Hello, I’m J.A. Aleman and I’d like to present to you my first ever comic book. It is about a cat named Noll who gets rescued from a fire at a pet shop by a journalist named Jules that lives across the street in some apartments. We find out that some time passed since then, but Jules is investigating a story he was writing about something sinister going on in the city with animal testing. We follow along as Noll and Jules fight off advances from the femme fatale, Lou and her crazy uncle Lyle who wants to stop the snooping. See what happens when Jules and Noll find out the truth in my comic The Maine Coon Cat.

My Process

From the beginning I set out to tell a noir themed story. I believe I succeeded in the endeavor. I am proud of the work I did in my comic book and the story that developed. The genre of the comic book is a mystery/noir/Adventure/love story. The process was not easy, but again I say I’m proud of myself for sticking through it to the end and making something worth reading.

The values the comic book has is more animist then any other. I tend to lean on this value due to the power storytelling has. This by no means signifies that the art will not accompany the story. But the story cannot be sacrificed because of the illustrations. Instead, I tried to find a middle ground where the art and story compliment each other and the reader could find a natural flow. Some of my favorite comics have to do with known characters like Batman being set in something known as Elseworld stories. This means its the characters we know and love, but they are in a different setting than usual. They go very classic with thar art and it feels more like a mystery story than a superhero one.

Inspiration

TMNT The Last Ronin is by far one of my favorite stories in comics to date. It was an inspiration for me. My story is different in the sense of there are no ninjas, but the narrative driven story matches perfectly. Noir stories to me are the best. They seem to bring the reader to a whole new world, but the consists of what’s contained in the huma heart. These types of stories have evolved because they don’t just have to be about a detective. Even the types of characters such as the hardboiled protagonist, and the femme fatale don’t have to remain trapped inside of their original architype. There can be a blend of all the other architypes to make a whole new one and even give a different point of view.

Scott McCloud in his book, Making Comics, when speaking about people that are just starting comics wrote, “no matter how many worthwhile destinations have been visited by earlier generations, there’s always a chance that yours doesn’t exist on any map yet, because is has yet to be discovered.”(238) This encouraged me because it took the pressure off. We don’t have to put ourselves in a box and call it a day. Instead we can just keep writing stories and they don’t have to be about just one thing and one genre. We can traverse what has happened in comics and while that could be great, we need to find our own voice.

I’m sure I’m not the first to say this, but I feel I have my own style. We can nitpick all we want and judge the works done by other hands, but at the end the questions that must be answered are, if the story invited you into that world for a while? and would you go back? At first, I’ll admit, I was doing too much and tryin to add as much detail as possible. You’ll be able to tell when I stopped doing that when you read my comic. I decided to settle down and just let the story and illustrations come to me. Thankfully it worked. Considering I’m not an artist, I think the tools and resources provided from my course at UW were a huge help.

For my story, I know I wanted story, expression, and flow. For the story process, I dug into the bag that I know; and that is black and white art. I have always preferred black-and-white in comics but color is a wonder and has a way of bringing drawings to life. Scott McCloud in his book, Understanding Comics, when talking about differences and similarities of B&W and color wrote, “the difference between black-and-white and color comics are vast and profound, affecting every level of the reading experience.” (192).

My Hope

I wanted to build a world that was story driven, had expression and flow, and I believe the choice to go B&W did just that. I hope you enjoy my story and I look forward to making more.

References

Making Comics, by Scott McCloud, First ed., Harper, 2006, p. 192.

file:///C:/Users/jamen/OneDrive/UWWork/ComicsClass/TheMaineCoonCat.pdf