Influence of Bill Waterson (Week 3)

Bill Waterson is a personal hero. If it wasn't for my childhood obsession of Calvin and Hobbes I don't think I would have learned to read. I was just so jealous of my older brother laughing historically at words he understood and I didn't. The genius of Calvin and Hobbes is that it works without words, but you can't fully grasp the genius of it without getting inside their heads. This particular comic created a solid bond between my brother and I, and it definitely helped shape the shenanigans we would do for fun.

Here's a little comic about that:

The Arrival Response (Week 1)

The Arrival Response

A picture is worth a thousand words and Shaun Tan knew this when he made The Arrival. The intricacy of image narrates a full story without the need of text. Each frame is a story telling composition that narrates the life of a man which many people can relate to, an immigrant who leaves everything he knows behind and moves to a new world in search of opportunity. As an immigrant myself I know the feeling of stepping out of your comfort zone and traveling to the unknown in search of something better. It is appropriate that this story was told without words because it allows any person in the world to interpret it regardless of culture and language barriers, it makes the story universal and relatable.

Overall it was good seeing a positive take on industrialization and the wave of immigrants that flocked to metropolis around the world in the last century. In the end of the novel you can see this had an overall positive effect on the man.  The last and first frame are very similar in the sense they are in the dinner table, except you can tell that the ending is way better, brighter, more positive than the beginning. The table has more food and other extravagant dishes, the interaction between the man an his wife is warmer since they are leaning towards each other.