Future of Comics: Erma

https://tapas.io/episode/255222

A web comic I extremely enjoy, that is on a more simpler side of things is called “Erma”. It’s a slice of life horror story, about the daughter of this worlds version of the Grudge. I would liken it to a similar vein as the Addams family, especially since the majority of the comic, asides from guest illustrations and a few random pages here and there, is done completely in black and white. It has a wonderful cast of characters that help push a theme of acceptance that runs throughout the entire comic. In the very first page you can see how the teacher is horrified by erma, in that she actually kisses a cross, and then her and the other teachers talk about how something like her could ever get accepted. As the comic progresses, you can see the teachers come around, but one thing I noticed is that the kids don’t actually care that Erma is technically a monster. There are many instances of her doing inhuman things but they are always treated with an innocent sense of comedy I would expect from children. 

One of the main things I value from this comic is the artistic growth from the creator, which is easily visible if you look at the first group of comics and the 5^thpage of the current arc. In the first page his perspective is off and his lines are super wobbly and untrained, kinda like he scribbled it out as a random idea and never intended for it to go on this long. In the current arc they journey to japan for a family reunion and when they first see the city its mind-blowing. The perspective is on point and astounding and the level of detail is not something I would have ever expected if I had just seen the first few pages. This is super valuable because its one of the more extreme cases of artistic growth I’ve seen in a web comic, and it inspires me to go out and make one as well. Which is important because a good comic in my opinion should enthrall and entertain as well as inspire.

Erma also deconstructs the standard horror monster trope extremely well while also enforcing it in a finely achieved balance that I feel is especially pronounced and only achievable due to her age. For starters yes she does enjoy horror films, watching them like comedies often, but its very quickly shown that she has a child-like obsession for cutesy things such as this universes version of my little pony, going so far at one point to mind control her babysitters boyfriend to get her an expensive playset. Which while ignoring the mind control part is something I can see a child doing by sneaking onto an amazon account and ordering something. Same thing really.

They just do an absolute wonderful job of balancing otherworldly monster with young girl and it’s amazing.

Erma has also been materialized in the way that recently they have made little surprise bags of erma merch goodies for this years thanksgiving as well as accepting funding so they can make a mobile game.

Women in Comics

While in western culture the comics industry is for the most part a female dominated market, though that’s not to say that women haven’t made extreme contributions. Alison Bechdel may be the most well known outside of the comic circle, for creating the Bechdel test. This test is one of the main ones  that most main media is judged by and will likely still be used in the upcoming century or so.

The women creates made sure that women were no longer just the bombshell eye candy or ditzes to show off the male leads intelligence. From these women we got women who were three times more dimensional than all of the adult female characters before. And we got some comics specifically made for women talking about our problems from our point of view. 

Manga tropes

One of the main difference between Western and eastern comics is the basic conventions of each genre. Due to both cultural differences and main audience sought after completely different bases were formed. In Manga there are two different main genres of comics Shojo and Shonen. Originally made for different genders Shojo focused more on slice of life stories, though often with some fantasy element. Shonen focused on more action based and violent adventures. Because of this they established a lot of conventions different from the western world. Add in that the characters are based off of idealized beauty and made more simplistic.

And everyone knows the basic generic anime/manga tropes, there is always the one character who believes solely in the power of friendship, there’s always the over the top first problem who either is severely outmatched after the main characters first power up and the girl with the huge chest, amongst many many others. these are the more modern day tropes that have taken hold and while some are quite wholesome to see, like such as the anime gasp, power of friendship always coming true, edge lord with a heart of gold. And the cringe worthy tropes that I know we all want to drop off the face of the earth. Such as the Loli trope, the anime girl with boobs way too big for her to be standing upright and still being supermodel thin otherwise, alongside the extremely perverted comic relief character that’s just super cringy and not actual funny..

Though these are more modern tropes that are increasingly more common in recent years, older tropes are still heavily prevalent. Such as the trope of a magical guardian animal creature in some stories, along with Transfer student, the window seat in the back, Op main character, Self insert main character, Extreme exaggerated faces, and Punching your problems away. These are still heavily prevalent in todays standards but are classics that most anime’s have.

Reinventing the Superhero

Week 13

When it comes to reinventing the superhero the general standard up till recently was just, give them human problems or slowly make them an asshole/antihero. While it works I personally find it extremely dull to read and don’t particularly care about them. They don’t do anything particularly revolutionary and only some of their attitudes seem to improve alongside these revamps. Plus you also have to deal with asshole people trying to make a name for themselves like that jackass who did the captain America is secretly hydra. That emotionally killed so many people, adults and kids alike and I remember reading hundreds of different accounts of how young children started bawling when they found out their favorite superhero is a bad guy. Stuff like that does NOTHING for revamping a character. I would consider a successful revamp of a character being the current Miss marvel publication. If the big wigs in comics could stop seeing their creations as untouchable gold statues I feel like we would get a lot more like miss marvel, so long as the fanboys don’t try to rip out their spleens when something changes which is always why things turn to shit.

Graphic Novels

Everyone and their cousin has probably picked up a graphic novel by now, long full story arcs generally contained in 1-3 books, that give you multiple character arcs, plot twists and fantastic stories. This is a huge change from comic books, where they constantly are rehashing the same story arcs with a new villain of the week. Its somewhat more rewarding to read a graphic novel over a comic book because it doesn’t feel randomly plopped in times. The stories flow and have sub plots and plot twists and character development that is just not possible to attain in a comic book. Because of this level of development and just plan good stories, graphic novels are becoming more and more widely accepted.

Stereotyping in comics

As far as stereotyping goes I find it’s something that shouldn’t be used at 100% at all. Especially when it comes to villous characters because then it’s usually used to demonize a group of people. The only acceptable time I find this is in regards to Nazi’s. Stereotype the hell out of them. 

The best way in my opinion to use any form of stereotyping is to deconstruct it into small pieces, using only one or two choice pieces to help construct a character. Using stereotypes in this manor I feel is an inevitability especially with secondary characters as a method of padding out their character into a more three dimensional being, even if it usually ends up falling mostly flat. But because of this you are let with so much else to customize and usually will end up eventually discarding the stereotype pieces cause your character is 3 dimensioned without it.

And as a white Caucasian girl the only stereotype I can consider applicable to me, would be the damsel in distress trope.