At first, like most people, I thought that comics were just superhero stories and that the format they used involved mostly pictures instead of written descriptions to better show the story. I thought of them as childish picture books and wasn’t really interested in them. Not to say that I didn’t like the stories because that’s just not true. I’m a big fan of marvel superheroes. I just prefer to watch the movies and the televisions shows instead of reading the comic books. With that said, I really found Scott McCloud’s definition of comics to be an interesting way of thinking about it. His definition states that comics are “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or aesthetic response in the viewer.” This definition makes comics seem much more complicated then what we normally perceive of them. After reading the chapters, I understand comics aren’t just superhero books. In fact comics don’t have anything specifically to do with superheros at all. Comics can be stories of any genre. Superheros are just one of the most popular genres used in comics. The pictures and images in comics are meant to illicit a specific response from the readers. This response is based off of whatever feeling the author of the comic is trying to convey. Unlike in movies, comics aren’t really meant to give a realistic view on things (though there are some comics that have pictures that somewhat resemble reality even though it drawn). I think that comics are meant to feed the imagination of the readers, which is why most comics are more supernatural based. They widen the limited view of reality in the readers mind and let it open up to all the extraordinary possibilities in the world. As humans, we generally tend to want things that would make life more exciting and adventurous for us. This includes things such as having the ability to fly, to read minds, to have super strength, to be able to become invisible etc. Comics let us explore these wants in a more visual way then there would be with just words on a page. However, as I said, that is not only what comic books do. As mentioned in the definition, they are meant to convey information and/or a response from the reader. To me, this means that like any other book, comics are meant to tell a story. Also, since there are many different genres of comics, our imagination does not only expand to supernatural things, but to everyday problems or lifestyles as well. Books also do the same thing but comics do this in a more visual way. For the most part, I think that my understanding of comics have greatly changed since reading “Understanding Comics”. I see now that they are not just childish stories about superheroes but that they are stories that feed the imagination and broadens our views of reality which I think is something that even adults can use in their everyday lives.
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