Quote from: Julia1996 on February 01, 2018, 07:45:45 AM
My boyfriend is into comic books. I don't understand the appeal of comic books to adult people. He's not a typical nerdy type and he doesn't look like a nerd, well usually. He wears contact lenses and when he has his glasses on and his nose stuck in a comic book he does look kind of like a nerd who got into the steroids. Lol. ( and no, he doesn't use steroids, he just spends WAY too much time at the gym)
PSEUDO INTELLECTUAL ANSWER TIME.
Separating the concept of pictures with dialogue from comic books, the former is method of storytelling that has been in place for thousands of years since the advent of language. It is one of the most effective and robust manners in which convey an engaging narrative to a wide audience. In essence, it is simply a story telling media no different than any other, and should not be held to a different standard simply because of pop culture associations. In recent history, the best example of this is in Japan with manga. While manga has existed in various forms prior to World War 2, its cultural significance was shaped by the end of the second world war. The Japanese post-war economy was in shambles, poverty and starvation was rampant. People needed an escape. Movies were prohibitively expensive. Literature was a dense, complex thing and the average person's vocabulary of kanji (Japanese pictographic written characters) was not quite up to the novels and works written previously for the elite and highly educated in society. Enter manga. Written and drawn by a single person and printed on cheap pulp paper widely available, the production costs were exceedingly low. Art provided a means to convey story depth without having to have an in-depth knowledge of kanji. (Essentially, picture a children's book level vocabulary being all you can read. As an adult, you aren't going to get a whole lot out of that.) Manga subjects spanned every genre, from children's stories, superhero and robot tales aimed at teens, to complex life dramas with no less substance than War and Peace. (Short version: "Pictures with dialogue", despite the common western association, is a medium for entertainment that does not have any inherent limits to audience, and is only dependent upon the content. Dismissing them as for children is the same as dismissing Saving Private Ryan because of Spy Kids.)
To address the issue of western comic books specifically, even then the appeal is rooted in history. Since their rise in the early part of the 20th century, western comic books have largely focused on more pulp material than developed in Japan post world war 2. Superheroes, detective stories, horror anthologies, and so forth. Largely plots were simplistic, but they filled a need in society for a relatively cheap and effective means of entertainment(which allowed them to incubate and develop alongside their readers and become far more complex and engrossing stories and entire worlds, as can be seen in many modern graphic novels). Superhero comics are of course the biggest association, and the appeal of those explicitly may seem puzzling to anyone over the age of 14 at first glimpse. Yet going back thousands of years, you'll find this is hardly new. Many have drawn direct lines between the super hero comic books of the 20th century with no less than the mythology and stories of the old world. Superhuman figures, battling for good against evil, defeating sinister plots and horrible monsters, challenging those more powerful than themselves and coming out on top nonetheless. That could describe any issue of Superman or X-Men. It also describes the Odyssey and the Iliad, and pretty much any tale from ancient mythology. It is thus no surprise that the characters from much of mythology have been adapted as characters in comic books! It speaks volumes (pun not intended) that major comic book heroes include Thor and Hercules, and the transition between the mediums was seamless. Wonder Woman is steeped heavily in Greco-roman mythos as well. From analogs to Prometheus, taking from the gods for the good of humanity, to the classic human-centric narrative of the mortal triumphing over the gods themselves (Batman and Dr. Doom), the parallels are astounding. If it was good enough to base civilizations off of, good enough for me.
