Christmas Eve Triple Feature: Blankets

Baby, It's Cold Outside....

Wrap Up Tight With

Brrrrrrr! A cold home life and a cold Midwestern Winter set the stage for this deep and introspective tale of religion, redemption, acceptance, and finding a place in the world.

The comic has become a classic, and I highly recommend getting a copy for your bookshelf. It can be bought at this link but until your holiday money arrives it can be read free at Read Graphic Novels Online. I'll quote those good folks in synopsizing the story:

" In this autobiographical work, Thompson recalls his childhood, his coming-of-age stage, and his first love. In this book, Thompson also focuses on his spiritual journey, how growing up in an Evangelical Christian family has profoundly affected his life.

In this marvelous illustrated memoir, Thompson takes readers into his rather rough childhood: he always became the target of the bullies at school, his inconsiderate teachers, his relationship with his little brother Phil, and how he found their passion in drawings and art. In the later stage of his teenage years, Thompson met a girl who brightened up his seemingly gloomy life. It was his first love, Raina. Also around that period, Thompson faced an inner battle as he sometimes felt his passion in making illustrations somehow contradicted the Christian values he got from his devoted Christian parents."

The Rating

Off. The. Charts.

The Raves

This. Comic. Is. Gorgeous.

I could look at this thing all day. Really, I could.

But after the visual treat, you begin to see the beauty of the psychological forces involved in the storytelling. This is a story of loneliness and acceptance. Setting most of it in the bleak midwinter of the American Midwest only intensifies the theme. The difference between being outcast and finding those you belong with is as stark as stepping inside out of the bitter chill. And learning who you truly are is as subtle and as freeing as the melting of the ice in Spring. Anyone from the Midwest (and, originally, I am) will understand. For those of you who are not, I'll sum up: the cold of the winter will kill. So will the cold of rejection and dismissal. Warmth and acceptance will save your life.

This story explores both the pleasure and the pain of the cold, both the joy and the agony of coming of age and becoming who we need to be.

This story  is complicated all the more by a rigid and brittle type of christianity that demands conformity from its followers. Being alive is practically impossible, and the unhealthy nature of a belief that cannot bend is explored with compassion and with clarity in this work. In equal parts deeply moving, oddly funny and affirming, 'Blankets' will warm your heart and remind you that the place where you belong is out there, but it's up to you to decide you need to look. This is a story that does the most difficult thing in the world: it takes innocuous experiences of a pedestrian upbringing and shows the depths of pain and the heights of ecstasy to which they can deliver us. The cruel word of a teacher can crush us. The smile of a friend can send us soaring. And that is what it means to be truly and fully human.

If you've ever been lonely, if you've ever been an outcast, this is a story for you. There is understanding in these pages. There is redemption. More importantly, there is perspective. And we all come out the better for reading it.

The Revue

Light the fire. Wrap a quilt around you. Cuddle up against the cold and read. Let the pages sing to you.

Saturday Revue August 27: Ten Years

Come Take A Stroll Down Possibility Lane

With

Ten Years

Should've. Would've. Could've. What would've happened if...we all ask ourselves these questions. Danny Valdez has taken it a step further, creating Ten Years: An exploration of both time and place, and the potential intersections which could have shaped my life. The story splits down two alternate routes with the opening of that dreaded college acceptance letter so many of us remember. Holding it in sweating fingers, our hero opens it and finds...well, he could have found two different things. And that's where things get going.

The Rating

I give it an A for creativity, a C for execution.

The Raves

Reading 'Ten Years' is, for a lot of Americans, like looking in a mirror. It expresses much of our collective social experience in a charming 'boy next door' way, capturing scenes that make you give a gentle, reminiscent smile and remember the time when you were in your own version of the situation.
The writing is solid; the creator is very good at encapsulating an entire social experience or life event in a few panels, and the writing flows from experience to experience in a cogent way. There's a gently affirming comfort in the work as well: even if your life didn't go exactly as you had planned, you can still find joy in it.

The art is extremely stylistic and rather flat, but also highly consistent (an image creation program I presume?) and meshes well with the story style. Nothing particularly wrong.

The Razzes

Problem is, 'nothing really wrong' and 'rather flat' sums up the entire emotional tone of 'Ten Years'.This comic is a little TOO realistic; events happen. People do things. Nothing is really resolved, and though character growth is hinted at there's nothing that calls the character to really rise or fall.

  I've lived in the Midwest, and this is the comic equivalent of sitting on a porch in a small Wisconsin town and watching your neighbors go by. There's nothing wrong with it, and on certain days it's pleasant. But it doesn't' do much beyond comfort.It is, quite simply, ordinary life in Heartland America on paper....and most of us read to get out of our everyday lives.
The creator has grasped all the aspects of comic work and draftsmanship. What they're missing is a soul. I'm hoping they'll use this as their learning project and go forward with a new idea that has a bit more zest. Everything's here but the spark.

The Revue

If you need some mental downtime, grab a seat on the porch, ma will have some iced tea for you. If you're looking for excitement, keep driving.

