scott schoenike's blog

 It's very easy to see the appeal of comics in the 20's and beyond. Television wouldn't become mainstream for another 30 years, which made them the perfect form of entertainment. People love action, adventure, and stories which are very simple to understand. and comics brought all of this to the table. Sure as they evolved over time they eventually became more and more complex (then simple again and the complex and so on) but during this time, anyone could pick up any issue and not only know what was going on, but also be entertained by it. Another appeal was the price. Comics were extremely cheap to create, and as a result it made them easy to sell and easy to make. From a business standpoint, early comics were targeted at kids more than adults, which made the simple stories work even better. However it wasn't always just dumb entertainment. comics would reflect the views of the times, such as during world war 2 when the world was dark and depressing, comics gave us ri...

  The comic I read was called Gasoline Alley. I do not see many specifics as to which one this was, but I do know it was the comic on page 115 of the Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics. The comic stood out to me as having these strange, trippy, dream-like scenes throughout the entire comic. While this one takes place in a dream so this weird abstract world makes sense, this was a lot more common in early comic strips then I originally anticipated. Tons of comics strips throughout the 20’s to 30’s had weird almost abstract drawings, which is interesting because the medium was in its early stages and already people were experimenting with it. The prevalence of this type of art style also shows that, while not the most popular, it was very popular amongst the average comic strip reader. Which is odd because now these hyper abstract worlds have fallen (for the most part) out of popularity. In Fact it seems that this shift even happened by the end of the 30’s. In this issue of G...

  In understanding comics, there are several points which i think are very important, but one of the most important is understanding transitions from one panel to another. Understanding the 6 different types of panel to panel transitions is important to not confuse the reader of a comic. Much like in story boarding or creating a movie, you must not let the view get confused as to where everything is in relation to other things. Once the viewer loses their spatial awareness, they will become confused and their immersion has been broken and their enjoyment might have been tampered with. I also found his analysis of Japanese versus European and American comics to be very interesting. Different cultures will create different standards for entertainment no matter where they are. It’s an observation that is obvious when pointed out but unnoticed when it is not. Americans want simple uncomplicated stories but because they are easier to understand and because of the limited space our comic...

               I found it interesting to learn about the context which led to the creation of superman. I already understand a lot of the history of comics in what i thought was the “early days,'' but after reading this I quickly found out that my knowledge basically started with super man and dc’s early works. Powers like super strength are just so common to me that it never occurred to me that they were inspired by the exaggerated worlds of Popeye and other Fleischer studio’s work. In fact, when Siegel combined the elements from other protagonists he liked, such as the idea of a secret identity, the use of a one letter symbol, the idea of fighting criminals, and science fiction inspired skin tight suits, Siegel created every superhero cliche that would go on to be used for the next… well...forever. But another thing I didn't fully understand was that it was more than just simple establishing of cliches, these combinations lead to copy cats ...