- What popular culture are you drawn to and why?
- Why is it important to you and what value do you get from engaging in it?
- What do you anticipate you will learn about that particular form of popular culture in this course?
I started reading comic books in middle school in the early 1990s. I would spend much of the money I earned from my paper route at the local comic book store. I read mostly Marvel Comics (they publish Avengers, X-Men, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four), and just really enjoyed the adventures and the super-powers. Pretty straight-forward. However, my comic-reading continued on and off through high school and college.
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| Cover to Whiz Comics #31 |
Studying comics has been a great experience for me. It has not only taught me more about comics--a form of entertainment, I greatly enjoy--but it has made me think differently about how we communicate, symbolism in images, how I make sense of story-telling (be it in comics, film, novels, or radio/audio), and a better appreciation of the arts as a whole. Comics have introduced me to some of the most amazing and skilled people in the abstract (that is, I'm not aware of certain artists' work) and in the concrete (I've met many artists through my interest).
I have never personally read a comic book but I know a lot of people who do. I have always been interested in other things. In terms of popular culture, I am drawn to why our society today is infatuated with certain celebrity's (Kim Kardashian) who have done nothing to earn their fame.
ReplyDeleteI have never personally read a comic book but I know a lot of people who do. I have always been interested in other things. In terms of popular culture, I am drawn to why our society today is infatuated with certain celebrity's (Kim Kardashian) who have done nothing to earn their fame.
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ReplyDeleteThanks Cooper--well, good news---in this course, you will get to read a comic book as it is part of one our modules later on. You'll have to let me know what your initial experience is like!
ReplyDeleteHello - I am actively trying to figure out this blogging portion. Unfortunately I don't take well to 'threading' and 'posting' on platforms similiar to anything like Twitter.
ReplyDeleteI recently purchased Comic #'s 1,2 and 4 of Thor Girl. I am interested to see where Marvel is going with their female version of the Avengers. I have always been intrigued with the fantasy of super human powers in any light whether in a movie, tv show or comic book. Archie was my first comic strips and books that I ever delved into. Wonder Woman was my hero as a child and Sarah Connor is my modern day superhero that holds her own special powers. I have always translated Sarah as a child into who I wanted to be as an adult..somehow I just found a piece of me in her and it has always stuck. Needless to say I am happy to see her legacy continue with the Terminator sagas in the movie theater...I didn't get into the tv Chronicles. Perhaps that is alot of what Popular Culture is where do we find ourselves trickled within it? How are we defined by it and how do we define it?
Similar to Cooper, I too and interested as to why America is so obsessed with useless celebrity's. Why is the richest group in America fueled by our need to be entertained by some artificial tv screen? When did things start to change and children became less interested in bugs and dirt and more interested in iPads and computers? and will things ever go back to "normal" like how I grew up?
ReplyDeleteI have never read comic books and don't even know anybody who does it. It is just because I lived in Russia where such things or something like this existed only in a form of children's magazine. I read this analog of comic book regularly and liked it until 7 or 8. It means that now I just try to understand some parts of pop culture with the help of this course and people who take part in it.
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ReplyDeleteI can also say that I agree with Cooper. As a kid I was never one to watch cartoons on TV or read comic books. I don't not like them, I just never really had an interest in them. I think that the idea of comic books is cool, but I couldn't get interested in them. i am more of a person who reads non fiction books and watches action movies.
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