After reading Christian Davenport’s piece, I believe that comics offer stereotypes as they pertain to race. Generally comic books offer stereotypes to all characters chronicled, but racial stereotypes seem most prominent as they can shape [unfortunately] the characters. Davenport states, in his piece Black is the Color of My Comic Book Character: An Examination of Ethnic Stereotypes, “A way of speaking, a look, a personality trait, an emotion is given to a character that allows readers to label, and recognize, and identify them. As a consequence of this process, individuals from Brooklyn would speak with an accent and make gestures with their hands; intergalactic pirates would drink some alcohol- like substance and plunder unsuspecting vessels; bikers (from any planet or microverse) would wear tattoos and dark glasses; and Blacks (whether they appeared on a street corner or on Mars) would be represented by characteristics that were/are usually associated with African Americans, such as threatening demeanor, high levels of athletic prowess, low intellectual capabilities, exotic and mysterious backgrounds, residence within an inner city, and menial employment or unemployment” (Davenport 22). I feel as though Davenport was able to depict the topic of this blog in a way better than I ever could attempt. Stereotype is defined as a 1widely held but fixed and oversimplified or idea of a particular type of person or thing and 2a person or thing that conforms to such an image. Comics is just one of countless media outlets that succumb to the use of stereotypes.
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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