I need some very good help please...

Keenio16 · Post by **Keenio16** » 25 Apr 2006, 21:42

Hi, Im new to this Forum and I have a Media test tommorow at school based on Comics. I was wandering if you would be as kind to answer these wuestions for me for help. Thanks alot.

1) Describe the appeal of Comics and why they are so popular?

2) How have comics changed over the past 50 years? Please refer to examples to support your ideas.

Shaqui · Post by **Shaqui** » 26 Apr 2006, 00:46

While I'm not adverse to helping people out or answering any manner of queries on comics, I think I'm a little wary of doing other people's homework for them... especially when a/ it's for a test and b/ it's tomorrow!!!... ? (Well, later today I suppose now... )

Your questions look too much like you've just copied them from your test, and shunted the responsibility onto us. If you'd come here earlier, with an agenda or idea you wanted testing out with regard to this, that we could help with, I certainly would have pleased to try and assist but sheeeeeeesh....

colcool007 · Post by **colcool007** » 26 Apr 2006, 07:30

I'm with the lady on this one. I scream and shout at my kids as their idea of time to do homework is usually when I yell bed-time!

Too big a subject to answer in 50 words or less. It takes me about 5 pages before I even get warmed up!

Magnet · Post by **Magnet** » 26 Apr 2006, 08:25

For me the appeal is basically that it's like a bridge between movies and novels. For me it's better than TV in a way, cause it's like jumping into a book but it's like a movie at the same time. There is also a traditional appeal to it too.

Over the years it has changed from mainly written picture stories to colourful rude comic strip stories.

kevf · Post by **kevf** » 30 Apr 2006, 14:40

Keenio16 wrote:Hi, Im new to this Forum and I have a Media test tommorow at school based on Comics. I was wandering if you would be as kind to answer these wuestions for me for help. Thanks alot.

1) Describe the appeal of Comics and why they are so popular?

2) How have comics changed over the past 50 years? Please refer to examples to support your ideas.

Sorry I'm too late to help with the test Keenio, but here's my two penn'orth (that's old peoples' speak for "my contribution to the debate"):

1) They aren't very popular, but they used to be. Why, when I were a boy you couldn't move for comics. There'd be shelves in't newsagent fair heaving wi' comics like T'Hotspur and T'Beezer and T'Warlord. They even had comics fer girls. I know, imagine it. There were T'Bunty and T'Tammy and T'June and't School Frrrriend. And they were all British. Yer Americans might have had their superheroes, but we used to get them all reprinted in black and white and they looked much bigger and better. And you could get change from two bob (that's 10p in new money) for any one of 'em.

So, to return to yer question, y'young whippersnapper, when comics have been popular - and in some countries they still are (ie Japan, France, Norway and to a lesser extent the USA) - it's when they've been doing something that wasn't done in any other artform. So in the 1960s when there was a large young readership (we were called Baby Boomers, because we used to blow up babies) and an appetite for visual adventure stories and colour, the comics were able to provide that in a way that TV couldn't. (TV until 1969 was in black and white, there was no daytime TV, only 3 channels, and childrens TV amounted to about 90 minutes a day, with very small budgets for most things).

When comics started to be outshone by TV (colour telly, then video, then multichannels, then games and the animation explosion) comics had to be better than the artforms they were competing with to succeed. Some succeeded by becoming adult oriented and targeting readers with more money, and some kept being innovative and always finding new audiences. Some comics were so intrinsic a part of their culture, eg France and japan, that TV was no competition, in the same way that radio never defeated intelligent radio in our country.

In the UK, because we had long gotten into the mindset that comics were just for kids, when the TV and games became better than the comics, the comics gave up the ghost and went under.

I think that's questions 1 and 2 answered. Any more?

Kev F

Peter Gray · Post by **Peter Gray** » 30 Apr 2006, 15:52

comics can also remind you of your childhood....where you were when you read it...I got very excited when the new Beano came out...
Comics and annuals can remind you of past christmas...Birthdays...or when you are carbooting...book shops...charity shops...its a thrill when you find something......collecting old comics is a buzz.

Also I like imagination and creativity in comics...e.g. My own Genie...any Tom Paterson work...

I enjoy the skill of the comic artist more these days.....

most of all it makes me smile and laugh

Comics UK