Persepolis 111-341

In the second half of the book Marjane enters adolescence and also becomes an adult. She also leaves Iran to be schooled in Austria. the change of setting from Iran to Austria allowed the pictures to become more detailed. Austria does not have the same rules about appearance as Iran had so the characters had features that were not shown in other characters. I also thought that the detail of the drawings had improved a little bit but for the most part remaned simple. Marjane's struggles change in this part of the book. In Europe she has trouble conforming to being a westerner but when she returns to Iran all of her friends look at her as a westerner rather then Persian and she feels lost and does not fit in anywhere.

Persepolis 3-110

Out of all the graphic novels we have read in class so far I would say that this one easily has the simplest drawings. All the characters have the same shaped head with no strong facial features except for mustaches and beards on the men and a few characters with different colored hair. This threw me off at some points because I could not tell who was who in the book. Unlike Maus there are not many pictures of brutality going on. After reading Maus it was good to not have to see so much of this but if I were to have not read Maus i wonder if I having more visual scenes of the demonstrations would have got the point across better about how bad things really were.

Spiegelman Book 2 2-5

Vladek continues to tell Art his story but his health is getting worse.  they finally get out of the concentration camps and try to re-enter society.  Vladek and one of his friends begin working for the Americans doing simple tasks for them.  The same anti-semitism from before and during the war has not been erased.  One of the interesting things about the last half of the book is that there is a real picture of Vladek right after he left the camps.  The only time animals are not drawn in the book is in the cartoon about his mother's suicide but this isn't even a cartoon it's an actual picture.  I think Spiegelman put this in because he felt people should see the actual man of the story for all that his father had to overcome to survive.

Spiegelman book 2 chapters 1-2

so the second book of Maus focuses on Vladek's joureny throught Auschwitz and how he survived in the concentration camps. Vladek uses the same clever tactics that he used in Poland in Auschwitz to survive in the camp. Spiegelman uses the same ideas in presenting the sory as he did in the first book of Maus. The setting for the stroy has changed as his father is now in the Catskill Mountains in upstae New York. In most of the pictures the mice are not drawn as bad as I thought they would be. Only when they take off their shirts or dead mice are shown are they shown to be in bad condition.

Spiegelman Book 1

In the first series of Art Spiegelman's Maus Spiegelman describes his father's experience living in Nazi occupied Europe.  Spiegelman switches from the present time where his father and his new wife discuss how they despise each other to his story of struggling to survive in Poland during World War II.  The Holocaust is a hard issue to discuss but Spiegelman keeps the reader in the story by occasionally stopping the Holocaust description and focusing on him trying to make the book and discuss his father's problems.  the occasional break allows the reader to take a break from the cruelty of the Nazi regime and so to speak catch your breath before resuming the story. Making the faces of the Jews, Germans, and Polish people of animals also helps tell the story.  I thought one of the best drawings was of Vladek (Art's father) and his mother Anja disguised as Pigs which is the animal chosen to represent the Polish.  Vladek says that he was able to blend in more but his wife looked more Jewish.  the picture drawn shows Anja's mouse tail reveled while Vladek's is tucked in his clothing to represent this.      

Thompson 3-9

I was really surprised by how this book ended.  It was not the typical ending to a story and caught me off guard.  Thompson continued to use the style of having many frames without words and continues to go back and forth between time periods although he does this less often then he did in the first two chapters.  

Thompson 1-2

When reading Blankets I thought it went by really quickly.  Unlike Fun Home the author chose to use pictures more then words to explain the story.  there were a lot of panels without any words and even a number of pages that didn't use any words to describe the situation at all. You have to use your imagination a lot more.  Some of the panels don't need words to describe the situation.