Our discussions in the class this week focused on the negativity in which was found in comic books. America thought the violence of these comic books were turning their children into delinquents, but what the society in the 50's was not taking responsibility for was the fact that their children were being left without adult supervision especially in homes in which both parents were working. It seems that although show like Leave it to Beaver represented the ideal, they did not represent reality. Then such sources as Dr. Fredric Wertham who is comparable to Senator McCarthy and his witch hunt, finding anyone to blame for rising of crime by young people. He believed that children learned to "fight, torture victims, and conceal firearms" from comic books and also learned to take narcotics. This is a serious proclaim especially since the Comic Book industry wasn't as established then as it is now.
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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