Superhero comics

               Superhero comics are more of my style. i grew up reading Batman and Justice League and Spider-Man, X-men and so forth. hell the first comic i ever owned/ read was Batman's Knightfall series, a series that was very dark and brutal. i also found Frank Millers Dark Knight Returns and was amazed that Batman as a character could be so deep. i have also watched as the superhero comics grew from the campy nature of the 60s, to the more dark and violent portrayals of today (even the extreme 90s) the documentaries i have watched all usually credit this darker shift in the protrayal to few people Frank Miller, and Alan Moore are the most notable. Miller being known for his work on Batman and Moore revitalizing Swamp Thing and written Watchmen. i do know that these two are not the only ones who deserve credit and others like Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison desreve credit and they often get it.
            I thank them for everything because if batman had stayed in his Adam West phase, i wouldn't even bother with him. i think the nature of the superhero comics is supposed to be dark or at least have a bit of grit in them, because having a superhero fly around in a guaddy costume can't be taken seriously unless we as the reader can feel for them and relate to them. current comics now have gotten better at having us relate to characters like superman better because they tend to bring them down to earth and dirty them up a bit. this makes the character feel more tangible and real than they should be.

Japanese Manga and Anime

        I've always been more of an anime kinda guy, i never owned a manga and the few i read like Berserk, Fullmetal Alchemist, Ghost in the Shell were either hard to follow due to its complexity, or ii started half way through the series because the local library never had the full series. I had many friends that did read a lot of manga and they introduced me to anime like Trigun, dragonball Z, and my favorite Cowboy Bebop. i always found the stories to be fascinating even though in most anime the the main hero is some sexually ambiguous teen boy with big eyes and shy social outlook has to save the world (because that's how things go in Japan i assume).
        I found it amazing that the artist can and has to produce thousands upon thousands or pages and cells each year to produce a volume, where as in American comics a page is usually done in a day, only producing a fraction of that in a year. i guess the thing that never attracted my attention to manga was the fact that it can be very confusing if like me you jumped into the middle of the story, especially if the story is very complex and drama ridden (oh the drama). so i found that anime always cut to the chase by editing things from the manga to fit into an OVA or into a series of anime, however jumping into anime without knowing what is going on can be jarring DragonBall Z for example, as simple as the idea is (find the dragonballs save the world) it can get complex fast then the fast paced action can be to much for some. anime has always been more preferable to me because it was always on a tighter schedule and it was easier for me to follow.

Wide World of Comics

                        When i was younger i always thought there were only American comics mainly Marvel and DC. I never knew that other countries had their own comics save for Japanese manga. My only experience with European comics wasn't till recently in class, the comic i started out with was 2000AD specifically Judge Dredd. I started reading this because i had known about the character for years from thanks to that Horrible Movie adaptation in the 90s and after seeing the recent (1000 times better) remake i wanted to read the stories. So I clicked on the links provided and had at it, and as i read through 2000AD i noticed that these comics were not that different than the American comics i still read. I read on to some of the Nikopol comics began to see other viewpoints and styles in these comics than the superhero comics I'm used to reading. Has these comics converted me to only European comics? no, but i have a better understanding of the world wide comics and take away the fact that some of these stories and characters like Dredd are just as compelling if not more so than the characters I'm used to reading

Stereotypes in comics

          comic has a long history of stereotypes and undertones of racism in comics going all the way back to the beginning. Winsor McCay has drawn them Will Eisner has drawn them even Frank Miller has. is this a problem? Of course it is, but it is also a reflection of the times. for example in the time of Little Nemo African Americans were drawn very exaggerated and offensive wearing jungle skirts and having bones in their hair, the faces would have large light colored lips and big noses. Offensive by today's standards but back then it was completely P.C. the stereotypes and racism didn't stop at African American either Asians were drawn cartoonishly ghoulish and so was any other minority. However as the times evolved opinions changed and the racism for the most part subsided, but the stereotypes still played through. Sure African Americans weren't drawn harshly but they were still thugs and gang members and seen as bad people, and other minorities were played that way too.
       I suppose that its not always the argument of the time period, and that the writers or artist bias views are consciously or unconsciously placed into their work. I do believe that the stereotypes will always play out in comics because they are easy to put in, no extra thought has to go in to creating new views or scenarios for certain characters to go through. stereotypes are the way people see other people and that can't be changed. no matter how far along we come as a society or in the comics industry, those stereotypes are ingrained into from our experiences and unfortunately the stereotype will always be prevalent in comics and media.

