WEEK 2 READING RESPONSE

Calvin and Hobbes Collection by Bill Watterson

Having read Calvin and Hobbes from a very young age I was excited to reconnect with long forgotten stories I would flip through in my school library. I was always intrigued by Watterson's ability to capture elements of childhood and adulthood by merging the boundaries between them. His commentary on the subjective nature of reality through the metaphor of Hobbes- the character that we would sometimes see as a full grown tiger and sometimes as a stuffed toy. The ability to visually relay differently perceived reality successfully fascinated me, as I felt naturally carried from different worlds from panel to panel. The relationship that Calvin and Hobbes shared seemed to be so complex that it transcended the idea of a normal fantasy or imaginary friend. Also thinking about the dissection of comics using "Nancy" as a model- something we covered in Week 2, I was look at the panels with a new perspective of visual observation. 

Week 1 Reading Response

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

Just a few pages into McCloud's "Understanding Comics," I was intrigued by multiple concepts that served as lenses to see comics through a variety of different perspectives. The analytical approach towards deconstructing comics; as expected from McCloud's background which he mentions of in his TEDx Talk, brings the notions of the psyche and its functioning. All this, to get a better understanding the way we as humans interact with and perceive art and comics. 

The compression of time through elements such as the Gutter and Transitions peaked my interest a lot. It reminded me of this neurological problem I had read of once in the Phantoms in the Brain by V.S. Ramachandran called 'motion blindness' or Akinetopsia, where victims are disabled from seeing fluid motion and instead see rigid frames a few varying seconds after each other. When paying attention to how time is perceived in the white space between comic panels we are able to get insight into our brain's functioning of understanding information that is being relayed to it. McCloud smoothly carries on this kind of inquisitive mind wandering into the concept of icons which commented on our neurological wiring- our inescapable tendency to recognize  and see ourselves in everything. There is an apprehension of our brain- in a way, hallucinating our conscious reality. And how comics use this aspect of the human psyche to create visuals that allow readers to "be" and not just "see." Playing on the philosophy of extensions of identity, we are able to interact with comics and see reflections of selves in the form of archetypes.