Understanding Comics
I went home this week and read Understanding Comics. Not only was it extremely informative in a fun and highly engaging way, I found myself asking a lot of personal questions, which I confess, I hadn’t expected. In the comic we are provoked to look at comic books themselves in a different way. We are pushed to see them as literature, works which took almost more thought, planning, and a great deal more work overall than any works of literature. Yet, even with all this, all myself and many people I’ve nerded out with about them, only tend to see comic books as still films. Merely pictures on paper. Pictures that occasionally have a moral and intricate story line on the surface. This brings me to another interesting thing I found about the comic, they point out how comics are so much more than just what I or many of my friends have taken them for. They are an art form and visual and literary art form. What’s even more amazing are the people who make them. There are many different kinds. There are the surface level artists, interns, individuals learning their trade, and as you continue through each tier you come across more and more individuals who aren’t content with only being an imitator. The more the individual pushes forward, the fewer and fewer there are, and the more of an influencer they become. Until you come to the core where you have the masters, men and women who discover the tools, and set the rules of their trade. This description of these men and women makes you wonder and question your own purpose when starting at the bottom of your world. What do I have to say? What do I have to contribute? Anything? Something? And if I ever find out, how far am I willing to go? Do I want to hover on the surface? Content with imitating someone else? Or do I want to go all the way? Or, perhaps, will I fall in the middle? Is one worse than the other? I suppose it depends on the person.
I went home this week and read Understanding Comics. Not only was it extremely informative in a fun and highly engaging way, I found myself asking a lot of personal questions, which I confess, I hadn’t expected. In the comic we are provoked to look at comic books themselves in a different way. We are pushed to see them as literature, works which took almost more thought, planning, and a great deal more work overall than any works of literature. Yet, even with all this, all myself and many people I’ve nerded out with about them, only tend to see comic books as still films. Merely pictures on paper. Pictures that occasionally have a moral and intricate story line on the surface. This brings me to another interesting thing I found about the comic, they point out how comics are so much more than just what I or many of my friends have taken them for. They are an art form and visual and literary art form. What’s even more amazing are the people who make them. There are many different kinds. There are the surface level artists, interns, individuals learning their trade, and as you continue through each tier you come across more and more individuals who aren’t content with only being an imitator. The more the individual pushes forward, the fewer and fewer there are, and the more of an influencer they become. Until you come to the core where you have the masters, men and women who discover the tools, and set the rules of their trade. This description of these men and women makes you wonder and question your own purpose when starting at the bottom of your world. What do I have to say? What do I have to contribute? Anything? Something? And if I ever find out, how far am I willing to go? Do I want to hover on the surface? Content with imitating someone else? Or do I want to go all the way? Or, perhaps, will I fall in the middle? Is one worse than the other? I suppose it depends on the person.
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