Week 4: The Comic Book

In the 1930s and 1940s, a new form of the graphic narrative took hold and became known as the comic book. These more elaborate comic strips were easily portable and people really seemed to enjoy being able to read more than one comic at one sitting, something you couldn’t do with just one newspaper. Before the comic book became popular, it was very hard for animation to break out of the concept of only being for children. The stories tended to always be very unrealistic and overdramatic so it was very difficult to make them appeal to both kids and adults. There was a strong demand for the expanding and maturing audience, and a strong censorship system was created to restrict mainstream comics to appropriate subjects and representations to be kid approved. This became a big conflict; however, people then began finding a way to create stories with political and social satire that were also kid approved. So many people were drawn to comic books because these stories took them away from their everyday lives, and many people became attached to not only the stories but the characters in them. One thing that was unique to comic books is that comic book characters are always reset – they never advance beyond a certain level – take the superheroes in Marvel in DC Comics for example. So with each new comic book, you are able to read about a new adventure that character takes on, drawing in the reader with each new book that became published.