Week 11: Comics as Contemporary Literature

For this week, I read Strangers in Paradise. This comic feeds off an Archie/Riverdale vibe, style wise, but for a more mature audience with crude humor. The art is decent enough for the "newspaper funnies" type section that it seems to be going for. This is odd for me to say because I'm not someone who particularly likes certain styles, but this one works well considering the type(s) of story it holds. I'm also not one for reading black and white comics since sometimes it's hard to differentiate what's going on in the panel because either all the black values are too close to one another or there's too much white value, not enough black. This comic balances that issue quite well. It's not that the art is specially fancy, or eye-catching, but the fact that the artist, Moore, has a knack for conveying enough emotion through facial expression, which is something not often seen in these types of comics.

That particular skill is key for this kind of story. The story is all about the relationships between a handful of characters. What's more, some of the tension in the story comes from the fact that the relationships are non-traditional (gay, lesbian, polyamorous, etc.) The characters in this story have problems. Real emotional problems that they're trying to resolve. They have people the love, and they're trying to have good, healthy relationships in spite of the emotional baggage they're carrying around. They're often confused, they treat each other unfairly. And it is, honestly, a lot like what people go through in real life.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading something like this that deals with real world problems instead of a typical nonstop violence book; even though that's something that I tend to gravitate more towards, but this was a treat. The comic isn't preachy or anything, it just shows people trying to have relationships and struggling, and some of those relationships aren't boy-girl relationships. Truthfully, the story stutters a little bit early in the series, and I think that was just the author's way of getting his sea legs, learning to write.

I definitely think it's worth a read. It's especially wroth reading if you want to see something different in comics. This is one of the great indie classics in genre, in my opinion.