Superman and Comic Books Essay

Submitted By cjman
Words: 2182
Pages: 9

The Evolution of Comics
Comic books, a dying part of our innovative society as well as other items being over looked from before the turn of the century as they are geared towards adults, technology-overtaking comics, and to recover the popularity of comics writers need to change their approach. Michael Chabon believes comic books are not written the way they used to be and are not geared towards children anymore. He also believes that if writers took a different approach, comic books would be a bigger part of children’s lives as it was in his life growing up. In todays society it is hard to even just sit down and read the news paper now that we have cell phones, Ipad’s, and much more. The amounts of other things people can be doing are endless. Sitting around reading comic books is one of the last things humans want to do these days. We prefer things that are more entertaining. People today need their “quick fixes” instead of time investments in books, newspapers, and none the less comic books. I think comics are becoming less and less relevant as all paper readings are.
The world of comic books is changing to adjust to those or more specifically the generation that liked comic books. Michael Chabon thinks that writers should take a different approach to bring back the day’s children used to read comics.
“Let’s blow their little minds.A mind is not blown, in spite of whenever Hollywood seems to teach, ,erely by action sequences, things exploding, thrilling planetscapes, wild bursts of speed.”(Chabon, 1020). As people get older the comic books have to get more vulgar and adjust the art and stigma of comics. If the stigmas are changed maybe there is a small chance comics could have a comeback for children but more than likely not. Almost all comics have some type of stigma to them. Whether it is the Joker and his evil ways of wanting to get revenge on a city for his beliefs or just plain out utter evil. In the article "Culture And Stigma: Popular Culture And The Case Of Comic Books." Paul Lopes states
My interest in popular culture and stigma stems from my research on comic books in America. In reading histories, interviews, columns, and other writings in the subculture of comic books, I found the multiple levels of stigma to be quite remarkable. Comic books have been stigmatized since their introduction in the mid-1930s, and this stigma has affected comic books as well as artists, readers, and fans of comics. (Lopes, 390)
The stigmas that are tied together with comics have a very important part in what comics are. There are all sorts of stigmas and depending on the audience of the comic books stigmas can very. For a child reader, stigmas can be plain and silly like a bad person wants to rule the world and is just plain evil. Everyone knows those types of stigmas and have all read or watched something that has that stigma growing up. Or there can be a more in-depth stigma that has a more realistic feel to it. For example, the Joker in the Batman series of comics, he wants to bring down a city because of a deep meaning of corruption that the city has. He believes he is in the right and is bringing justice to those people and it appeals to the audience of adults because it is realistic although; something like that may never happen simply because superhero’s like Batman are not real. If writers are able to change the stigmas and get more creative, the comeback of comics can mount their comebacks that way. To get to the point, when comic books were in their prime, the generation that reads them today got hooked when they were younger and believed those silly little stigmas. Now that very few kids/teens today read comics because of all the distractions, comic writers have had to adjust to the audience and mature with the loyal fans of comics so when an adult picks up a comic that has read them since a young age will still be just as intrigued as when they first read them. Paul Lopes states
From the mid-1950s to the early