Planet of the Apes Project - Ruvim

The speaker talks about their lack of interest in comics as a child but how they have learned to appreciate them as an art form. They review a comic they recently read called "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" and discuss the use of notions in the art to convey emotions and the transitions between panels. They also mention the post-apocalyptic setting and the use of blood to depict violence. Overall, they provide a detailed analysis of the comic and hope the listener enjoyed their discussion. I have never been a huge fan of comics, like most kids were back in their childhoods. I knew about the existence of them, but I just had my focus set on other things at the time. With this class, I was able to learn a lot of information about comic books and how they are sort of art in the grand scheme of things. Many would disagree, but that is not why I am here today. Today, I want to talk about a comic book that was not part of the class, but was a comic book that I recently bought and read from one of my favorite franchises, Planet of the Apes. The comic I am reviewing is called Dawn of the Planet of the Apes by Boom Studios. The first thing I want to focus on is the notions that are used in the comic book. According to what Seth MacLeod taught me, notions can be demonstrated through the art and lines that are visible in each of the frames of a comic. The comic is based on the events of a deadly virus killing off the majority of the human population. The apes reign supreme at birth and the humans must scavenge and fight other humans to get safe food and resources. The comic uses a lot of anxiety type of panels because of the human plot in the comic where the protagonist's son gets kidnapped. Through this art, we can see the father's anxiety and fright to what will happen to his son. On the opposite side, the ape plot includes an ape that rises and tries to overthrow Caesar, the leader of the apes, and Koba is sent to exterminate the rebellion against his king. Since both these story arcs are stressful, you can see these emotions through the type of lines and how they are portrayed and lets you get immersed in the action and drama of the story. The second part I want to focus on is the comic's transitions and how they flow from page to page. As I have stated before, the comic is post-apocalyptic so it is very heavy and gritty, but blood is used a lot of the times to show the characters' deaths. The transitions that I found to be used the most were action to action and subject to subject. Many of the fights in the comics are using action to action and let us see the action moves that were being performed by the apes or humans, but in some of the bloodier fights, we do not see Koba performing the action of staking his spear through Pope's head, but we see the before and after result. In one panel, Koba is fighting Pope and in the next we see a shocked face of another ape pleading for mercy. We then see a switch with Koba body being shot on the floor with the spear stuck through his head. This is more of like a mix of action and subject transitions and it is very well worked and captivates the reader. That is all I have for today and I hope you enjoyed my little podcast on how I analyze the comic book.