Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics

The book Understanding Comics is truly a fascinating look into the production of comics that I was not expecting to be nearly as deep as it was. Its kind of funny, since in the beginning he talks about how comic books as an entertainment medium are usually discounted as being simplistic and childlike, and because the book itself is told in the form of a comic, I didn't think it would be as content-laden as it was. I found the section on iconography really interesting and almost philosophical in a sense. The idea of relating to simplistic faces and emotions more readily because we have a simplified image of our own face in our minds at all times had never even occurred to me. The techniques used to keep characters interesting while more realistically designed backgrounds are behind them was something that actually made a lot of sense and is something that should be considered in all picture making. Overall I thought the  book had a ton of insight in to things I never even considered before, and makes me rethink the depth of storytelling that is possible in chronological picture-making.

Max Ernst Storyline

The story being depicted in "The Rooster's Laughter" is one heavy in symbology and metaphor. The story seems to start with a woman being buried in the presence of these overpowering men taking the forms of roosters. I get the sense that the men having rooster heads is to imply some sort of animalistic dominance in the story, as for the next few pages they are always in dominating poses and positions, while the women are lying passively on the ground, either injured or dead. In the panel where there is a man with a human head dancing, there is a rooster coming entering the room behind him. I feel like this is meant to symbolize the instinct of what is considered "masculinity" attempting to overpower the more restrained and cultured side of this man. A lot of the pages depict scenes of women hiding or being overpowered by these rooster-like creatures, and in some panels being confronted directly with symbols of death. In some scenes, the women are being carried away by other unrecognizable monsters, which leads me to believe there is some other agent of death involved, such as a plague of disease or famine. Towards the end, the women begin overtaking the roosters with violent force, and become what the rooster's represented.

The Arrival

Shaun Tan's the arrival is a perfect example of storytelling in its most universal form; it communicates everything entirely through visual symbols and gestures that anyone from any culture can relate to. It tells the story of an immigrant leaving his family to travel to a new and strange world full of promise. Upon first glance it may seem that this is a simple metaphor for the immigration that occurred into the United States in the early 20th century, however the experience is universal to anyone moving to a foreign place. Each person the main character meets shares his or her own experience of how they got to where they were, with every story being drawn directly from real experiences gathered from real people.

The decision to forgo the use of words in telling this web of stories was not arbitrary or gimmicky, as it directly related to subject matter and concept. In order to feel the direct connection with the main character's sense of confusion and feeling of being out of place, you had to be just as bewildered by everything as he was. The representation of all the signage and lettering on papers and buildings as an incomprehensible series of characters made the ability to empathize with the feeling of being somewhere totally new and frightening palpable. I believe this is why wordless comics serve a purpose for existing. It is a quality shared by early silent movies, but has been almost entirely lost due to our media-saturated current culture. Is has the ability to translate complex emotions and concepts in a way that direct communication through language cannot. It allows for a more direct experience, and in my opinion a more personal experience of a story.

I can only hope more stories like this continue to be made as our culture continues to prefer loud, direct action to subtle, quiet experiences.