ANYA'S GHOST:
I have to say, this surprised me. I decided to read it because of the cover, which is a cool and kind of perfect descriptor of the story. It seems to be a perfect match for the story.
In terms of the art, its a little basic. The drawings don't stand out as being overly complex, like Arkham Asylum, but not quite as simplified as Persepolis. The designs are indeed appealing though. The palette is by far one of my favorite things about the art. The dark blueish-purple that's almost just greys may be an artifact of black and white printing on the glossy paper, but it seems too deliberate to be that way. It matches the tone too well to be accidental.
In terms of the story, I can see why Neil Gaiman got a cover blurb. It seems to be very heavily influenced by his work. The story is that Anya falls down a well and finds at the bottom a ghost of a girl who died in 1918. This ghost girl helps Anya in her classes(though not gym, thumbs up for the Pacer Test), helps her to socialize at a party, and generally gives a lot, for the reason that "she never got to experience anything like that."One thing I really liked about the story telling is the way the twist happened. The character Dima, who we learn is having trouble speaking English, finds information relating to Emily(the ghost) in old newspapers at the library(thumbs up for the microfilm readers!) and when he confirms that that is what Anya was looking for, she dismisses him thinking he mixed up words or didn't understand her properly. That is a really clever way to reveal something, especially since I had to go back like Anya did and reread what he said, which is quite engaging.
In terms of the process used to create, as we have talked in class about the future of comics and what that may look like, Vera Brosgol has a very interesting process which I found on her website. She seems to work back and forth between Computer and Traditional. For some pages, she maintains a completely digital process. For some pages she "roughs out" on a computer, prints it, then traces in ink only to scan it back in. When I think about the effort to do this, I think that its kind of wasteful. If it was like the in-between chapters in Sandman, which are very collage-y, I could see the point of working back and forth. In her case, if she wanted some quality that only traditional mediums could create, or some sort of different style she would have been unable to achieve via computer. But, for the life of me, I looked at the pages and didn't notice any major difference. The only thing that stood out was a different panel layout.
