Week14 Webcomics

I read 17776 or What Football Will Look Like in the Future, and Trash Mountain for this week, which I had a lot of fun.

 The 17776 or What Football Will Look Like in the Future comic is interesting. I did not realize that the characters are Artificial satellites for the first time. I also had fun with the range of formats; the calendar, text chat, gif animation, and YouTube video. Seeing different mediums in the story is interesting.

The Trash Mountain reminds me of a gif comic artist on twitter, who is Quick Obake. He(she) creates one or two panels comic with moving the main character. I think this half animation comic is very interesting to see because this is a contemporary comic style. It arrows to the artist a wider range of expression.

QuickObake via Twitter

My favorite work from this artist

 I believe comic is a kind of in-between media of word base media, such as novels, and film media, such as animations and films. Animations and films are telling stories unilaterally to the viewer while novels require the reader’s imagination. In other words, animations and films limit the viewer’s imagination, and sometimes novels are too hard for readers to understand what is going on. The comic is in between them. It still has places of arrows the viewers’ imagination, but at the same time, it shows the many or less graphic which helps the reader to get into the story. I think comics have the advantage of both media.

 I think webcomics have the next advantage adding to the point that I wrote above. The additional mediums added in the webcomic show what the author wants to be received by readers. The animation makes the viewer feel the detailed movement of the character, music shows more atmosphere, and more letters induce more imagination of the reader. When the author wants to tell some additional information or feeling to the viewer, I think webcomics are a great style of comics.

Week13 Reconsidering the Superhero

 I have a lot of fun with this story. The ordinal superhero story is mostly rewarded good and punish evil, but Batman the Killing Joke is the true antithesis of moralistic story. Also, this comic has a metafiction aspect at the same time.

 Most of the audience may expect that the hero (or heroine) will always a good person, always be a justice side when they start reading superhero comics. However, Batman the Killing Joke breaks this theory and refers us the possibility of different assumptions, which the hero could be a villain as well. Unlike the ordinal superhero story, which has a clear boundary line between protagonist and antagonist, this comic trying to make it vague, or even trying to taking off it.

 The reason, belief, and the past of the antagonist make the character much more appealing because it creates readers’ empathy. Normally, most people do not feel it with the antagonist, who just want to kill or destroy something without reason, because most people are not criminal or terrorist. Since the viewer does not have empathy at first, the reason and background story stands out and makes a strong impact on the viewers. Therefore, after finish reading this comic, the viewer may confuse that who should they cheering to be the winner, because both of them have their understandable faith. 

Batman refers "there is the end"

 Another interesting story structure of this comic is metafiction storytelling. Even from the beginning, the characters know the place they live in is a story. In the end, I felt that they are criticizing humans, I mean, every human who is reading or creating the story of Batman series. I think this is a type of personification because sometimes characters are talking about the world beyond their world, which they never should recognize. In this time, the characters are no more be just characters in a comic but more likely to be a human in the real world.

"It's all a joke", not real. Especially for us.

 To be honest, I feel like this type of story is getting more popular in several media for these days because it breaks the theory of hero/villain relationship, leads the viewer’s empathy to the villain, and makes the character more realistic because there are no completely good or completely bad people in real life. The story itself says that “this world is a fake, and we are imaginary existence”. But then, we feel them more realistic as the same human like us. 

 Therefore, if I had the opportunity to adopt this story to the other medium, I would like to choose either cartoon or animation. I found a lot of film structure on this comic, but I believe real-human actors cannot make the full aim of the structure within this comic. If the character already “human”, the personification structure and metafiction structure are not to be as appearing as in comics. To make this interesting structure and story, films are too realistic and too close to us. They stand out when the appearance and art style is beyond real life.