Graphic Novels Manga and Comics

Hellboy:

Hellboy is a comic book character made by Mike Mignola. His art style is very dramatic and is influenced by a lot of German expressionist artists, especially Rembrandt, the first artist to really use shadows in a very dramatic way. Hellboy has a lot of things left in the shadows and the panels are mostly in black and white with a few things (mostly hellboy's skin) in colour.

Hellboy is about the life of the demon Anung Un Rama who was brought into this world by a group of Nazi occultists, the story follows Hellboy as he fights crime in his later years working for the United States Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. I really like the use of shadows and the fact it doesn't have the typical comic book plot.  

Death Note:

Death note is a very dark manga about a teenager called Light who finds a notebook dropped by a shinigami, he later finds out if you write the name of Solomon in it they die so Light uses this power to kill all the criminals and to try and make himself god of the world using the book but a super smart detective called L is on his case and it becomes and intricate game of cat and mouse. Like Hellboy this is a very dark story and though it doesn't have such a bold art style this fits the mystery aspect of the manga more. Death note is also a lot more subtle and stylish than Hellboy and it suits the slicker art style.   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellboy

Robert Capa

http://www.skylighters.org/photos/robertcapa.html

• He travelled to Omaha Beach with the 16th Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division 
• He was well known for his photography in the Spanish civil war
• "If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough."
• The boatswain saw him taking a picture and thought he was being hesitant so he physically kicked him off the boat 
• He hid from bullets behind a disabled American tank
• He was so scared that while he was taking pictures while he repeated a sentence that he had picked up during the Spanish Civil War: "Es una cosa muy seria" ("This is a very serious business").
• He left as soon as he saw a boat
• "I just stood up and ran toward the boat. I knew that I was running away. I tried to turn but couldn't face the beach and told myself, 'I am just going to dry my hands on that boat.'"
• He used 3 rolls of film which was 106 frames/photo's
• Back in London the developer was so anxious to see the photo's he dries the film to quickly which melted the emulation on all but 10 frames which gave them a blurred surreal look.  

• He chose to call himself Heartfield in 1916, to criticize anti-British sentiment feeling Germany during World War I.
• in 1918 Heartfield joined the Berlin Dada club and the Communist Party of Germany who were against the war (WWII)
• He worked for lots of communist publications as well as developing photomontage into a form of political and artistic expression
• After the Nazi's came to power in Germany, Heartfield moved to Czechoslovakia, where he continued his work for a communist magazine he was working for which had to be published in exile 
• Heartfield's photomontages often involved Adolf Hitler and Nazi undermine their propaganda message.
• Heartfield's "The Hand has 5 Fingers" was used on System of a Down's début album cover
• His most famous photomontage was called 'Hurrah, die Butter ist Alle!' which means 'Hurray! the butter is gone!' makes fun of a quote from a Nazi officer who said 'Iron has always made a nation strong, butter and lard have only made the people fat'
• The Swiss band Mittageisen named themselves after the picture
• The band Blurt recorded a song called "Hurrah! Die Butter Ist Alle" 
• The band Discharge used Heartfield's work "Peace and Fascism" for the cover artwork

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Heartfield

Review Kingdom hearts 358/2 days

Kingdom hearts 358/2 days is the fifth game in the Kingdom Hearts series and takes place in the time between Kingdom hearts one and Kingdom Hearts two. It was made by the company square enix, formally square soft, and includes most of the same voice actors from the other games. In this game you play as Roxas through his time in the organization. You must complete a mission to make a day pass and when you complete key missions a group of days pass. Throughout the game you learn more about the organization and its members while making friends with Axel and Xion.

This game has many problems, for one you are limited to only being able to save in 'The World That Never Was', which you can only get to when you either give up on  a mission or complete it, which is extremely annoying , especially when your in a rush to save and your on a long mission. They have also changed the storage system for accessible items to 'Panels', which does let you hold more things but has a major flaw, whenever you level up, get an ability or upgrade your weapon you have to install it to your panels, which cuts down on space a lot. This basically cancels out the one good point of the 'panels'. Possible the biggest flaw in this game though is the plot. First of all, this game got a tonne of hype when it was announced that it would be about Roxas' time in the organization. The organization were the villains in Kingdom Hearts chain of memories and Kingdom Hearts 2 and they are considered by many the best characters in the games, everyone was exited that they were getting a game all about them. Unfortunately the organization members are given hardly and screen time and no depth to their character at all. The whole game focus' around the friendship of Axel, Roxas and Xion instead, this is not too bad as the characters Axel and Roxas are well loved characters by the fans, but the one thing that completely destroys this one good point is the character Xion. Xion was created just for this game and even though she is a main character, she has no personality whatsoever. At the beginning of the game she doesn't even talk, and when she does she doesn't have anything really interesting to say, Roxas becomes her friend because Axel is away and it is revealed that not only is she the 14th member of organization 13, she has the ability to wield the keyblade. The keyblade is the token weapon of the Kingdom hearts series and it is apparently only wielded by a select few, but by this game six people can wield it which defeats the purpose. Some characters like Sora, Riku and King Mickey have legitimate reasons for being able to wield a keyblade, so does Roxas since he's a part of Sora, but Kairi and Xion have no real reason to be able wield it. But anyway, Not only does Xion not do anything, she has somehow managed to become the main character in days but to sill be completely expendable to the plot, and at the end of the game memories of her existence are wiped out.

Apart from these flaws the game is still reasonably good, probably because of the friendship of Axel and Roxas and the battles, it is still far inferior to the main series of the games.