"Blankets"

by Craig Thompson

"Blankets" is an auto-biographical graphic novel about the life of a fundamental christian as he grows up and battles the conflicting emotions between following the faith and following his dreams. After reading the novel I found it to be an extremely rich and thoughtful account of the authors life. He tells the story of his life from an artistic angle that is easily digested and engaging. A testament to this degree of approachability would be my girlfriend's interest in the novel (a comic novice) , saying that "I never knew that comics were so deep". I feel that this novel is an example of how interesting someone's personal story can be after some self reflection and analysis. The author shows me that a character that is based off of real experience is often much more fleshed out and relatable than a character that you were to just make up. I feel that this is a huge part of art and in my own work I think of every character as being a piece of me, I don't believe there is a way to disconnect yourself from your artwork and if there is than that's a sad way to do art in my honest opinion. I have always felt when the debate over representation in media comes up that the author of any work cannot create things they do not have experience with. I would say that without extensive research and real life experience that it would be very hard for me to write a compelling story about the life of a Korean child seeing that I have never experienced that directly. I feel like this is where alot of stereotypical and archetypical characters come from. Asking for a compelling story about the plights of a black man from Atlanta from a white man from Boston doesn't seem like it would work out well to me just based of the fact that the man from Boston has never experienced the life of the black man from Atlanta. My conclusion from "Blankets" is just to stick to what you know and not in a negative way, but in a way where you celebrate your own experience instead of suppressing it for storylines and characters that marketing people think will resonant with the audience. This novel is straight up fantastic, a must read for anyone interested in story telling.

"Donald Duck in the Old Castle's Secret"

by Carl Barks

The comic book "Donald Duck in the Old Castle's Secret", is a 30 page story about Donald Duck and his families adventures in Scotland as they attempt to find their ancestors lost fortune. Reading this story reminded me of the days of watching cartoons where the characters reveled in a simple conflict that would be resolved in a matter of 15-30 minutes. Unfortunately I think, for whatever reason, my brain is no longer stimulated by these types of stories. As I read through "The Old Castle's Secret" I find myself asking "what's at stake here?", "why do I care about these characters?", and "what is the take away of this story?". I know all too well that Donald isn't going to get killed by the sword wielding specter, I guess to put it simply, I just saw it all coming from a mile away. It's hard for me to explain why I cannot get into an adventure title like this one, yet can be enthralled by the surreal adventures of Little Nemo. It's so hard because I could say that I know the ending of every Little Nemo comic seeing that he always woke up in bed at the end of the adventure, but maybe there was something within the surreal imagery that I could just relate to more than the shenanigans of these ducks. I don't know man, after talking to my friend Andy about Little Nemo we came to the conclusion that the imagery and narratives of Little Nemo are more varied and unrestricted than that of the more realistic Donald Duck series. I don't know man, I just don't know. Let me know if you know because I don't know.