Wonder Woman as Brad stated earlier has always been drawn as a beautiful woman with a short, somewhat revealing outfit. However what he failed to mention were Wonder Woman's proportions. In reality the earlier Wonder Woman would not be able to stand up without falling over, her waist was so tiny and her chest so large that if anyone so much as touched her she would have fallen over. However we all know as comic book readers that comic book characters are not always realistic. This however can prove problematic for young girls reading Wonder Woman comics. While the WW comics are now a bit more realistic, they and other forms of entertainment such as Vogue, still portray the ideal skinny woman with a perfect body as what is normal. In reality about 5 percent of women worldwide actually have the figure of a model, which means that more than 5 billion people do not. Yet all these forms of media portray these ideals, an insane amount of comics show skinny characters and in doing so influence the young minds of male and female readers alike, suggesting that a normal woman should look like this. The depiction of women in many types of media is harmful to young women's self esteem and body issues.
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...
Comments