In some respects, the comics of the 1960s were spot-on with their storylines and themes in relating to their readers and growing their fanbase, but in others, they were still lagging behind. Marvel did a great job gaining new readers and expanding the popularity of comic books in this decade. They did this by making the storylines more relatable to the people who would be reading them. Superhero characters became more realistic and human. They struggled more often in this decade than they had in previous decades and dealt with subjects that are universally experienced by people in the real world. At the same time though, they did not fully adapt the stories to fit exactly what was going on in the real world at the time. This was going to have to change for the future if the comic book industry wanted to stay relevant and popular.
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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