week 3

Well I can definitely tell from all the readings last week that comics are beginning to shift their way into becoming the romantic adventures and tales of heroism that post world war two comics have become known for. Obviously at this point in history, the general audience of American Caucasian cartoonists have a lot of skewed perceptions of the surrounding world and different race. But hey, they knew they're audience, and escapism sells! America is becoming more curious as it's dragged into the second world war. Prize comics attempts to treat kids of the time with a buffet of strange, perplexing, and harsh environments that they wouldn't know how to make heads or tails of. Are they using unfair and downright disgraceful stereotypes of real world cultures? Yes, but the kid's don't know that. Prize comics were definitely a humiliating read, but they teach us how far we've come in trying to break down racism in comics. Terry and the pirates seemed to have a few of those elements within it but it wasn't surrounded by horrible stereotypes like that in prize. It was much more classy, vaudevillian, and dynamic. The characters have a lot of personality to them, and caniff's wonderful execution of ink truly helps the stories to seem very theatrical.

The batman stories appeared (like discussed in class) as gothic stories. tales of adventure, the occult, and horror in general. I found it funny that I needed to take a look back after finishing it to figure out just who was a werewolf and who was a vampire. It was interesting to see batman with so little personality, I'll admit that.

The court case was very difficult to understand. I feel like it opened up cold at first and I wasn't exactly sure what they were arguing about. But I understand it's relevance in the sense that the fictional character's like superman suddenly had a lot of monetary value to them. Eventually a lot of other people wanted in on the whole prospect of fantastical escapism in cartoon form, solely on the use of these new archetypes.