Dark Knight Returns

The Dark Knight Returns was an epic comic. It had all the big guys; Batman, Superman, Robin, Green Arrow, and a whole army that Batman trains! I had no idea that this book was like this. It starts out normal enough with Bruce Wayne becoming Batman again after coming across a Mutant gang in the alley where his parents were killed. Carrie Kelly helps him as his new Robin (I did not like this character very much. I think her role as the 'side-kick' was boring and expected, although it was cool that she was a girl). Commissioner Gordan is replaced by Ellen Yindel and Batman sees that even though Two Face looks normal again, he is still bad. When Batman finds out that an army general was giving guns and weapons to the Mutant gangs, he confronts him and finds out the general was only doing it for the money to save his sick wife. He kills himself in front of Batman. Then Batman fights the Mutant gangs, but the leader of the gang kills the Mayor. Batman gets him out of jail so that he can kill him. Then the Joker gets out of jail and gets Batman to come to a talk show, where he sprays him with Joker venom and runs away. The Joker takes Selina Kyle and ties her to a bomb in the middle of a field after killing a group of Cub scouts. Luckily, Robin (Carrie) defuses the bomb. Batman finally fight the Joker and breaks his neck, but does not kill him. However, like the army general, the Joker kills himself in front of Batman by twisting his neck to break the rest of his spine. The old Mutant gang members who became the Sons of Batman after he killed their leader become the local law force, a source of vigilante justice. The government gets Superman to come and fight Batman and during the battle Oliver Queen shoots Superman with a Kryptonite arrow and Batman wins. BUT! Batman soon after has a heart attack and Alfred blows up Wayne Manner (then Alfred dies of a stroke). However, when at the funeral of Batman, Superman hears a heart beating in the coffin and realizes that Batman is still alive. Overall I thought the book was cool, but I didn't like it as much as the Killing Joke. I enjoyed each of the stories, but not on as deep a level as I enjoyed The Killing Joke. I thought the art work was good, but not my favorite of the books we have read. I think this might have been too superhero-y of a comic for me. I prefer the ones that take it to the next level and give it more depth.

The Killing Joke

I have not read a lot of Batman comics, but this one will probably be my favorite no matter what. The Killing Joke was simply amazing. The insight into the psyche of the Joker is incredibly well done and intense. I like the portrayal of the joker as an intellectual, rather than just a "jokester." I think that it gives his character much more depth to have him give reasons for why he is bad. His description of man kind is particularly bleak. For instance, on page 290 the Joker says, "I give you...the average man! Physically unremarkable, it has instead a deformed set of values. Notice the hideously bloated sense of humanity's importance. The clubfooted social conscience and the withered optimism....How do they live, I hear your ask." He calls humanity club footed and withered, clearly giving a dark outlook on human life. The format of the book sort of reminded me of in Hamlet, when the gravediggers are digging Ophelia's grave make jest of death. Same as in the Swedish film, The Seventh Seal, where the Squire plays chess with death. All three of these characters, the Joker, the gravediggers, and the Squire believe death to be an embittered and hopeless joke. This complexity of the story made it a very sophisticated and interesting read. Besides the story, the artwork was also amazing. Each panel is a masterpiece in itself and as a whole it is an incredible piece of art. One of my favorite panels is the one on the bottom of page 282 where the Joker is looking straight out at the reader with his head tilted sharply sideways. His eyes are bloodshot and the thin, jagged lines that go through it make it even more intense. Everything about it screams insanity. Overall, I really liked this book and the more I think about tit the more I like it. I enjoyed all the conversations between the Joker and Batman, and the back story to how the Joker became the Joker. It has definitely become one of my favorites.

All Star Superman

Grant Morrison's and Frank Quietely's All Star Superman was a very interesting read. After reading We3 I was excited for the art work before I even opened it up and I was not disappointed. I have never read a Superman comic before because Superman has never been one of my favorite super heroes, but I did find this to be pretty good. Most of time I find Superman to be pretty cheesy, which I am sure is part of its appeal, but just not for me. However, I thought the dialogue in this version was sophisticated and I liked the stories. Of the six episodes in volume 1, I think my favorite was the fourth one, Superman/Jimmy Olsen War. I liked it for a number of reasons, mainly I liked seeing the dark side of Superman and I like Jimmy Olsen as a character. I thought the use of color was particularly good in this episode, also. For instance, on page 93, we can see the beginning of Superman's transformation into bad superman as the background of his speech bubbles becomes gray. Then when he makes the full transformation they turn fully black. I also like the rainbow jacket. One thing about the comic that I really didn't like was the lettering of the titles (on pages 30, 41, 80, 84, 109, 137). I thought they didn't fit with the rest of the art work that was so incredible. These titles reminded me of stuff people make in Microsoft Publisher. I just didn't like how it fit in with the rest of the book. The use of color throughout the book were also really impressive. I liked how the panels went back and forth from black and white to color on 46 to 47 to emphasize that Louis Lane is finally seeing things clearly. Then on the next two pages the panels alternate from a dull grey background to a vibrant pink. I think that it keeps the reader interested, or at least it did for me. Another thing I found amusing was that the dogs in Superman are so similar to the dog in We3. I liked that because you can see the artist in the works.

