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Group Reading

The Fountain has had some of the most interesting and beautiful art in any comic I have seen in some time recently, Kent Williams employs very similar artistic embellishment as to Gustav Klimt. Kent starkly contrasts very simple designs against elegantly detailed watercolors. The story is surreal and non-linear, which is to be expected from the director of 'Mother!'

Alice in Sunderland
Alice in Sunderland is a very strange comic which uses multiple methods of storytelling sometimes with panels, sometimes without, almost collage-like arrays of imagery strewn across the page with reckless abandon to give to more context into what the narrator is talking about, the story covers a huge spread of subjects from dinosaurs to doctor who. There is very little telling what this story is entirely about, but one thing's for certain it sure as hell feels like the chaos and mayhem of wonderland.

'Why I hate Saturn' seems to assume the reader knows about the beatnik generation and if not provides a fairly unbiased view into their lives, the story seems to be told from the inside of this group rather from the outside and the art style feels very fitting with it. The story covers the life of a young woman living in New York and struggling within the almost kafkaesque state of the economy in America at the time. This story seems to really play of its ability to capture the reader within the generation of the beatniks without really shoving it in the face of the reader.

Asterios Polyp is situated in the modernist art group of (what appears to be) New York, an inciting moment takes place when a man's house burns down, and from such he decides to leave his current situation and just get away. This story certainly assumes that the reader is at least somewhat familiar with not only modern art itself but the inner workings of the modernist communities. To talk about this story and not mention the art would be criminal, there is an acute emphasis on design throughout the entire thing and many modern art motifs.

ACME
I originally assumed that this was going to be a very funny or happy comic based on a lot of the character designs, however, this story seems to have covered multiple themes, at times it is funny, at times sad, beautiful, and even bittersweet. This was a very interesting read it used the panels to create a very unique sense of storytelling and juxtaposes imagery perfectly to clue the reader in to what is happening all the time.

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