I think that the social class we are in effects how we view comics, depending on the society that people are brought up in differs on how things are viewed. One of these is comics, many comics are about the super hero that does good for the community, no matter what their class is he/she is there to help. However the super hero's past may be present in the story and by what class he/she derives from will impact how the reader views the super hero. Some super hero's are born in the wealthy class of society, and for the people he/she ends up doing good for all. The most common route of comic, is when the super hero comes from a poor family that does not have much, makes some dramatic change, becomes the super hero and does good for all man-kind. One story of this type is Clark Kent a.k.a. Superman. Clark Kent was a middle class farm child that decided to leave his home and move to the city. In the city is where Clark Kent becomes "Superman" and rids the city of evil. Now, this relates to a lot of people from that time that were moving to the city from the frontier and needed something that was supportive in their life. Moving to the city was what an average American at that time was doing, and that Superman was doing the same thing gave residents hope that it would happen in the real world. The story is of an average American that can do amazing things. In the reading, one that stood out to me was Jack Dempsey, who we talked about in class as well, and the story of how an average well Irish-American can do something amazing. Starting from the little bar fights, to being on the big stage. These stories stand very strong to me when thinking about comics and class. Classes make how we view things, the lower class is not going to view a comic the same way as the upper class. Meaning in the comics will hit home to different classes in different ways. So, class is definitely a factor to when it comes to interpreting comics today.
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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