Five Underground Comics (3 points)


    I've read an assortment of comics within the categories given, starting with Abortion Eve. while just looking at the titles of the comics this one really stood out to me since the topic of abortion hasnt stopped being contrversial. Talking strictly from an art view, this was the worst looking one out of the five i've read. The framing or the inking wasn't interesting and looked so off putting to me. Especially when someone would look up. Sometimes the text boxes were hard to read since the text would be front in center instead of the characters. The characters felt like they were thought about last compared to the story. While the art looked bad the story was quite informative. It was straight to the point and told facts in a way that didn't feel like a textbook. This one was the most down to earth and interesting to read about. I wish we could have read this comic when talking about sex ed in school. The characters, even drawn poorly, could still be related since they have been written well enough to make up for it.

    I also read Naked Hostility. That one was hard to follow and read. How close together each frame was, on top of how much information is jam packed inside of each frame, made it really hard to read for me. On top of that the character designs are so wild. The women having wildly puffy lips, boobs out and always present, others having extreme promotions and more. The bits I liked the most was when a page was a full illustration. It became easy to read and appreciate the wacky character designs and what message they are trying to tell me. There were some funny jokes here and there but I didn't really enjoy this comic as a whole. The topic's importance felt overshadowed by the wacky designs and made me not take it very seriously or care about the topic. If this was more funny or less chaotic to look at i feel like i would have enjoyed this more.

    Another comic I read was Girl Fight Comics No. 1. The first story I read felt off. Every moment Kwahiri was getting raped or fucked by someone. I feel like this type of story where POC lead is only getting screwed over by everything is a trend within social media and life in general. Does this type of thing happen within the POC community, yes, all the time. I personally am really tired of consuming this type of media. It creates a narrative of one big pity party of “time to feel bad for POC and give them anything we ask for.” I just want equality instead of pity. Regardless the story itself i feel like has been told a million times over again and it's sad that it does happen over and over again.

    The last two I read I really liked. Monolith and Mu: the land that never was both talk about a really that could have either happened or happened. Both coming from a fancy front the topics they talked about were dramaticized but still talking about events that could happen. Mu was the most unrealistic one but still talking about political corruption, greed and sex. Which is pretty much what rules our government today. Monolith was a really cool take on what happens when war is used to solve issues as well as human corruption within a war torn society. On Top of the environmental issues that come with greed. The world leaders fought each other to the point of destroying earth to the point of no return. Even when the humans are redacted to become scavages again the same mentality of ruling over each other no matter what persists. Also the use of narcotics (most likely weed) to detach from reality is also used a lot within these stories.

    After reading these I feel like the trend of over sexualizing women to prove a point is the biggest trend that graphic novels today use. A lot of these stories don't need to have a womens boobs and nipples in my face to make the message behind it work. A lot of times when a woman was in a story their main character trait was i'm a woman who has boobs look at me doing this. I don't think this is empowering in any way or is it helping much with the whole equality debate.

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