The 1950s are often portrayed as a period of social cohesion, why is this misleading? This is very misleading because in society there wasn’t very much cohesion socially. The civil rights movement was starting and people we divided socially and racially. Also comic books where divided in concepts of what they can and cannot print. The comic code authority was instituted in 1948. This was a self regulated organization that significantly limited comic book creator’s thoughts, ideas and creations. Because of the CCA the age of very creative, free comics we over, because of crime comics and gruesome horror comics the code was instituted. This code continued through the 1950s. The 1950s was a time of recovery from World War 2 so it would seem that society was coming together after fighting the biggest war of all time. In some lights the 1950s is seen as America getting back to being one unified country again. But back in America many things were beginning to spark up and cohesion was not one of them.
To begin with, I really do like the idea of reading a comic about comics. I think it's a great idea and it's very well executed. As I was reading the first two chapters, I was surprised at how many examples there were of art in recent (and ancient, in some cases) history that are variations of "sequential visual art" and thus the foundations of modern comics. I'd never even thought about it before and it was hard to believe how many different kinds there were. I also love all the discussion about how our human brains automatically interpret certain images in a specific way, how we see others constantly but we identify ourselves when we look at cartoons, and how inanimate objects automatically becomes extensions of our bodies. The pyramid of styles was very interesting too as a way to conceptualize and almost graph or "place" a specific art style in comics. In Comic Book Nation , I enjoyed reading about the evolution of early comics from "funnies...
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