After reading our last few assignments I fully grasped the concept that comics are more than just fun stories with pictures; the stories have meaning and those meanings have everything to do with history. No wonder this is a history class and I earn my “D” gen-ed credit! The creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, are perfect examples of social classes affecting our perceptions of the comic image. Siegel and Schuster were two different men; Siegel was the inspiration for the Superman persona while the bespectacled Schuster was the inspiration for the Clark Kent persona. The co-creators, who were first- generation Americans, put themselves and their “American Dreams” into their comic. They didn’t know what it was like to be popular or well liked so they wrote a comic based off of what they know—enter Clark Kent, a not so popular farm boy. On the other hand, they also wanted to write about what they wish their high school years had been like—enter Superman, a man of superhuman strength and immense popularity. Siegel and Schuster created Superman for a demographic much like themselves; they wanted the comic to be an outlet for readers who were just like them. Beyond the social issues, comics affect our perceptions of issues that are prevalent in the news. Writers purposefully create storylines that parallel current news events. The juxtaposition of the superheroes dilemmas and reality can be skewed due to the writer’s attempt at impressing an opinion/message on his/her readers. In short, societal class does affect our perception of the comic image because it affects almost everything around us; our society hasn’t matured to a level where people are not concerned with the society.
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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