Sunday, August 21 2016: It's Just Another Day

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today I shall regale you with the tale of Jake
And his many exes in the story...

Jake comes home to find his family being evicted from their grandfather's house. It's just another day. He breaks up with his smothering, ultra-religious girlfriend, Brianna, and has to move out of her house. It's just another day. He meets the girl of his dreams working at a local convenient store by chance. It's just another day. His father, St. Nik, has a seizure and collapses.

It's Just Another Day is written and drawn by BluRaven C. Houvener and tells the story of Jake and his quest to find love in high school and dealing with the tribulations of life at home. His family moves from apartment to apartment like vagabonds, but even with these misfortunes, Jake still holds his head up high and keeps trunking on.

Rating

It's far from just another comic...

Raves

I tend to enjoy slice-of-life work and that's an aspect of this story that appealed to me. Admittedly, when I judged the webcomic upon seeing the first page alone, I thought this was going to be some kind of "cool, strong man fights ninjas" kind of story (Jake looks pretty cool in his sunglasses), but by the start of page three you finally get to the meat of it. Fighting ninjas. Knocking someone's block off because they ticked you off. These are Jake's idle daydreams and a far cry from who he is and what his life is like, but I think we can all relate to daydreams like that. I mean, Jake's obviously a lover, not a fighter.

The writing is what makes this comic stand out and it's what kept me reading through the entire archive. Jake's narration isn't pretentious and the events and emotions from his various relationships are laid bare. The story beats move along fast and it never drags. We get to the core of each relationship he has with Brianna, Ryoko, and Nikki fairly quickly.

Brianna's relationship seemed like one of convenience. She let his family stay at her house and Jake goes between arguing with her due to their different moral compasses and enjoying the sex they have together.

Almost immediately as that relationship ends, we meet Ryoko: the hot girl. She's literally introduced as a catgirl dressed in neko-ears and a leotard, which is Jake's fetish, but her wishy-washiness and her strange relationship with another boy lead to jealously and their breakup.

Since the comic focuses on Jake and his relationships, it makes me wonder: how well does this story treat the women presented in it? I don't think we're trying to pass the Bechdel test here, since it's a portrait of Jake's life and his relationships to his family, friends, and the women he dates. The only thing I can think of in regards to women in this comic is: She's Just Another Girl.

Until we get to Nikki...

Jake thinks she's the one. They connect over the same things and their relationship grows steadily until Nikki breaks it off for reasons unknown (and through e-mail, no less). Of all the relationships portrayed, this is the one that haunts Jake and the one I found most interesting because of how it ends. It made me wonder about her life beyond the frame of the comic. What was she going through and why did she break it off? There's a great flash-forward panel later in the comic where we get a glimpse of what happened to Nikki. I wonder if the comic will ever bring her character back.

But...almost immediately after that, Jake's on to his next woman (kinda).

There's another interesting relationship that builds over the story, and it's between Jake and his father which is contentious at best. There is a cool factor about Jake's dad that he admires -- being in a biker gang and being a rock musician, but at the same time, Jake's dad also complains about his laziness and puts his son down every time he can even despite Jake's efforts to be responsible and do well.

Jake talking about his dad...

The part that hit home for me was when his father had a seizure due to his brain cancer and went into a coma. My father fought cancer for five years before passing away. I can say for certain, when something that dire happens in the family, whatever minor heartbreaks you were suffering before slip away from your thoughts pretty quick.

Jake also moves on pretty quickly...

Razzes

Most of the razzes I have concerning this comic is the art. The one thing I notice the most about the art is how flat it is. We see Jake and the other characters mostly from profile or front shots. There are a few attempts at dramatic angles, but they definitely need some reference to help refine them.

This kind of angle is hard even for me. The head looks too smushed.

Andrew Loomis has some good examples of heads at different angles

At first I thought BluRaven might not know how to draw glasses in profile because of the way Jake's glasses are drawn, but he certainly does know how to do it, because other characters look correct. There's a conscious choice to keep Jake's eyes hidden at all costs, but doing that in profile is hard. BluRaven is bending reality to hide his eyes. The sunglasses could be curved to wrap around his face, but the way they're drawn, they always appear flat.

There are some issues with head proportions, especially from profile. Sometimes it appears the back of Jake's head is too small.

Back of the skull looks too small. Could be his hair is covering it though.

I think some of the lips and eyes on various faces could also use some work as well. The lips are oddly curled when characters smile. Eyes look too almond-shaped.

When I started learning how to draw, one of the first books I had was from Andrew Loomis, and if you're looking for great instruction on drawing human heads and bodies, getting the correct proportion and how to hang figures so they all appear composed in perspective together correctly, I recommend Figure Drawing For All It's Worth. Loomis' book was reprinted a few years ago and is one of my go-to books. This is how I learned to draw heads when I began drawing 12 years ago, and I still use it today:

Revue

It's Just Another Day is a great read. It's quickly paced and you might find something relatable in Jake's life to your own. Well, unless, maybe you're one of his ex-girlfriends.