Week 4: Comic Books

This is a subject I am very familiar with considering from Sophomore to my Senior year of high school I worked in a comic book store. This week, I read several older comics that I had not read yet. Of these included the first issue of Action comics, which I feel any fan of the superhero genre should read considering it sparked the whole genre. I also read a few of Carl Bark’s work on Donald Duck.

With the arrival of comic books, individual stories could be lengthened. And since they were printed as their own thing separate from newspapers, the content became more about the stories. Whereas comic strips have a certain charm to them, I feel comic books truly tapped into a gold mine of story telling. With both of the comics I read, the worlds of these comics are huge and really capture the imagination. The world of the ducks developed into a well beloved series that contained a wide array of characters and was the basis for several cartoons including Duck Tales. 

The world that Action comics created is on a whole different scale. Even though the first issue of action comics had multiple stories, only one of which being about Superman, it was the beginning of a whole modern mythology. One only has to look at the box office to see how well the super hero genre has survived since 1938. Comic books allowed for characters to become so much more than just cartoons. Through the lengthening the stories, comics allowed their characters to become so much more fleshed out, letting them practically become people than just mouth pieces for gags. Through the medium of comic books, our imaginations have been captured by the same characters for over 70 years.

It is interesting to see how the actual art form of comic books has changed since its inception however. Over the summer, I decided to take on the task of reading every issue of the Avengers, starting from issue 1 (1963). Its amazing how much they’ve evolved throughout the decades. Even comparing that first issue to the first Action Comics issue, it seems that with every decade that passes, the characters, the stories, the art styles, the panel layouts, practically every part of a comic have grown.  With perhaps the exception of the 90s, comic books have only gotten better and better. I for one am excited to see what the future holds.