understading comics

         As a kid the way i learned to read was from comics. my first comic was Batman issue 500 and i pretty much didn't fully understand the story from the pictures alone so i had to read the ballons to get the idea of what was going on. so comics have always had a special place in my heart, so when i read Understanding Comics i enjoyed it very much. Scott McCloud's way of explaining how comics are done and arranged only strengthens my idea to use comics as a visually intresting way to get young kids to read more. how Scott explains how simplicity in the drawing and the story can actually be better than a highly detailed and complex arrangement of pictures that can cause confusion.

           The way he breaks everything down to illustrate how comics work is very refreshing and the fact that its done in a comic form is added sugar on top. it makes the book more enjoyable as a reader who loves comics and honestly finds reading novels and other books a bit boring, and the fact that he explains that comics is another type of art form made me so happy and gave me justification to explain to my parents that i want to do comics. the read was very enjoyable and i would recommend it to anyone interested in comics.

Tin Tin

        Tin Tin is a character i know of but am not to familiar with like my familiarity Batman of Superman. I remember seeing the animated Tin Tin adventures as a kid on cartoon network or something like that. so i knew Tin Tin was an adventurer like indiana jones or more closely to johnny quest. i didn't know till much later that Tin Tin was a french comic character. now having read some of the comics and seeing some of the shows i wish i was more exposed to Tin Tin because i feel that he was kind of like the idea boy childhood, going on adventures and being in the middle of action, and going to exotic places. I had never seen the Tin Tin movie because i heard mixed reviews about it and was unsure about it, but i did like to see that character that seems t be from a earlier time period get brought back for a more contemporary time, but also not be made modern. as i said eariler Tin Tin reminds me of one of my favorite cartoon characters Johnny Quest, they are both young adventurers that end up saving the day with the help and resourcefulness of their friends. it maybe possible drew a lot from Tin Tin and that is not a bad thing. i know Tin Tin had a very long publication run and was popular in france so maybe to create similar feedback in the U.S. Johnny Quest was created. so Tin Tin could have had a good impact on culture sparking the young male adventurers like quest, hardy boys, etc. Tin Tin is the type of character i could easily get into and stay with wishing i had his adventures.

underground comics

     I can honestly say that before reading Doping Dan in class, i had never read any underground comics before. my own expereince with comics were always mainstream superhero comics so seeing a comic with so much drug use and seeing some others with subtle and not so suble sexual content was very refreshing. i had no idea that underground comics were such a big genre and had such a following. it even had its own animation. animation i swear was for those tripping balls because that stuff gave me headachs and honestly started to irritate the hell out of me. however the comics themselves were awesome to read. they were raw, gritty, and real. they didn't censor themselves and why should they? they were not part of the comics code so they could get away with anything and i love that concept. i do with thaat some of the art wasn't so cartoony but thats my own personal taste. i didn't get a chance to read a lot of the comics passed out in class but the few i skimmed through Doping Dan and a Zap comic. it was clear that this was not the comics i grew up with and thats not a bad thing. mainstream comics can get very confusing very fast due to overly complex stories and other BS, but these underground comics can be about real experiences that people had or completly random things (not particularly my favorite). this genre of comics i feel are more in the light by todays standards by way or the internet and the vast amounts of online comics that some may follow the same tradition of underground comics andso more people especially to day are expoesed to them.