A while ago in my university we attended a talk with Paul Gravett who had talked about his love for comics and a compilation of comics that he had particular interest in. He had talked a lot about American Sunday Comics, mostly focused on the old Garfield comics launched at June 19, 1978 and how long winded they where and simplistic in it’s dry humour, and eventually becoming a void series resembling nothing of which it had before. Beano Comics such as Dennis the Menace and The Bash Street Kids and how popular they where in their time. Action Comics such as Superman, Batman and the like and compared how different the American Action comics where from the Japanese Mangas and how both suite a very particular interesting difference in storytelling both from a layout perspective, art style and story structure and the way they are both handled. Having American comic juggle between several writers and artists there mostly to just pump out comics and Mangas there with the same people creating it mostly from start to finish, and taking a lot longer to create in general due to the difference in industries. Paul also mentioned the comic code of 1954 in America to allow publishers to self regulate their comics, this was not a legal requirement but a lot of retailers looked at this for reasurance that the comics where appropriate for distribution. He also talked about the Maus graphic novels which illustrated Mice in a Nazi controlled Germany showing from the perspective of the Jews how life was in Germany at the time made in 1980-1991. And a comic called Asterios Polyp made in 2009 by an American novelist which was a colorful comic which used colored linework instead of solid black and white and solid colours and changed whenever the writer wanted to portray character emotions, meaning the overal art style changed frequently having many characters be of different linework color based on the situation and emotions. He had also mentioned Webtoons as a more modern way of enjoying comics being very easy for authors to release comics onto an online audience and being much shorter but engaging comics that makes the platform worthwhile and has it’s own benefits over traditional comics exagerating the effects of the “Turning page effect” that a lot of comics use to maintain audience engagement.
I found this talk to be somewhat interesting going over many different comics and the love and interest that Paul Gravett has in comics, there where many different comics he had mentioned ranging from cartoons, action comics, mangas and more unique comics that fit into their own categories.
