When reading the Arrival by Shaun Tan I immediately thought of one of my favorite comics by an artist named Lando. Lando's comic is similar to the arrival because there is no dialoge. In the arrival we follow the immigrants journey to this new land, and we are lost in the land just like him. While with Lando's comic we are thrown into this Alien civilization with no idea of the language spoken in the comic. So our only means of interpreting the story is by actions. Both of these comics do this very easily.
While The Arrival, and Lando's comic had a pretty clear narrative of what was going on. Max Ernst's a Week of Kindess was more abstract. When going around the classroom everybody had a totally different interpretation of the events going on. When trying to interpret the images, it felt like a Roschach test. I'm very certain we learned a lot about each other that day.
To contrast these previous stories we looked at Archie. In class this was the first time I ever read an Archie comic. When reading it I felt this sense of nostalgia of when I was eight. I remember for the longest time I had this idea of what it would be like to be a teenager. Archie felt pretty spot on besides having two lady love interests to what I thought being a teenager was all about. Archie created this clean fun idea of how teenagers in our society should behave. Personally I think the sex, drugs, and rock and roll teenage stereotype is much more exciting to read about now.
