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Aaron Smith
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 10461
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| Posted: 02 July 2013 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | 1
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I agree Steve, what made comics cool to read was because my friends READ THEM.
***
Complete opposite of my experience. Most of the kids I went to school with didn't read comics, or at least didn't talk about it. It wasn't a social thing at all but a solitary hobby. The only time in grade school I really interacted with other kids in any way that had anything to do with comics was in the 6th grade when the 1989 Batman movie craze hit and almost every kid, just for that one summer, was into comics. By the next year, almost everybody but me had forgotten about comics (I'd been reading them long before the Batman thing and kept going long after).
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Kip Lewis
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 March 2011
Posts: 2880
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| Posted: 02 July 2013 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | 2
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For me, in 3rd grade a bunch of kids read comics, but we
all stopped by fourth grade. I got back into comics in
the fifth grade and by then there were just two of us.
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Michael Roberts
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 14831
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| Posted: 02 July 2013 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | 3
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I was playing on my NES back when video game design meant "mistime your jump and have to spend another 45 minutes replaying the levels to get back to the point where you died." Video games did not interfere with my comic book reading. People act like video game consoles haven't been around for the last 35 years. Not to mention the quarter gobbling arcades that were around back then.
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Manuel Tavares
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 02 December 2009
Location: Portugal
Posts: 407
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| Posted: 02 July 2013 at 8:19pm | IP Logged | 4
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"Lars, my snarky sense of humor shall remain unappreciated. :'(Paul Greer ~~~~~~~~~ Not at all, Paul. Actually I think that the Ultimate Superman is not as bad as the Elseworlds Avengers. I'd rather go for a Goyer than a Millar, the latter is freaking creepy.
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Shane Matlock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 August 2012
Location: United States
Posts: 1760
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| Posted: 03 July 2013 at 12:02am | IP Logged | 5
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One word: Distribution. If I hadn't been able to buy comics at drug stores and supermarkets and convenience stores growing up, I would not have read comics.
Then there's the fact that comics aren't written for all ages these days and the fact they are so expensive, but distribution is the main problem.
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Brad Krawchuk
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 June 2006
Location: Canada
Posts: 5819
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| Posted: 03 July 2013 at 12:11am | IP Logged | 6
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I'd say distribution too. Used to be you'd go to the corner store as a kid and your mom would grab you a comic while she was buying her smokes, or you'd hit the store after school for a Slurpee and grab a comic at the same time for reading material.
And before anyone says digital comics make them accessible anywhere... sure, for the same price as print in most cases. That's crap; four bucks for a comic, or 99 cents for a song. Plus, with Clouds and backups, you can keep the song. You only license the comic for four bucks - the company "selling" it to you goes out of business, your "collection" disappears with it.
Who wants to spend money on that scam?
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Shawn Kane
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 November 2010
Location: United States
Posts: 3239
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| Posted: 03 July 2013 at 6:06am | IP Logged | 7
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Guys like Joe Quesada and Dan Didio who don't believe that kids ever read comics. Quesada likes to tell the story of his dad buying him the Spider-Man issue where Harry has drug problems and then getting out of comics until he came back during the Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen era. I've seen Didio say at conventions that DC produces comics for kids with the Johnny DC line. The writers and artists are to blame as well. If Bendis wants Ares ripped in half by Sentry, Olivier Coipel draws it very graphically. The fans that like that kind of stuff then rush to the message boards to tell how awesome it was and publications like Entertainment Weekly write about how edgy it is. That's not to say everything in comics was unicorns and ice cream cones when I was a kid. There were stabbings, shootings, people being disintegrated, and all that stuff in comics but the artists normally handled that sort of action tastefully not gratuitously. I remember G.I. Joe #1 had Cobra kill a group of villagers (off panel) but the Joes happened onto the scene after the fact. It was a faraway shot and there were no body parts lying or anything like that.
Edited by Shawn Kane on 03 July 2013 at 6:07am
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Jesus Garcia
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 10 April 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 2414
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| Posted: 03 July 2013 at 7:18am | IP Logged | 8
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Accessibility, price, and content.
