The Comic Book History of Comics (3)

 After reading The Comic Book History of Comics, first I will say it was a very interesting and informative read while being somewhat humorous. I also found a lot of the subjects they talked about fascinating like how comics evolved and the shifts in media. Although what I found to be particularly interesting to me was how comics were developed and viewed in different cultures. Like how in American comics were more dominated by a particular genre for certain eras; like how WWII brought about the age of superheroes while in Europe their comics were never really dominated by a certain genre but instead had a wide variety of different genres and franchises. It was interesting the respect American comic creators got from Europe while American's themselves held some contempt for them and the fact that Europe did not have harsh censorship compared to the comic code in America which gave them the freedom of a more adult audience and market. Along with that, it was really interesting and I thought it was cool that the French embraced comics to be an art form worthy to be a major art form.

I also enjoyed when the text has a brief section about manga and talks about how the Japanese have such an affinity towards it. It was probably the section I was most engrossed with since it was just so interesting how one's culture (the Japanese) mixed with the influence America brought about. Also reading about just how influential Osamu was to manga because of American comics and animation, it was interesting to read how we digest American comics to Japanese comics. Like how they described American comics are more something you read slowly to take in the amount of detail and information printed while Japanese comics are more fast-paced and demand the reader's attention by making the reader actively seek out clues on the page and interpret them. Overall it was just really interesting how comics came about and the influence they brought to them.