Andy Death Ray Superhero

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The Death Ray by Daniel Clowes is a graphic novel about the story of Andy and how he learned about his superpowers. A superhero is someone who has saved the day by accomplishing something heroic for the good of others. Even though we look at superheroes as a something fiction, based on this we have everyday heroes around us such as firefighters, police officers, doctors and many more. In Clowes work, we quickly discover that this superhero theme plays out a little differently than what we are used to. The way that Clowes presents Andy to his super power, it is clear this is not an ordinary superhero story. It is arguable that despite the fact that Andy did more harm than good with his powers, his intentions were good therefore, he would be …show more content…

To start out, on page 22, Andy witnesses and older gentlemen getting his TV stolen by two thieves. Andy immediately goes after the thieves in revenge for the old man. On page 11 we see Andy stepping in to rescue his friend, Louie. Louie was in a situation where he was getting beat up at school and Andy decided to take the risk to helping his friend out. As we see what Andy did in both situations, Andy could be considered very heroic. In a superhero story, a heroic action is something in which the character decided to help someone else for a positive outcome. By this, what Andy did here he would be considered a hero. Contrary to being a hero, Andy also behaved in a way that caused more harm than good in some parts to the story. On page 23, as Andy tests his death ray he kills an innocent squirrel. This is not very heroic because he abused the use of his power for something completely harmless. We can see afterwards the action really had a negative effect on Andy. In the last panel on page 23, the color scheme is very dark with lots of black and some yellow. Also, we see a speech bubble, but can’t see the words he is saying. This represents the way Andy was lost and speechless after this incident. Because Andy was feeling down after what he did, we can conclude that even though he made a bad mistake, that one mistake doesn’t define who his …show more content…

However, as we see, Clowes approaches the superhero genre in a way that most don’t. He does things out of the normal but with the way he does it in combination with his form, Clowes makes a story that keeps the audience interested. Clowes does a good job from that start of the book by incorporating the use of color into the way the plot plays out. Right in the beginning of the book it is clear that Andy’s childhood had a negative effect on his life and left his adulthood with a feeling of emptiness and oppression. We can infer from the way the panels were drawn; the ones of his childhood were full of bright color and representation of life. In opposition, the panels drawn of Andy as an adult had dull colors and expressed the lifelessness and oppression that he was left facing. As the story unfolds, we quickly realize that because Andy was unable to fulfill his hopes of saving the world from evil, he was left with a feeling of regret and that feeling would control him for the rest of his life. “After that, I went through a dark time, I even became Christian for a little while. I was lost, I’ll admit it.” (Page 37). From this quote, we can see that Andy was at a lost for his life and didn’t know what to

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