My daughters are 5 and 7 and currently enjoying my Supergirl and Black Canary archives. In fact, just yesterday, my eldest was drawing a comic book page and I discovered she knew what word ballons were for, at her age, I ignored word ballons as though it was tree folliage.
Other thing that surprised me is that they figured out what was going on mostly without asking.
I did have to explain what sound effects were for and why a second Supergirl kept popping out of the base of a tree. Other thing like Larry Drake having two faces: I explained that comics don't move so the artist have to use tricks and then pivoted my head to demonstrate.
I'm proud of them for having figured out the language of comics, including processing the panels in sequence and realizing that there was a story flow involved.
Perhaps the trick to getting kids to enjoy comics is to take an active hand in mentoring them in discovering the medium rather than taking a passive "just go to the racks and pick something" approach.
My parents didn't really care what comics were about. They justed wanted me to stand still and shutup for a couple of hours.
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Jesse Perkins
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 April 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 172
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| Posted: 03 July 2013 at 7:49am | IP Logged | 9
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For better or worse, I think comics need to follow the movies more closely. A 15 year old kid loves the Avengers movie, and goes to pick up an Avengers comic, and it's a completely different set of characters. I think we (comic lovers and the comic creators) have to get used to the fact that comic books are not the kids' first introduction to these characters - toys, cartoons and movies are.
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Marshall Stewart
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 June 2012
Posts: 10
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| Posted: 03 July 2013 at 8:19am | IP Logged | 10
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Interesting topic that I'll jump into. I have been in education for twenty-two years--high school English teacher and administration at various levels. Still a comic book collector at 44 years old (only from 1940's-early 90's comics), I use them in our English classes and in school detentions, reading supplement programs, arts classes, creative writing, etc. This past school year, I worked with a couple of English teachers in grades 9 and 12 using comic books. I won't go through all the lengthy findings, but will discuss a few relevant to the topic.
Out of 47 freshmen,41 favored the "old style" of art and storyline, that being superheroes performing impossible feats and different villains appearing almost each comic. For the seniors, 48 of 50 (by the way, the classes were male and female populated) enjoyed the "older" over the "modern" formats. Interestingly, the vast majority overwhelmingly preferred newsprint to the more modern glossy look. Over 3/4 preferred the old newsprint "smell" of the comic pages (kids notice things just like we did).
Among the most vocal aspects were that students enjoyed the "escapism" aspect of older comic storylines. Modern comics are too realistic, they reported. Things are bad enough in the world as it is, reading comics today simply slaps us in the face with a reminder of how bad things really are. We enjoy escaping to the Negative and Phantom Zones, not to Iraq and Afghanistan. We enjoy the Baxter Building not the new World Trade Center. We enjoyed the futuristic thinking and creating that occurred in the older stories, not the realistic aspects of today's.
Lastly, we placed comics out to read in the last day of the semester. We paired older FF issues with newer ones, and the same with Superman, Avengers, Bat Man, Spider Man, and others. The stacks of newer comics was always left on the tables.
Children, young adults, and even I prefer the older escapist comics. As one young lady said to me at the end of the school year--"How dull it would be if 'A Long Time Ago, in a galaxy far, far away...' wound up depicting today's reality."
So very true.
and apologies for a keyboard that missing keystrokes. Need a new one.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132673
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| Posted: 03 July 2013 at 8:27am | IP Logged | 11
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I have been in education for twenty-two years--high school English teacher and administration at various levels. Still a comic book collector at 44 years old (only from 1940's-early 90's comics), I use them in our English classes and in school detentions, reading supplement programs, arts classes, creative writing, etc. This past school year, I worked with a couple of English teachers in grades 9 and 12 using comic books.•• We've come a long way from the days when teachers TOOK AWAY kids comics!!
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Greg Woronchak
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 September 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 1631
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| Posted: 03 July 2013 at 8:33am | IP Logged | 12
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If Bendis wants Ares ripped in half by Sentry, Olivier Coipel draws it very graphically
Good point. In a recent Batman issue, he beats up a character and the artist chose (admitted frankly) to draw it as graphically as possible, rather than use a subtle approach.
Makes me wonder who's running the show.... or what editorial is thinking.
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Topic Closed)
