Comics

I don't really feel like giving any big review on anything, so here's something completely different instead.

So today I feel like talking about one of my favorite subjects: Comics.

Comics have always appealed to me, ever since I started reading I have always enjoyed looking through the pages, look at the art and action, or in newspapers, the jokes. In fact, I remember the first time I read Garfield, my mother had the first seven collections of it. While the jokes are stale to this day (Garfield likes lasagna, hates Monday, punts Odie, berates Jon, etc.), they are still a good starting point to demonstrate humor. In fact, as a younger child, I started learning more about humor and how it worked via reading these. There's some jokes that don't make immediate sense and you have to use your noggin. The comic humor is the same, playing around with puns or references and usually poking fun at them.

Pictured: How I spend most nights

I think the most important thing in these comics are the characters though. You have to at least like this person that you have on there. Garfield, while being a jerk, is still kind at times. Charlie Brown is a rather depressing person, yet he's likeable because of how we can relate to him at times. Comic characters like Spiderman have tragic stories yet likeable personalities, and yet at times, they can also be completely over the top and silly like Deadpool and we'll still like it. As long as these characters are written well, the populace will continue to enjoy them. And sometimes, they just feel rather human.

8-bit Theater is a good example of a comic done right. It is a sprite comic, yes (as in, using normal or modified video games sprites and using this instead of actual drawings), but it's so fantastically written that I can't help but reread it now and then. It's certainly very long, with large blocks of dialogue that I would normally critique a comic for, but it does a decent job at making fun of itself. The characters are very fun, the main four in general, Fighter, Black Mage, Thief, and Red Mage, all having these dysfunctional personalities that allow them to really stick out. Their strange adventure and the people they meet, enemies included, are all a pleasure to see whenever they appear. The jokes are also really smart a good chunk of the time, rather than just relying on crude humor. I would give this one a recommend if you feel like reading a lot. There's a bunch of references thrown around you might not fully get, but that makes discovering more about them that much more fun.

Another really decent one is Nedroid (even though the lack of updating has left me sad). To puns, to taking phrases and idioms literally, to messing around with his own characters, the author really shows a good sense of humor without having to make dirty humor. Plus, having a jerk and a straight man together (that is, a straight man being one that balances out the weird with a more normal attitude) is often a plus for me, and here it is done well. The comic itself doesn't take itself seriously like the previous one, but unlike the other that tries to be consistent with its plotholes and such, this is more played around with. Overall, this one I definitely recommend to any comic lover.

Yeah, yeah, I know. One Piece is a manga/ anime. Well, a manga is basically a comic anyways, just stylized a little bit differently. But I'm still going to throw it out there as one of my favorite manga series ever. Just the evolution of the art and characters really make this for me, and Oda himself balances out a ton of characters emotions and personalities. Another really enjoyable thing from it is the fact that a lot of characters will have bizarre traits, such as a unique laugh, a fun appearance (although I will conceed to too many of the women either being monsterous or nami clones), a weird trait (Zoro always getting lost, even on a straight line), what have you. It's a very long series that's been going for over a decade now, but I definitely feel like it's a must. Even with a style that's not like a typical anime.

There's several comics and manga I do enjoy, and I think that they themselves really helped me move into reading books and such as I grew older. I still enjoy looking at them (One Piece still has a long time to go before it's even done) and enjoying their stories and humor to this day. It's really a shame that comics aren't appreciated more as a literary form, as I feel like it's a style that can bring certain people into reading, even if their imagination isn't fully being taken advantage of. I feel like any way of making people read will help.

I feel like that's all I really have to say for now. I think I'll talk about bad comics (or good comics turned bad) sometime in the future here, but for now, I'll just keep it simple and clean, so look out for comics.

Oh, and another thing I'll throw out there is that I'm really excited for Stripped, a documentary which will be about the decline of newspaper comics and the future for comics themselves. Seeing as how Nedroid was in the trailor, I'm excited to see that, not to mention interviews with Bill Watterson (creator of Calvin and Hobbes) and Jim Davis (Garfield). Check it out below.