Visual Communication in Comics

The creation of the X-Men is grounded in metaphors relating to the oppression and hatred that racial and LGBT minorities have faced in society throughout history. The ‘mutant’ metaphor has stood in for both and is the key element that all the characters share and is what defines them as ‘different’. The comics have always explored the struggles these groups have faced on both a personal and societal level, whether it be mutants coming out and accepting who they are and trying to fit in within society, or the pure hatred that they face on a daily basis for something that is out of their control from a much larger ‘normal’ part of society. Many have drawn the parallels between these struggles and the struggles of real life groups such as gays and lesbians ‘coming out’ and the oppression and segregation of blacks in America. Many also draw parallels between the two main characters, Professor X and magneto, and the two prominent civil rights advocates during the 1960s, Martin Luther King and Malcom X. There is a link between the characters and the real life figures in the sense that they both have similar goals but have completely polar opposite ways of achieving them, however, the X-Men characters were never intended to be directly compared in such a way. Some who have researched the topic, such as Lyubanksy a psychologist, also state that to compare a character such as Magneto to a real life figure like Malcom X is absurd and insulting as one is an extreme terrorist that advocates only violence to solve their problems, while the other is a more nuanced and complex political figure. Whatever your opinion on the parallels between the comics and real life issues, it is undeniable that the X-Men is a metaphor for the struggles of real life minorities as well as there being a link and at least a strong influence on the characters from the events of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.    

References 

Clark, P (2015) ‘On Malcolm, Martin and that X-Men Analogy Thing’, Phenderson Djèlí Clark, 21 February. Available at: https://pdjeliclark.wordpress.com/2015/02/21/on-malcolm-martin-and-that-x-men-analogy-thing/

The great depression was one of the toughest times in American history as a quarter of the population became unemployed, and many were forced to live on tight budgets just to get by. Comics were still in their earlier forms during this period as they slowly emerged from newspaper strips. Famous Funnies was released in 1933 and is classed as the first ‘modern’ comic book even though it only featured reprinted of previous newspaper comic panels. The comic sold pretty well considering the budgets people were living on, with its first run selling out. Later on in the decade a new original character would emerge that would effectively create an industry and genre, and redefine popular culture. Superman debuted in Action Comics No.1 and quickly soared to unbelievable levels of popularity. He regularly sold over a million copies per issue, got his own separate comic book and eventually a radio show that played out his adventures. Analysing the character and time period now, 80 years later, it is clear to see why he became so popular. Superman arrived just at the right time, people were miserable during the Great Depression and sought anyway to escape from the grim reality they lived in. Having the opportunity to regularly read and follow the adventures of a super powered hero rescuing people and saving the day would’ve been desirable for a large portion of the population, thus resulting in such an explosion in popularity. However, it could be argued that even if America wasn’t in the social and economic nightmare that it was in during the 1930s, Superman still would’ve been extremely popular due to his character being something completely new and original and the shift in popular culture during the 20th Century.

References

Modern American Poetry (no date) About the Great Depression. Available at: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/about.htm

Ramsey, T. (2013) The History of Comics: Decade by decade. Available at: https://the-artifice.com/history-of-comics/

Cantu, A (2016) ‘Into The Comic World: Superman And American Anxieties In The Great Depression’. Available at: http://www.stmuhistorymedia.org/into-the-comic-world/

Post Modernism according to the encyclopaedia Britannica is defined as a “late 20th century movement characterised by broad scepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power.”

Comic books have not escaped post modernism, but it could be argued that it has affected them in a slightly different way than expected. Rather than introducing new conceptual, artistic ways of presenting comic books, publishers seem to have decided to change the characters themselves on a fundamental level. For example Marvel comics within the past few years has past the mantle of Captain America from the classic white character, Steve Rogers, to a black man, Sam Wilson, while also changing Thor to a woman. Other publishers such as DC have changed other aspects of characters, such as their religion and sexual preference. This is a fundamental shift from the previous near 100 years of comic books, and comic book writing, as writers are now deciding to engage and ‘relate’ to minority readers by catering to specific elements of their personality and life instead of making readers escape reality and enjoy the fantasy of larger than life characters. This in turn has alienated many long-time comic fans as they feel like the publishers are tampering with characters that don’t need to be and shouldn’t be changed, and that marvel would be more successful with its ‘Post-Modern’ movement by creating new, original characters. Ultimately it is down to personal opinion whether changing characters like this is a good or bad thing and only time and sales figures will tell if these new versions of characters are successful.

References

Duignan, B (no date) Postmodernism. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmodernism-philosophy 

In this weeks session we were given presentations on art movements from the 1900s to the 1920s as well as how to analyse artwork to gain a greater understanding of its context and meaning. For my analysis task I will be analysing the Captain America #1 cover which features Cap punching Adolf Hitler. In the image we see curving lines of movement in the centre of the page signifying the movement of Captain America and his fist as well as an explosion of lines moving out of his hand showing the strength of his punch. There are also further lines of movement behind Captain America and coming out of guns and bullets, showing his speed and agility. Another aspect of the image is the colours used within the characters and backgrounds, and how they convey the position and traits of the characters. Captain Americas bold blue, red and white colour scheme conveys the characters patriotism and makes him body stand out from the yellow and grey background, whereas the Nazi soldiers wear dark green uniforms making them all almost identical, conveying how they are part of the regime with no individuality. The social and political context of this image cannot be understated. At the time of the comic being published it was a risky move for Jack Kirby and Joe Simon as they depicted a world leader, admittedly a fascist and tyrant, getting punched during a time of extreme isolation for America. This could’ve easily soured relations between America and Germany had it not been that they were already on bad terms. The purpose of the illustration was to spread the anti-isolationist, anti-Nazi feeling through the nation and readers of comics as well as using such a provocative image to drive sales and cause the comic to fly off the shelf, which it did.

References:

During this weeks lecture we had to present our research from the previous week on the subject that we had been given. My group was given the topic of comic books and graphic novels through the 20th century, with my specific area being the 1920s and 30s. I found this research to be very enjoyable and interesting as it’s a subject that I am personally interested in but didn’t know much about the history of the genre.

While researching the comic strips of the 1920s I found that none of them had their own books with nearly all strips being limited to a small segment in a newspaper. As the decade progressed new forms were introduced with collections of comics being created which could be considered the first forms of modern comic books. Sadly most of the characters that were popular during this time have disappeared and been forgotten over time with only Popeye and Tin Tin being known widely today.

Moving into the 1930s original comic books would begin to be introduced with all new characters and stories. This was a complete step away from the original collections and fully ushered in the modern format of comics. This would continue for the rest of the decade until 1938 – 39 when arguably two of the most popular superheroes of all time were introduced, Batman and Superman. They exploded and became cultural phenomenon’s almost overnight and would influence the direction comics would take in an unprecedented way. This was the beginning of the golden age which would see even more iconic stories and characters introduced.

Overall I’m happy with what I learnt from my research but I think in future I need to find slightly more well known sources of information that might be more reliable. This may be difficult with comics as I doubt many large organisations would publish lots of information about them, but I may be wrong. Furthermore, I think I should’ve included more research about how the style of comics changed over the two decades in terms of medium and characters and analysed what may have influenced these changes.

References

This week we were introduced to the module of visual communication and given an overview of what we would be doing over the coming weeks and what we’re aiming for as an outcome. But the end of the module we will have produced a 2500 word referenced essay on how a specific area of Illustration has changed over the past century, through art movements and social changes. We will also have produced a 300 word project proposal before we start the actual essay.