Today I woke up feeling unwell, likely due to not eating well and last night’s insomnia. After sleeping more, I felt better, but by then I missed half of the communications crit anyway. So instead I decided to read the comic books I purchased earlier. I’m also planning on doing (an) interview(s) with comic book shop employees at Orbital and Gosh! if possible.

The Big Empty Life of Alphonse Tabouret

This graphic novel is what it self-descirbes as an ‘existential fairy tale’ and that description fits it so well. The nature of the storytelling is non-linear and whimsical, with a childlike naïveté that is felt throughout. It does deal with themes of depression and finding a meaning in life. I picked this book up as the drawing style felt very whimsical and simple, but conveyed a lot anyway. I also chose this book, as it deals with finding a meaning in life, which is something I struggle with a bit currently. It is also my first comic book, as in it looks and feels like a ‘proper’ hardcover book and it is beautiful. The experience of reading it in such a format, is that it makes it feel more like you’re reading an illustrated book rather than a comic book, only further accentuated by the low amount of panels used in the book and the lack of a border around the panels that are there. It makes me consider how the style of a comic can convey things beyond the use of text and image. (Panels or not? Border or not? How many images per page? etc. etc.) Scott McCloud in his book ‘Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art‘ argues that what makes a comic book a comic book is the space between panels, the gutter, as that is the place where we insert our imagination to seek closure. We perceive parts, but make up our minds over the whole.

My favourite character was Hole, a character with a literal hole in their body who is desperately trying to fill that hole up. The whole changes shapes and sizes depending on what they want and they want everything that is presented to them. However, nothing can satisfy them and before long everything gets discarded at some point anyway. They find happiness when their shapeless hole gets filled with (an)Guish, who is afraid of everything. Together they get into fights, but always make up in the end and are happy. 

Cosplayers

by Dash Shaw. a bit weird ngl. reminded me a bit too much of how used to be when i was like 16/17 😂 

Infidel

I read this sometime ago actually, but revisited it again. I love the use of traditional mediums to portray the otherworldly elements in the story juxtaposed by the crispness of the digital art for the rest of the comic. It is also a gripping horror story, as well as a metaphor of how hate can linger in the world and how trauma is experienced by marginalised people. 

American Born Chinese

by Gene Luen Yang. On being Chinese-American and how alienating that might feel.  3 stories seemingly unrelated that combine together at the end beautifully. Be proud of who you are, don’t try to change yourself. Finally found a practitioner for my essay. 

Spinning

A beautiful coming-of-age graphic memoir by Tillie Walden. This comic made Tillie the youngest Eisner Award winner ever at age 22 and it is clear why. Her beautiful drawings of greyscale indigo and yellow are evocative and expressive of big feelings of joy and freedom, loneliness and emptiness, the fears and judgement from the world, late nights, early mornings. The pacing is wonderfully emotive. You can truly feel the addictive rush of euphoria from winning and the tiring repetitiveness of life. A story of her coming out, overcoming her fears, finding her voice, standing up for herself, and finding out about herself. Informative about the mystic world of ice skating behind the graceful glittery facade, relatable in the way it is hard to let go of something that brings you both joy and sadness. 

Your Black Friend

A small press comic by Ben Passmore. ‘An open letter from your black friend to you about race, racism, friendship, and alienation.’ Just 11 pages long, but an amazing and important read nonetheless.  

Searching up more works by Ben Passmore, I can confidently say I like his work a lot. He is a very contemporary comic artist, making short comics on important political issues. Thank you very much to Orbital Comics employee who recommended his works to me. ♡  I found his comic ‘Colony of a Colony‘ and I really like the way his research is so evident in the comic. It is short, but still touched upon the colonisation of Puerto Rico and how local communities are working to decolonise the island of Vieques. How an organisation of community-oriented ecological farms can give back to its community etc. It is the kind of comic that I would like to aspire to one day create. 

Through finding out more about Ben Passmore, I found The Nib, a website that publishes political and non-fiction comics daily. It was established in 2013 and the comics published deal a lot with the race and political issues in the US and worldwide, feminism, etc. I wonder if perhaps I can pitch a comic there at some point. Also, if anyone else is interested, here’s a link for more information on how to pitch a comic to them. – insert link-

I conclude that I am now more curious about small press publications. The formats of such comics are very experimental and out there. 

On a different note, as my research proposal from the last project was mostly inspired by a case of blackface in cosplay, as I’m struggling to find a topic to write about, the topic of racism in the cosplay community comes up once more. This time it was via a viral tweet from cosplayer @Vaelniel_ who posted pictures of her first cosplay ever. The character she wanted to portray was Nezuko from the anime Demon Slayer and her cosplay looked really good. In her tweet she stated that she was nervous about cosplaying due to fear of the rejection she would surely get for being a black woman cosplaying and sadly enough, while many praised her and her cosplay, many other people were being incredibly toxic, to the point where she made her account private. Comments stating that she made an OC (original character) even though she was cosplaying an established character, simply because of her skin colour, that black people can’t or shouldn’t cosplay light skinned characters, and that she should have cosplayed dark skinned characters instead (whatever their ethnicity might be as everyone who isn’t white or pale is the same anyway apparently). A white woman cosplaying the same character would likely not face the same criticisms, despite the character being Japanese. Recurring instances like these on the internet and in real life are the reason why it is important to highlight the issue of race in cosplay and perhaps even in the broader sense of race in fandom.

Pondering on fandom, I came to the conclusion why fandom is so important to me: it is an identity I choose for myself that can connect me to others. Rather than a label one is born with (race or ethnicity for instance) or assigned to by society (gender or sexuality), it is a label that we have practically complete control over. It is something to take pride in and connect people who might otherwise not be connected. Fandom to me is the broad sense of connectivity to others through shared interests in works created by other people or other people themselves, excluding religion (though in a technical sense, a religion could be considered a fandom as well). It always involves a third party (you, other fans, and ‘The Idol’ (someone/a group of others/a work by someone else)). In that sense I don’t really distinguish sports fans from fans of pop cultural media or music. 

Not entirely sure where this is going….

Research

https://99designs.co.uk/blog/design-history-movements/history-of-comic-book-styles/

An interesting article on the change in the art and design of Western comic books over the years. And now the world… 

https://www.vulture.com/article/100-most-influential-pages-comic-book-history.html