Comic books in the 1960’s were certainly at the forefront of social transformation. Comics in the 60’s used many topics and events that were around during that time period. They used currents events in their stories to keep their readers interested and active in reading their comics. The cold war and Vietnam War were common topic written about in comics during the 60’s. These common topics kept comic book in completion with the television and radio which had taken over the media outlet. Another thing comic book writers did to keep comics progressing going was to recreate some of the comic book characters. The writers made the characters more realistic and humanized and seem like an average person when he not fighting crime, this allowed readers to better connect with the characters and understand them. Spider man was a one of the bigger characters that was recreated. He was Made into and nerdy college kid with an average life who gained powers after he was bitten by a radioactive spider. At first he didn’t try and stop crime, but tried to use his power for personal gain like any average person would do. Only when tragedy strikes does he realize he needs to use his power for the safety of the people. Many stories were revamped on this sort of manner. With the new themes and characters I think comic books were towards the top of social transformation.
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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