Charlie Brett's media blog: Unit 33 Comics

Task 1:
What different kinds of products do Fantagraphics publish? i.e. graphic novels? Comic strips? Deluxe editions?

Fantagraphics publish comic strips. Comic strips are a sequence of illustrations telling a story. These are usually featured it newspapers and magazines.

· List the titles of as many different comics that Fantagraphics publish, do they have anything in common?

Krazy Kat, Prince Valliant, The comics journal, Eros comics, Los Tejanos,

Love and rockets, Ghost world, Neat stuff, Doomsday squad, most of these comics look like they are based around a fantasy world. two comics that does stick out is Eros comic and Black kiss as they seem to be more for adults.

· List as many creators as you can from the article and can you identify their role in terms of writing, drawing or both?

Kim Thompson- Co-Owner

Gary Groth- Founder

Brian K. Vaughan – Writer

Paul Hornschemeier - artist

Gil Kane- artist

Barry Windsor- Illustrator (artist)

Jack Kirby – artist

Task 2:

Contents/ style

Both comics are in black and white, and are based around detectives that live in worlds with characters that aren't normal for real life. An example of this could be the robots in robot love, and the villains in Dick Tracy, this might be due to the influence Chester gould had on Charles burns. Both comics also have the same grotesque style to them with creepy characters.

Meaning

Both Big Baby and Robot love have themes of crime and violence, in big baby there's domestics violence and crime as you see a man being dragged along by a masked man, Robot love is a detective comic so the narrative tends to revolve around violence. In robot love the missing person El Borbah is tasked with finding has see what the robot/ cyborg life is like and he never connected with normal life so felt the need to become robotic. Depressing themes such that are found in robot love can also be found in Burns' Big baby.

Audience

The audience for RAW would predominantly be mature older male audience as it features themes that would be too mature for younger viewers and the themes seem to revolve around the themes a stereotypical male would enjoy. Burns wanted Robot love to reach out to an audience of people who don't usually read comics because they don't have an interest in super hero's. Burns wanted people to see his comic as not one of the super hero comics.

Character

The character El Borbah is based of the Mexican wrestler Lucha this is due to Burns' love of wrestling. Both El Borbah and Big Baby have alien like featureless faces this seems to be a common feature with Burns' main characters. Burns had an interest in wrestling throughout his childhood and he was obsessed with the Mexican wrestling, through this obsession came El Borbah.

Task 3:

Character Grid

Victor Harlow		Jack White		Jamie Harlow
17	Male	18	Male	25	Male
Loud, Think they are hilarious, Fun, Usually energetic, usually thinks they are right.		Super energetic personality, a little bit dumb.		Cautious enthusiastic and caring
Food, money, sleep, wants to make films.		Trying to find the good in everything.		Trying not to destroy the world.
Have no powers because he’s human.		Is Invulnerable (can’t die) but isn’t aware of it because they are a bit dumb.		He has the power to make anything he thinks of happen but anything he thinks of even for a second happens.