During the late 1960's, the main event or social issue that was taking place and was the topic of everyday life in America was the war in Vietnam. Because the war was so heavily opposed, people rioting and protesting were common in city streets and collge campuses. This sparked a whole new era in America, and like with everything else, the comic book industry followed. Because peace was so closely related with drugs and the "hippy" movement in this era, comics started incorporating this into their stories, however vague or underlying the message was. Because of this new drug wave that swept the country, comic book stories like the Amazing Spider Man series started incorporating drug messages in their plots. For example, we see Peter Parker experience his friends being exposed to drugs because of a girl conflict. it was suddle messages like these, among other cultural trends, that were so relevant to American culuture in the late 1960's that the comic book industry started to incorporate into their stories.
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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