Week 6 - Underground Comics

-
Most underground comics are intended to be offensive and push the borders of taste and propriety. These comics may include nudity, sex, violence, racism, sexism and pretty much anything considered to be offensive. 

For this week, I read Robert Crumb's Mr. Natural #1 as well as Whiteman. While reading Mr. Natural, I found myself looking at the images more as it was hard to follow a bit. Mr. Natural was interesting to read and was less disturbing to me than Whiteman was. Whiteman had some sexual and disturbing scenes especially since it was about a human and a creature that I believe was Bigfoot. The images and the actual text made me very uncomfortable that I couldn't even finish reading that section. I had to skip that part and read ahead and I honestly feel like that scene wasn't necessary. It was the only sexual part of the comic and I feel as though it didn't even need to be added. 


After reading underground comics, I realized how the material can range from being slightly offensive to overly offensive. That being said, there were a few comics that I feel like they were trying too hard to be offensive. They tried to integrate it into the story naturally but they just seemed to be forced. If given the choice to read these types of comics again, I would pass as the humor and content was just too crude for my taste and would prefer to read more adventure comics like Donald Duck. Overall, these comics were just disturbing and overwhelming.

Comments

  1. Olivia DeChantOctober 10, 2019 at 8:07 AM

    I agree, I also found Mr. Natural to be quite offensive and shocking. The sex scene was very graphic and it made me uncomfortable which is exactly what underground comics intended to do.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 2 - Understanding Comics

-
Image
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud had many interesting concepts throughout. It talks about the history behind comics and discusses the many techniques artists explore in order to get their message across in the comic yet still be relatable to the readers. An idea that stuck out to me was, "Our identities belong permanently to the conceptual world. They can't be seen, heard, smelled, touched or tasted. They're merely ideas. And everything else - at the start - belongs to the sensual world, the world outside of us" (McCloud 40). He says that things we have experienced in life can be separated into these two worlds or realms. There's the realm of the concept and the realm of the senses. This idea of these two worlds was interesting as they change the feel and concept of the comic. On one hand, there is the physical world. For the physical world, an artist would use realism as it helps portray the beauty and complexity of the world. On the other hand, there...
Read more

Week 5 - Body talk: Eisner and Thompson

-
Image
Habibi  is a graphic novel by Craig Thompson. It is about two runaway child slaves, Dodola and Zam, and the dangers and adventures they have to face in a fictional Islamic country. Thompson tries to present themes of environmentalism, anti-Islamophobia, racism, rape, and slavery through the use of visual and thematic cues from both the Qur'an and the Bible. The illustrations brings a lot of emotion as they try to portray designs and patterns of the Islamic culture. While reading there was something that made me a bit sad. The fact that the girl is only nine-years old and is sold into marrying a much older man and he rapes her, was quite sad to me. This affected me because, like the Islamic country in the story, there are a lot of child marriages in India. This isn't common now but while reading the story, it made me think about being in that position and how it would feel. My great grandparents and grandparents had a child marriage but luckily it wasn...
Read more