During the 1980s comic books saw a drastic change in the way they were written. In the times leading up to the 1980s, super heroes such as Batman were almost treated as a friendly, silly character. He would wear bright colored suits while fighting all sorts of weird creators and aliens. This was not the same Batman that was around when it was created during the 1980s. The reason why Batman comic books became so bright and happy go lucky had partially to do with the comic book code restrictions. The comic book code restricted the writers from writing about the dark side of Batman, the side that we view him as today. Frank Miller was the man brought in to change in the image of Batman. Miller brought Batman back to his roots. He was older but much more dark an ominous. The violence in the issue that Miller wrote was also a great deal different than the Batman comic books that were created before. It featured characters such as the joker going on rampages and killing a large amount of innocent civilians, something that would not have been allowed with the comic book code. Miller also brought another character into the mix. After creating the new "darker" Batman, Miller created a character by the name of Dare Devil. This character had a similar style to Batman because he was portrayed as a dark and scary super hero. This era of comic books might have been the era that saved them from going extinct. The creators of comics at this time realized that super hero comics were on a fast track to extinction and knew that they only way to get them back was to shy away from the fun, bright adventures of characters such as Batman and return him to his dark roots.
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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