Analysis of Comics and Other Works of Literature

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Day One (2/14): When I hear or see the word “comics” many words come to mind such as, news papers, books, children, Sundays, superhero and partners in crime. Before learning about comics, I would define “comics” as a narration of a story with pictures and captions in a certain order, that are often printed in a book or newspaper.
Day Two (2/17) After reading Understanding Comics and a class discussion, I changed my initial definition of “comics” to “a sequence of images and pictures intended to get a certain response from the reader”. I decided to change my definition because I felt that it was too narrow, and I applied others ideas into my new definition. From the beginning of Maus, the reader automatically feels bad for the characters, the first pages of the book shows Artie being bullied by his friends at a young age, and his father, Valdek, is not sympathetic towards his son. Through out the book, I felt really bad for Valdek, his new wife, and Artie because Valdek’s first wife, and Artie’s mother, Anja’s death is still affecting them years after. Nothing ever seemed to go right for the characters in Maus, whenever one good thing happened to them, there wasn’t much time in between for the characters to enjoy a happy moment, before something bad would happen, which again, made be really sad for the characters. One question I had about Maus, was why were the characters mice? After having a large group discussion, we figured out that the author, made the characters not human, because it allows you to think of the characters as not human, and possibly feel different emotions towards the characters since they are not human.
Day Three (2/19) I selected the scene from Maus where Valdek, Art’s father, is complaining about his seco...

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...chool on the island for Chris so he would not have to leave and would not be exposed to other children. Slate also required Gwen to have plastic surgery, and a work out routine after she had Chris so she would be more appealing to look at for the viewers. Slate not only manipulated the characters, he manipulated and lied to the world, he hid the fact that Gwen had twins, not only from her but from the world, Slate also knew that there was a chance that Chris was not a clone of Jesus, but portrayed him as so for fame and money.
So far I have really enjoyed this section of “religion and comics”, before this class, I had never read a comic besides the ones in the Sunday paper. Maus, A Contract With God, and Punk Rock Jesus have allowed me to explore, a part of literature I never thought I would enjoy, while learning about religion outside of a traditional textbook.

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