Skip to main content

Week 15- Women In Comics-Redux

As per the assignment, I am improving one of my previous blog posts, Week 12's "Women in Comics," for my final assignment for week 15. 

 The comic, "Ms Marvel," is a title that many familiar to Marvel comics already know, but none quite like this more modern take upon the IDEA of a Ms Marvel, by Sana Amanat, Stephen Wacker, G. Willow Wilson, and Adrian Alphona. It is made obvious numerous times that this is NOT the "actual" Ms. Marvel, or even any variant of the character in previous versions, (there is a quite enjoyable sequence in the first/second comic that shows her transforming into various previous variants of the character). This story is incredibly powerful for being not only a super-hero action and comedic story, but also one of an empowerment fantasy, and assimilation. We see the character struggle not just physically with the challenges she faces, but on a deep psychological level. One of her most powerful lines of dialogue includes, "Why does everyone get to be normal but me." 

 While not the most original story or concept, (the storyline of someone feeling alienated, lonely, or unsure of what to do with their powers has been seen many, many times a la Superman, Spiderman, etc) its defining characteristic is the execution of these aspects combined along with a voice headed by a somewhat dramatic, somewhat comedic viewpoint. While I personally don’t take a lot of inspiration from this story, it is nice to see another alternative take on the idea of what is truly heroic, this time from a combination of feminine and foreign points of view. Well executed with a lot of relatable, funny, and diverse characters, this newest addition to the Marvel universe may be a fan-girl, but she stands unique from and beside those she admires.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 13- "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" - In class assignment

1. My initial reaction to the text I read was sadness followed by acceptance, while certainly a MUCH darker overall tone that ANY golden age Superman story, this joint collaboration by Alan Moore, Curt Swan, George Perez, and Kurt Schaffenberger, is a damn near perfect end to this "run" of the Superman story. Focusing on the dramatic end of Superman, the story throws all of his most, and a few of his lesser, memorable villains and allies at him at once, a sort of collage of the entire Alan Moore run with the character. As Batman later describes it, "like walking through fragments of a legend." This comic celebrates everything that built Superman, from his allies and backstory, to his bitter enemies and emotional struggles; it ties up and ends practically every loose end previously left open in previous issues of the Superman story, while also providing one massive, yet satisfying cliffhanger at the story's end. 2. I grew up loosely following various versions ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 11- Contemporary Literature

For this week, I decided on reading "Alice in Sunderland," an exploration of famous literature and how it relates to the numerous "wondrous" events that occurred at the city of Sunderland, in North East England. Specifically centering around the famous accomplished writer Lewis Carroll, this sort of biographical novel, sort of review of decades of literature is an interesting mix of art and writing styles. It explores the various connecting factors between the writer, Lewis Carroll  and the Sunderland  area, with wider themes of history, myth and storytelling. The greatest bulk of the story is told from an elderly “rabbit” performer in a near empty theatre, save one loudmouth youngster, who starts off very detached and jaded from his work and focused more on something as “mundane as age.” This relatively relatable, realistic setting as our basis for the story only furthers the imaginative themes discussed in the novel, and makes for a nice reliable background to g...
Post a Comment
Read more

Analysis of Early Comics

From Little Nemo in Slumberland  to Calvin and Hobbes and Krazy Kat,  so many of early comics were primarily if not entirely based around cartoons and lighthearted, shorter "strips" of comedic observation or slapstick. Involving simple stories and characters, the objective of many of these seemed to be to attract younger audiences with the cartoon characters, never delving into more serious themes, reserving those for political cartoons or propaganda. Some early recreational comics however do explore more developed characters, such as Alex Raymond's Flash Gordan, an early adventure comic that focused on themes of science fiction, romance, and even aspects of war; (though HEAVILY filtered). These early adventure comics were some of the first comics to have continuing stories over multiple issues of a comic, involving much, much longer comics rather than a traditional "strip" of panels like previous cartoon oriented comics. These adventure stories were aimed at sl...
Post a Comment
Read more