During the transition into the 1960's and basically throughout the decade, comics were at the forefront of social transformation. This was for several reasons, starting with the large number of comic book topics dealing with real current events around the world. A lot of these just barely slipped by the comic code of 1952, such as comics dealing with issues from the Cold War and also the Vietnam War. Another great example of comics sticking with the times was the invention of the timeless character Spiderman. Peter Parker was the epitome of any 1960 high school student. He was just a normal kid and when he obtained his powers, his first instinct was to use them for making money. Marvel essentially created the perfect super hero for the times they were in, and since then, Spiderman has seen minimal changes in character, appearance, and storyline. This comic line also was one of the most humanly developed stories, in the sense that Spiderman dealt with many more "everyday" issues than the average super hero, in that his teenage life saw as much time in the comics as his superhero life. With Spiderman and other new super hero comics on the rise, the comic industry was without a doubt at the forefront of social transformation in the U.S. in the 1960's.
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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