Oops...

Okay, so I thought I posted this on here a long time ago, but evidently not. Anyway, here it is...

It’s kind of strange how the reader can be so opposed to what a character is doing, but still in some ways sympathize with him. Because on one hand, I want to see Light escape L. But on the other hand, I want L to catch Light. Weird. I mean, I strongly dislike Light because of all the reasons I ranted about in the previous post. And L has enough similarities to Light that it wouldn’t be much of a stretch for me to imagine disliking him in the future. But there’s still a quality about them that makes me care about what the outcome of their plight is. I guess what I ultimately want to happen is for Light to come to his senses, whether that means getting caught or not. I think he has potential. Which is more than he would probably say for someone such as himself, right?

I need to rant for a bit...

I’m finding the moral situation that Light’s character presents difficult to process. Some people online and in class were talking about how they were okay with his original idea, of ridding the world of criminals, but then they didn’t like what it was doing to Light once he put it into practice. But I can’t say that I ever thought it was a good idea – especially at the beginning. Because how messed up did he have to be to just decide that he has the right to pass judgment like that on anyone? It seems to me like he’s grouping all these “criminals” together into some generalized, evil category that refuses to consider circumstances and the ability of a person to change. Not that I’d try to excuse someone from murdering anyone, but...I don’t know. I guess I just don’t understand how Light can believe he has this divine right to pass judgment on others, even if they are criminals, because he can’t know all the circumstances surrounding their individual lives/situations, even if he can access his father’s computer files on them. Because he can’t get the whole story by just looking at their basic police files for a few minutes before he deems that they’re evil enough to be killed off. And then after a while he goes beyond even limiting his killing to criminals, but decides L needs to die just because he is against Light, and he even goes so far as to think about killing his family. He has major issues. And he’s a hypocrite. He just...irks me. But that’s the point, right? He’s supposed to.

Death Note

I really liked this one! I didn’t really know what to expect from a manga comic, but I really, really liked it. I’m going to need to go buy the 2nd volume very soon because I need to know what happens. Some things I noticed while I was reading it – There were a lot of up-close shots of people’s faces (or parts of them), which enhanced their emotions at the time. It made the effect more...intense, I guess is the right word. Even the dialogue bubbles were formatted differently for different people/tones of voice/etc which again made the experience more intense and specific. Even for Ryuk, who doesn’t really have a wide range of emotions, the artist used different shadings (pg. 23) and angles (pg. 29) to articulate his feelings. And speaking of Ryuk...he is possibly the most terrifying-looking thing I’ve ever seen. Ever. But anyway...initial reaction = quite good.

POVs

My group last class talked about points of view in The Spirit. Even before I was made to look closely at this aspect in class, it was something I noticed as I was reading it. I remember coming to “The Killer” and thinking how advanced for his time Eisner’s methods were. It was surprising, too, to go through and see just how many of the stories weren’t from the Spirit’s POV. We found that a lot of the time the POV started out as 3rd-person limited from the criminals’ perspectives, with the Spirit entering the story later. Then there was P’gell’s story, where even the narration was in her own 1st-person voice. There was even a movement in Eisner’s writing from the first stories, where the narrator was a 3rd person unknown, to the last stories which were narrated by the Spirit himself. What I found most interesting about this, I think, is that it allows Eisner to go beyond just following around this hero and seeing the different conflicts he’s part of, but to dig into deeper issues that a whole range of characters are made to deal with – take “Wild Rice,” for example, which delves into domestic abuse. We definitely wouldn’t have gotten the same depth on the topic if we had only seen things through the Spirit’s perspective. And “Ten Minutes” wasn’t about the Spirit at all – it was more an accident that it happened to be him to meet Freddy in the subway. I really liked that Eisner was able to give the reader so much depth in such a short space.

the ladies

Okay...I talked about it for X-Men, I suppose I should talk about it here. The portrayal of women. It doesn’t seem as offensive in The Spirit for some reason. Probably because “scantily clad” in the ‘40’s is so different than today. But there was just something about the characters in The Spirit that seemed...I don’t know. It was almost like the women in The Spirit were fully aware of the fact that they were dressing suggestively and using that to their advantage because they were intelligent enough to realize the implications/consequences/benefits/etc. of doing so. P’gell, of course, is the perfect example of this, as well as the scene in “Silk Satin” when Satin is taking the medal from the count (and various other instances). And I think that the intent to make the women intelligent like this says something for Eisner. He wasn’t just having these women in his comics to please an audience who called for women to be pretty, he was building strong, intelligent characters. And just because, as some people mentioned in class, the women who weren’t main characters weren’t portrayed that way (the wife in “Two Lives”, the old lady in “The Last Hand”), neither were the men. Again, going back to my last post about Satin, she and the Spirit are really the only ones shown with unwavering morals and intelligence. The male police, for example, are usually portrayed being easily duped and as quite portly. Again, I think Eisner was doing more than catering to the audience and giving us complex characters.

a side note

Someone made a comment in class about how Satin is kind of like the female version of the Spirit. I would tend to agree. She’s the only other character that we see who is as intelligent as the Spirit, and they seem to be on the same moral level (after the initial issue with Satin as a thief, of course). She even physically looks like him – the sharp features, mannish dress, and short black hair at the beginning. It’s an interesting parallel, and fitting, I guess, that their characters are drawn to each other (no pun intended).

The Spirit

My initial reaction to The Spirit was...well, I’m not really sure. I liked it, I suppose. I didn’t dislike it, at least. I can certainly see why Eisner is credited with so much in the comics industry – for something that was written in the ‘40s, there was quite a lot of experimentation going on in this comic. The various points of view/perspectives, for example, and the way he drew the splash pages. The stories themselves were more than just simple plots to follow from issue to issue. Eisner said in one of the posted interviews that he was trying to reach an adult audience, and the stories definitely show that. Ones that especially come to mind are “The Story of Gerhard Shnobble,” “Two Lives,” “Wild Rice,” and “Satin” (the part at the end where the Spirit shreds the evidence says a lot about his character/feelings for Satin). So, yeah. Eisner was awesome and there’s a lot to be learned from what he did in The Spirit, that much is evident. And I’d certainly read it again. But...I don’t know, I guess I just wasn’t blown out of the water about it.