To be honest, I do not like this book as much. This is the first time for me to read a American comic, and it is quit different than those that I read before. I do not like it because the way pictures look like but I do like the story plot a lot.
Firstly, I do not like the way pictures are drawn. I was a big fan of comic books when I was in China. I am still a fan of comic books but I do not like American comic books very much. Even though they are all comic books, they look quit different. This is due to the difference of appearance of Western people and Asian people because people draw characters base on their own appearance.
Lets see a picture of Chinese vampire.
It is abvious that Chinese use much more bright color for vampire stories. In Asian areas, people like to draw much more positive stories about vampire. There are always a group of good vampire or there are all good vampire. There are also less violent and terrific pictures in the books. Of course, there will never be a shower picture in comic books that can be published.
Let see an iconic vampire comic book in Japan. As we see, pictures in Japanese comic books are more goddess and meticulous.
As comparison, it is easy to see these differences in pictures. Therefore, when I read Anita Blake, it takes a while for me to get used to it.
Another reason that I do not like this book is the narratives boxes. There are just too much of them in the book. For the first time I read it, I read the speech bubbles and narrative boxes only. I like the story. The plot is interesting and characters are well built by the narrative boxes. However, for the second time when I read pictures only, I feel confused and contradictory. From my imagination, Anita is a tough woman. Even though she feels helpless or fearful sometime and look for comfort from penguins. It is really bother me to see her wearing penguins always. It just makes her weak. On the other hand, since this is a comic book, some of the narrative boxes are unnecessary. For example, it is meaningless to say " Luther is overweight, over fifty, chain-smokes, and yet he is never sick." because we can see them easily by the picture.
Since this comic is based on the novel, it is not really successful. From my point of view, both pictures and speech/ narrative boxes are too strong. It is hard for readers to follow either of them. Therefore, contradictions appear.
I really enjoyed your display of the different comics of vampires and how they are depicted in other areas of the world. I agree, I did think there was too many words or "bubbles" which disrupted the drawings.I also think most of the pictures are grotesque and take away from some of the reading. I also thought it was interesting that you looked at just the pictures and obtained a different perspective of the plot. In general, I would have to say comic style can be very confusing to read!
ReplyDeleteI really like that you added pictures of comics from China! Its really interesting to see the difference between those comics and the Anita Blake comic-Anita is very sexual and graphic. I also agree that it was difficult to read the novel because of the illustrations.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, manga is very different than Anita Blake is, and it's better too. The art style is different and it's set up so that you can see more of the art than the way Anita Blake is. I think that putting a novel into a comic just makes for not a typical comic, unless they were to leave out a lot of details and cause confusion (which even happened with the amount of detail that was there already...). I like your pictures of the manga. I love that style of drawing, I always try to draw characters in that style.
ReplyDeleteI found your comparison between American and Chinese comics interesting. I agree with you that Anita is a tough woman. I am not sure that the penguins makes Anita appear weak, I view the penguins like a "Hello Kitty" thing.
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