These comics were great. I love it when artists can make fun of each other and themselves. The little details in all the panels in both Superduperman and Bat Boy were great. I found that I was staring at each panel just trying to find the differences in the last one. Robin's changing pant patterns and logo was great, especially when Mickey Mouse somehow shows up. The other great thing about these comics, was it seemed a vast knowledge of the characters and story-lines wasn't necessary to understand the jokes. I love how Captain Marvel also made an appearance in the Superduperman comic.
Art in Time: Kona
The art in this comic was nice, but the text/ story was hard to understand. I could get a gist of what was going on but I didn't understand what was going on and why.. if that makes any sense. It was definitely very action packed, with all sorts of groups of creatures going after each other. It somewhat reminded me of that extremely long chase scene from Peter Jackson's King Kong. There was no breathing room for you to put together what was going on. I enjoyed looking at the different mutant creatures. The comic might have made more sense to me if I had read some of the previous comics.
Batman:
This comic was pretty adorable. Batman obviously cares about Robin like his own son. The story telling was great and the art was spotless. I haven't read enough Batman to really support this statement, but it seems that most of the Batman stories have villains with some kind of a mental illness or psychological problem and this was true in the comic we read except there was an interesting twist. Instead of someone attacking Robin, most of the danger was caused by Batman himself and the hallucinations left over from the stress test he was given. It wasn't until the end of the comic that Robin was put into any real danger, but Batman was able to come through and save his sidekick.
War Comics: Love Hawk and Souvenirs
The first comic was really interesting. I liked how the story was historically accurate and the manner that it was told. The imagery was beautiful as well. I can't imagine what it must have been like to fly in a plane all day for the sole purpose of bringing down enemy planes, and then being lucky enough to have a long, successful career and not be a martyr in the process.
This comic seemed to follow the Tales from the Crypt philosophy, where the bad man gets his just rewards in the end. It was one of the solider's greed that ended getting him killed, though it saved the rest of his troupe. It was an interesting twist. That must have been the same fate of the first man the troupe of soldiers found at the beginning of the comic.
Challengers of the Unknown:
The first comics with the metal man was pretty strange (as Jack had forewarned me). A bunch of scientific facts were used to make the technology and story seem more real, but somehow a ball of rolling force ray energy, when collided with the metal man, was able to knock him out with the Challengers being unhurt. What happened there?
The second comic about the mirage world was pretty awesome. It was fun to read. Again, the art and the nature of the story telling was great for both of these comics. I'm liking Challengers more and more, and will most likely end up reading more from the text book when I have some free time. I would gladly lend someone my copy, with the mirage world chapter bookmarked, as recommended reading.
Week 6:
ReplyDeleteMAD was fairly comical. I can see how a lot of people were very entertained by their humor. Because the comics and jokes are based on well known characters a wide audience gets them and understands the jokes. Everyone can always use some humor once in a while. I actually liked one I read about Wonder Woman a while back a lot more than these two, but the jokes are all play off similar things. They poke fun at the fantastical elements of the comic by stretching them even farther.
Kona was... well I think it was possibly the worst written comic I've ever read. Like, if I hadn't read the intro I would have thought it was all a joke. The logic is very broken and everything is unrelatable and I find that to be really disengaging. The artwork is great as far as the animals and some of the landscapes but the humans are kinda disappointing in comparison sometimes. I did like some of the mutate animals though, but maybe that's cause the reminded me of Avatar the Last Airbender.
Doofy Batman was pretty doofy. It just felt sort of Care Bears bland to me, if that makes sense? It does make Batman and Robin's relationship really awkward. I always thought Batman was more like a father figure/mentor to Robin but here Robin's definitely his equal or maybe even more dominant, but with the campy speech they just fit seem like preteen best friends. It's a new type of crazy for Batman. How has he not been put in a psyche ward?
Lone Hawk was pretty but I don't feel like the message they talked about in the intro hit home. All I got out of it was a fairly bland hero story. Also, the text was small and the hand was a little muddy which made it fairly frustrating to read for me.
Souvenirs, I agree with Lindsay. It seemed just like the EC horror stories but in a war genre. The character were flat, the moral was clear, and it didn't feel like the story was really war oriented. War typically isn't that fair. War is chaotic, dirty, and depressing. This felt fake and gimmicky I guess, with the portrayal of characters and the clean cut moral. The war aspect just felt like something tacked on over the real story of greed over loyalty. But, maybe that's me.
Challangers of the Unknown was as usual, super scifi weird. Nobody's thrown really by the sudden appearance of an alien. Nobody is mad or blames the alien for letting the metal monster get loose and wreaking havok on earth. The president isn't called, nope, it's just an alien with unknown technology, that seems to know a great deal about earth helping you out. No biggie. What? But that pretty common for that comic series.
However the mirage one seemed extra weird even for them. There's just so many questions here. Why is the Challenger chick out there in the first place? Why a medieval town connected to a desert? I mean a castle is not something you usually hear of being a mirage in a desert. Where does sound for the doorway come from? Why don't medieval people leave ever? Why does the woman want to help them escape once, but not later? Why does she in the first place? Are the people their really not thrown much by the Challangers different clothes and hairstyles? There is just too many questions. It's like for one comic the Challangers decided to be a fantasy comic, a whole different genre, which was interesting, but didn't work so well.
And btw, that Abner video was truely just horrible. I mean besides being horribly pixelized the animation was just painful. The story was funny, a little campy, but funny, but the animation made me cringe. I wonder how they ever thought that was good enough quality for tv.
The interview video was just surreal.
As for my vote for the suggested read, I feel like this is the opposite of two weeks ago. I really don't feel any of the ones specifically for us to read were anything special. Still, if I have to choose, I choose Lone Hawk. It felt most like a war comic which is something we haven't read a lot of.
Challengers of the Unknown: I liked reading the stories this week. The mirage world was interesting because it had to do with a deadline of time and trying to escape rather than just fighting bad monsters. The story with the metal man kind of made me feel bad for the metal alien. He was either being used to dig up oil or trying to be captured by the alien and the challengers. It never tells us why he was being escorted to prison.
ReplyDeleteMAD Archives: I liked the drawing style portrayed in this comic book. It is fun and easy to understand. It is funny to see the before and after transformations of superduperman.... they look nothing alike. They dont even look the same age. Along with Batboy and his changing logo, superduperman had a logo that changed too.
Greatest Batman Stories: During the beginning of the story when robin appears out of nowhere, I knew it was a dream that batman was having. I thought it was funny when Batman would see all the monsters that he did while dreaming. It did make me wonder what Robin and the Dr.'s plan was to fix Batman and how all of a sudden Robin was captured. At first i thought it was a set up by Robin and the Dr. in order to fix Batman troubles.
Best War Comics: The first comic, Lone Hawk, was hard for me to read. The words weren't the most legible and the pictures were very dark. I also didn't like it as much because I do not care for war stories. I did like the other one better though. It was crazy to see the guy go after all of the enemy's teeth and endanger the other people in the troop with his selfishness. I wanted the guy to have the bad around his neck when he was found so that they knew he was being foolish.
I recommend the MAD comics for the other people to read.