In my opinion, comics can definitely be considered inherently sexist. When comic books were first created, the genres that were used were targeted more to the male population. These genres include superheroes, crime, and horror. These don’t normally attract the female population. Along with the genres, many of the main characters in comic books are male. However, I don’t think that the creators did this because they were sexist. I think that the reason for this could be a result of the time period that many comics were created in. During the 1930’s to 1950’s, women weren’t normally the targeted audience that many mediums pointed their stories to. Most of them (mainly comic books) were created for the male population. Although, this could be argued because of the creation of the first popular superhero character, Wonder Woman. Many may say that her creation showed that comics weren’t sexist, but even she was originally created for men. Wonder woman didn’t become a symbol for feminist movement until years later. Her stories also portrayed her as very muscular with the ability to seduce men to get her way. The creators couldn’t even allow her to marry in fear that if she did, she would have to become a housewife, give up her powers and lose her thrill as a superhero. This shows that though creators may not have intended it to be so, comics have always been inherently sexist.
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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