Akira Review

Akira is the story of two friends, Kaneda and Tetsuo. It takes place in Neo-Tokyo in the year 2019 after World War III when there was apparently a huge bomb that devastated Japan. Tetsuo and Kaneda are in a bike gang that runs into a young boy. Tetsuo, unable to stop in time, gets into a wreck on his motorcycle and is hurt. Before Kaneda is able to find the little boy, he disappears. Then the military come to the scene of the explosion and ask a lot of questions. Tetsuo is taken to a government research lab where they experiment on him and his underlying physic abilities begin to awaken. He is more powerful than any they have seen before and more dangerous because he does not know how to control it. The friendship between the two teenage boys is put under a lot of strain as Tetsuo learns more about his powers. Kaneda, meanwhile, is having a relationship with an anti-government woman named Kei. Tetsuo is confused by his new abilities and starts to learn that the force behind it all is the mysterious Akira.

Akira was an amazing read. The art work was incredibly detailed and emotional for a graphic novel. There was a lot of action in the book and while sometimes that can be hard to follow, it was very clear in Akira. You could see exactly what was happening as well as feeling it. I think that is an incredibly admirable skill to have. The author Otomo Katsuhiro is also a very good story teller. He did a great job at developing his characters and their motives. You understood all of the characters at a very personal level, which made it possible to understand their actions and see where they were coming from. Although a pretty long novel, it read quickly and felt almost like watching a movie. The depiction of Neo-Tokyo may have been my favorite part. Katsuhiro really made the future city come alive and it sort of reminded me of A Clockwork Orange. I think because it had to do with teenagers doing bad things, but there was something very similar about the two.

I really enjoyed reading this book and am definitely going to continue with the series. I don't understand how anyone could stop after just reading the first one! I need to know what happens and what this elusive Akira is!

WE3 Review

WE3 is the story of 3 animals, a dog, a cat, and a bunny, that have been turned into the ultimate weapons. The story begins with the decision to terminate the We3 as the company decides to expand, whoever their trainer is against killing them and facilitates their escape. The animals are essentially half robot and have the ability to speak in fragments. They are incredibly deadly. They escape, but are pursued by helicopters and soldiers intent on their destruction. Then the animals come upon a father and son hunting in the woods. The father shoots the rabbit and the dog and cat react by killing the father and his pet dog. Eventually, after much more destruction, the dog and cat shed their armor realizing it is not actually a part of them. Then the homeless man who fed them earlier becomes their owner.
Quitely's use of the page is very interesting for a comic book. He has a way of using extreme close ups to give you a better sense of the scene you are reading. He also uses a lot of splash pages that are incredibly beautiful. I liked that there was not a lot of dialogue and most of the story was told through the pictures. I think the characters were also very interesting. Their limited ability to talk gave them personality, but also insight to the limitations of having animals as weapons. The art in the book was just amazing, even though at times it was quite violent. I especially like when Quitely layered the panels, using several smaller panels of close ups to give the feel of the larger scene going on in the background. Overall it was very interesting reading.

Watchmen

I read Watchmen for the first time this fall. I had been hearing about it for so long that I decided it was really time that I read it. I was amazed how sophisticated it was. I had read a couple of comic books before and Persepolis had been the only other graphic novel, but Watchmen was so different. Watchmen is set in a similar universe during the 1980's. The main difference with the Watchmen universe is that there are super heroes. While these vigilantes were popular for a while, they had fallen out of favor and there was a law passed in 1977 that forbid them from practicing vigilante justice. None of them have any "super" powers, besides Doctor Manhattan, who is used as a weapon and an advantage against the Soviet Union. The story begins with the murder of one of the original Watchmen Edward Blake, the Comedian. The first panel is a close up of his smiley face button with a drip of blood on it sitting in the sewer on the street. The scene zooms out until we see that he was thrown out of his window from a high rise apartment building. The police inspectors have no idea what happened. Rorschach, a super hero who refused to "retire", finds out that Blake was the Comedian and believes that there is a plot to kill off all the costumed adventurers. He tries to convince his old friends of the plot, but has some trouble doing so. Doctor Manhattan banishes himself to Mars when he is accused of causing cancer, which throws the country into political unrest because he was a huge weapon. His wife Laurie Juspeczyk, who is the second Silk Spectre, goes and stays with her old friend Dan Dreiberg, the second Nite Owl. They form a romance and break Rorschach out of prison to help him stop the plot against the costumed adventurers. They discover that it was Adrian Veidt who killed the Comedian and he plans on a larger scale attack on the city. He destroys much of the city, giving humanity a chance to start over. Rorschach does not believe this is right and Doctor Manhattan kills him before leaving for another galaxy.
The story is an amazing testament to what graphic novels are capable of. The art and writing in Watchmen is incredible. I have never felt so moved by characters or art while reading. I think that Rorschach's mask of ever changing ink blots is an awesome idea. It is so completely different from any other super hero costume I have ever seen or read about. I enjoy the dark undertones of the entire story and how even though the Watchmen do good, they are somewhat hated. Their involvement in justice is morally ambiguous. The colors used in the book are also very vibrant and emotional. The contrast of the red blood on the yellow happy face button is intense. Rorschach's journal entries may be my favorite part of the novel. I enjoyed reading it again and cannot wait to see the movie.

Covers

Perhaps most impressive to me about Will Eisner's The Spirit covers is the use of space. In the first cover that we looked at from No. 26, there is a spider web that covers both the title and Eisner's name. You can see Spirit tangled in the web trying to free himself while a villain in the background approaches and a woman seductively looks on. There is a certain amount of haste and desperation in Spirits expression and body language that is hard to get from cartoons. I also liked the second cover in our packet from No. 28. It sort of reminds me of Indiana Jones because of the Spirit's costume. All of the little gnome-like creatures attacking him are both funny and scary looking at the same time. They seem to be delaying Spirit as he tries to travel underground. You can even see how unbalanced he is on the logs floating in the water. The main thing that I like about Eisner's covers is that you get a sense of what is going to happen in the story before even reading it.