Comic books were seen as entertainment for the youth. Many parents didnt see too many issues with their kids reading the adventure dime store books but as our society evolved, so did the characters and the stories that existed in comic books. Gruesome horror and gore were now being introduced, along with violence and crime. Parents began to worry that what their children were reading was somehow going to affect how their children acted in society. Today we have seen this type of concern with music, like that of Marlin Manson, and video games. Like the comics code, music and video game distributors are required to put stickers that indicate violence and adult content. This is something that prevents children from buying these products, without parental consent. Comic books were strongly censored because parents were becoming scared of their children and what they couldnt control. They felt that outside entities were going to turn their kids into criminals and violent offenders. They were afraid that if kids saw a man cut the head off of a woman, all of the sudden their child would think it was cool and decide that he/she could do it too. Parents simply have to understand that kids are not as dumb as parents think they are. Parents also have to do their job by making sure their kids know the difference between right and wrong. Stopping your child from reading or viewing pictures of someone killing someone else doesnt mean that they wont see or hear about it from some other force. You cannot shield every bad thing from your child, unless you want to spend a lifetime stopping movie production, advertisement, and new reporting. Parents must allow a child to experience the world with the understanding that reality is different from fiction and that what is right is right and what is wrong is wrong. Children know how to make good decisions and its a parent's job to make sure they have the ability to understand, not to shield them away from the world.
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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