I really enjoyed our last project of creating a comic. My group made “The Safety Delusion.” Throughout the semester we have spent a lot of time analyzing different graphic novels and the different strategies that the author used, and so I thought it was very fitting that we had an opportunity to put some of those strategies to use in our own work. The article that my group had translated into a comic was “The Overprotected Kid,” by Hanna Rosin. The article discussed how over time, parents have changed their methods of raising children and how they have become more cautious and strict with their children. Our group decided to analyze the effects of this kind of parenting and prove that children gain very important skills by being more independent and free from stringent parental control. In my group, our roles were not as defined as those in other groups, as we basically did the whole project together, page-by-page.

Before we began working on the comic, we created a Google document, where we organized what ideas we were going to illustrate on each page. This proved to be an outstanding idea because it really made the whole process much easier. That being said, we all had input into the content on every page. During the project, I spent a lot of time searching and obtaining the pictures for out comic. This isn’t exactly as easy as it sounds. I had to take the ideas of each panel and figure out the best way to convert those messages into images. When choosing the pictures, I did not want them to be simple and boring, so I was a little creative when it came to the selection. The pictures needed to be able to attract attention, but not too much or else readers would stray from the important messages of the comic. In addition, I helped edit the photos and had the idea of the different effects that we were going to use. This is probably where I learned the most about the comics. Because the comic is in chronological order, starting from the 1960s, I decided to make the first few pages in black and white, and add color progressively. Another effect was the shading and the diagonal lines that we used. Each effect had its own meaning and our group did a great job at keeping the effects consistent throughout the comic.

One group that also incorporated the use of different color schemes was David, Chuck, Wyatt, and Alex, who all created the comic, “The Life I Lead.” They decided to keep some pages black and white, and others with color, but for different reasons than my group. I noticed that they used these colors to communicate the emotion and tone of the story without using any captions or words. I especially enjoyed the mug-shot page, which gives off a very solemn, and gloomy feel due to the lack of color shown. By making the page colorless, except for the little red in the caption, which is an alarming and emotionally intense, their group perfectly depicted the low point of the characters’ lives.

This class has really been one of the best English classes I have ever taken. One of the reasons why is because we took different approaches to both the way we wrote our essays and the way we analyzed the readings. In order to successfully complete this last comic project, I needed to use skills that I have learned from the other projects during the semester. When figuring out the effects of the pictures, I constantly thought of Maus and the way Speigelman constructed each panel and the artistic schemes he used in the backgrounds. Fun Home really taught me how to translate big messages ideas into visual representations, which was vital in choosing the right pictures for the comic. I learned a lot about the color schemes used in Vietnamerica and put them to use in our comic. I really think that this class has taught me to be more open-minded and creative. Almost everything I did in this class was new to me and at first I never really knew where to start. Thinking outside of the box was crucial in completing these projects and I am very satisfied with the work I have done. I genuinely believe that the skills I have acquired in this class will not only stick with me for the rest of my academic career, but also in any other obstacle that I will face in the future.

The collaborative essay writing assignment that the class had done in class was a brand new, yet very interesting experience. At the beginning of class we were told that we all had to contribute and write a single essay in 45 minutes. At that moment, every student was quite bewildered, as nobody really knew where to start. Students began jotting down random ideas that he or she had pertaining to the essay question. For the first 15-20 minutes, it was a mess. Cursors were everywhere, texts were being deleted, and good ideas were not put to use. Nobody kept track of what other people were writing and so there was a lot of redundancy as well. It wasn’t until Professor Morgen posted a series of questions on the document when the collaborative experience began to get more organized. Once the questions were posted, students were able to focus on specific ideas, which led to better team-work. Because everyone had a certain question to answer, it was much easier for students to add onto other students’ work and actually work “collaboratively.” I think that by the end of class, we definitely took steps in the right direction, but we still need to figure out a way to take all of the ideas and answers to the questions and put it into an essay form. I look forward to working on this again in class and truly believe it will be a success.

I used this picture because I believe the tree represents myself. I always aim up towards the sky, and I have firm and strong roots in family and moral values.

The panel that caught my attention more than others was the top one on page 35. In this panel, Vladek is in a ballroom setting, dancing with his wife. Surrounding Vladek and his wife, who are both depicted as mice, are all different kinds of animals. Spiegelman portrays the Jews as mice, the Germans as cats, and Polish citizens as pigs,and other citizens as rabbits, turtles, and more. The way Spiegelman uses animals to represent the people who experienced the Holocaust, portrays the animalistic nature of the people during this time and the actions that many horrible people were doing during the war. Vladek and his wife were the only Jews in the ballroom, which also shows how outnumbered the Jewish people were during this period.