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.