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Does class affect our perception of the comic image? If so, how?

Does class affect our perception of the comic image? If so, how? This class has definitely affected my perception of the comic image. When I was younger I would always read comics about Iron man, Spider man, Superman, Batman, Avengers, etc. but while reading these comics i never noticed the things I do now. In this class I’m learning the science of comics, kind of how they are created and the origins of them, before I never paid attention to white space, or panel sequence. Now I can look at certain comics or even look back at my old comics and say “oh hey, that’s how they did that”.
Also, when I was younger teachers would tell me how comics are silly and would rot my brain. They would go on saying that there was no educational value in comics and it was mindless reading. Now I am realizing “is there a such thing as “Mindless Reading”? I this class I have learned comics do have educational value, one of the most evident examples of this the first book we were taught with in this very class was in fact a comic book. Another, example of comic books educational value would be how you read comic books. With regular books you just move your eyes from left to right reading the words. With comic books you are reading panels left to right maybe up and down or side to side, and you are creating a moving sequence out of pictures and words next to each other.
This class has definitely affected my perception of the comic image. It has affected the way I read them, the way I look at people who devoted their lives to comics, the way I look at comic book creators and ultimately this class has affected the way I look at comics in general.

Comments

Bill Svitavsky said…
Sometimes it's what you do in perceiving that determines whether something is "mindless entertainment" or not. It's good that you're considering more what thought went into the creation of comics. As the class progresses, you might also consider not only what ideas the creators intended to convey, but the messages they didn't necessarily intend, but which just resulted from their assumptions and attitudes.
September 13, 2011 at 8:43 PM
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