and "I Was a Sex Junkie" just... it initially appeared to be a story with some kind of moral to it, but it didn't seem to go anywhere in the end. All in all, these all read to me as "ho ho! Look at us pushing the envelope! Do you like it? What if there's a dildo? NOW what do you think?!"

That's not to say I didn't enjoy this smattering of short stories, though. Some have great art styles, some have legitimately funny gags, and some managed to stir up some vague and strange arousal. I guess that's the point, right? I've got to say, though, there were definitely some creepy bits here and there -- I recall one ad with a nude girl that was maybe ten years old comparing the comics to her mother's vibrator. I... wasn't expecting that.

-Will Avery

Understanding Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics"

This is some quality stuff, I've got to say. Concise, clear, and humorous as well; that's pretty much all I could ask for in an explanation, and especially so in one that's over a hundred pages long (though that might at first appear to go against "concise"). I don't mind the length, though, when the subject matter is interesting or the narrative is appealing. I'm not too sure if you can really call what I'm reading a narrative, but sure as hell I want to see what the main character does next in a long sequence of events, so it's close enough for me.

One thing that I really appreciate in McCloud's work is something that I'm sure has been said by literally everyone who's read "Understanding Comics" -- his use of the comic to explain the comic is phenomenal. The juxtaposition of film's use of time to comics' use of space, the effect of simplification on the viewer, and the idea of contrasting a simple character against a detailed background to more easily relate to the character are all explained superbly with visual aides and written word. Never once did I have to think "wait, I must've missed something..." and turn back a page to try to re-process something McCloud told me, which I must admit I tend to do frequently when reading a textbook, novel, or even watching a tutorial on youtube.

Just the way that McCloud is able to convey what one would initially think are complex scientific processes in a page covered with a few lines is beyond me. I wouldn't have ever thought that the reason for the human brain being able to relate to simplified figures better than realistic ones would be that the mind thinks of the body's own face in abstraction. Not only is that downright fascinating, but it really changes the way I think about using the tool of simplification. As a game artist, it really reminds me of the environments in Jonathan Blow's new game, 'The Witness'. Apparently the art team is really focused on stripping away any unnecessary details in the landscapes and textures, giving the viewers only color, silhouette, lighting information, and the occasional bold addition like a fissure or fold. Even though you're actually looking at less than you'd see in your standard AAA game title, the environments feel like they're teeming with life and positively exploding with realistic beauty.

I bet McCloud would be proud (assuming he even cares about games).

-Will Avery