The Comic Book History of Comics (3 points)

I've only learned about comics history through a segment of my highschool history class. I learned about the different stages of comic history and all about the superhero comics. Since my teacher really liked superhero comics I learned a bunch about my teachers favorite comics rather than the history. Luckily for me my teacher told us about Hearst's first comic “the yellow kid.” Being able to re learn about Hearst's first comic being about yellow journalism is really interesting to me. I completely forgot that his comic was about over speculation of journalism.

Before Hearst posted the yellow boy comic, I personally feel like so many interesting events happened that he could have picked instead of just talking about journalism. For instance the first international olympic games, the first ford car was made, it was an election year, Plessy v. Ferguson aka "separate but equal" passed the supreme court, as well as a bunch of natural disasters all happened in the US in 1896. Yet the sensationalization of stories to make a profit shown by a little bald kid and a yellow baggy sweater was picked. I also don't understand why the history book only talks about the “good” sides of comics. Sometimes here and there they talk about certain hardships but it normally ends all happy go lucky. Maybe I just don't like the writing style of the author of the book. I wish the author would go into detail about the world's events that caused the comics history to unfold. I enjoy learning the details of why something happens instead of a watered down version. Even though it may be easier to read, I would rather just read more details. Also I feel like the whole book glorifies each author as if they have never done any wrong. Sometimes they talk a little bit about artist strikes or some world events that caused kids to work in comic/animations studios. I also wish this book wouldn't railroad on old time comics and superheroes, just like my highschool teacher did. Moving on to some positive notes of the book, I enjoyed learning about little fun facts about each comic author. For instance how jack kirby changed his name or how stan lee split his name in half to get his. I also enjoyed learning about the close ties of animation and comic book history. Lastly I enjoyed learning about how quickly comic topics can change based on world events. For instance the change from flashy superheroes to not being able to glorify violence because of the comic code of 1954.

To summerise quicky i wish the book when into more detail about the world event that connceted changes in the comic book history.