Yup. That's what I read. I'm still looking over the Annie review by Harold Gray, which is pretty interesting so far. I still can't help but find those large, pupil-less eyes to be extremely unsettling, despite the nature of the comic itself. I read a few strips of Little Orphan Annie in middle school, but I was never drawn to the artistic style. When I used to pick up a newspaper to look at the comics, I looked for the ones that often made me laugh, had something informative about them, or had a decent style. I never got into American comics that much though. The strips always looked to be lazily rendered to me and superhero comics were a little too intense for my liking. I used to read stuff like Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and all kinds of manga because I found both the story behind things as well as the style they're rendered in to be of utmost importance. The short strips were good for the times I needed a laugh or two, but the longer, book-length comics were more appealing to me.
I read a few strips of Little Nemo, including the Palace of Ice. The stories are very dreamlike, though his fantasies seem pretty highly developed for a growing boy like himself. When I was a kid all my dreams were horrifically surreal and full of monsters. His are actually pretty pleasant, but they're pretty heavy in dialogue. It's easier to get into the narrative of Slumberland even if you know it's just a place in Nemo's dreams. The comics all end alike, with Nemo waking up to something or another. It's the most interesting panel to me because it acts as a kicker; the details that preceeded the end often have to do with how he's woken up. For instance, in the Palace of Ice, the subject everyone started to focus on was the cold. In the last panel of that page, he wakes up having kicked off most of his covers. In another short strip, he ends up falling through space, only to wake up on the floor after having fallen out of bed. It's neat for a comic, with some linear narrative going on. I haven't had a chance to read a solid series of comics from Little Nemo to be able to tell if there's some ongoing story in Slumberland that is continued every time Nemo sleeps. If so, it'd be a really interesting comic. People would want to keep reading to find out what's going on in Slumberland, even when they realize that it's just a dream.
Boondocks, or at least the comic recommended on the resources page, was a little painful to look at. I used to read these comic strips in the newspaper on Sundays, and the style was way different--more refined. Then, a couple of years or so later, I watched the show on Adult Swim. I don't know if they're still releasing new episodes, but I was watching it up until last year. It's a hilarious show, so I gave the comic we were assigned a chance even if the cover illustration alone put me off. I was curious to know what the diamond in the rough was like, since it was the origin of a strip I'd read as a child and the series I've watched as a teenager. It was pretty much the same as what I've come to love and remember. Huey is practically a genius, though cursed as he is to be a child. No one takes him seriously, even when he makes perfect sense and talks like an adult. His brother Riley is pretty much part of the stereotype that Huey fights against, but they get along well enough. Huey's neighbor Jazmine is part African American, but she's naive as her age would suggest. Huey's grandfather is often a subject as well, as is Jazmine's dad. The neighborhood itself is often a subject in these comics. But there's a lot being dealt with racial stereotypes in this comic, and I don't see how others can find it offensive either. I read it as a jab towards both sides--those who do and don't support these stereotypes. The message seems to read that whether you are or aren't against them, they're still there to an extent. Huey ends up just having to deal with it because he's just a kid and no one really listens to him. Regardless, I still found the comics from 'Right to be Hostile' to be amusing, even if the art style was pretty awkward.
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