Classic Literature and Comic Books

The superhero comic landscape during the Golden and Silver age of comics was saturated with comics that were very similar in structure. In The Revisionary Superhero Narrative, Geoff Klock points out that comics like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman followed an established set of conventions where each issue only mechanically added another story to their respective folklores (117). It would not make much of a difference what order they are read in because they do not take into account the history of the character or what lasting impact their actions will have on the world. The complexity of these comics do not go far beyond commercial literature, and they only seek to prolong their lifespan. However, author Alan Moore challenges this view of superhero comics by creating Watchmen, a revisionary comic series that redefines the purpose of the superhero and explores how superheroes can greatly impact the world in a political and social context. By incorporating these ideas in Watchmen, Moore effectively creates a more realistic, and ultimately a more novelistic, depiction of the superhero figure.

The Graphic Novel Club is a school club that I have unofficially led for the past two years. In this club we encourage the members to look deeper into any passion they have for comics, anime, superheroes, or cartoon design. We look at a broad range of art from comic strips to the full scale production of the latest Marvel movie and why components of the art have changed to accommodate the changing demographic.

3. His eyes widened and, accentuated by his __________________________________, you could tell he was sickened by the sight of his wife in the room. 4. The __________________________________ philosophy is to use a practical approach to problems, rather than theories. 5. She __________________________________ conversed with her friend on phone. 6. The room was hidden behind the __________________________________ green curtain. 7. He and his __________________________________ hung out at the bar smoking. 8. He could feel __________________________________ anger building inside himself. Matching: Match the antonym to the vocabulary word. _____ 1. concerned _____ 2. compliant _____ 3. clear, truthful _____ 4. ornate _____ 5. tiny _____ 6. beneficial _____ 7. harmful _____ 8. ideally A. austere B. equivocate C. mulish D. cynically E. benignly F. colossal G. apathetically H. pernicious

Every year, students in all grades read novels ranging from To Kill a Mockingbird to The Great Gatsby. Yet, these students almost always complain about being required to read these classic works of literature. Classic novels have been put in the school curriculum for ages. Why would we change that now? Students need to continue reading the classic novels in school in order to further their education, expand their reading selections, and keep author’s legacies alive and well.

Since the beginning of time (particularly beginning in the 1920’s), comic books have always been a creative reflection of what’s going on in popular culture. Comic books tend to perfectly depict animations that relate to current politics, historical events, and current social issues that we face every day in the United States. Comic books cover a wide range of pop culture genres such as: adventure, horror, crime, mystery, romance, westerns, and humor (just to name a few). However, comic books also discuss serious American popular culture issues but utilize superheroes (such as Spiderman, Batman, and Superman) and villains (such as The Joker, Dr. Doom, and Lex Luthor) as the main characters; which fascinated the youth and thus resulted in a popular, successful, and booming comic book industry.

If one were asked to give a brief description that defines his or her favorite hero, it would be a very rare occurrence to get a response such as “a cocaine addict, workaholic, and peculiar genius with an indifference to sexuality,” or perhaps “an army general with an increasing bloodlust and an intense thirst for power.” However, despite these less heroic qualities, characters like these tend to appeal more to readers of literature — especially the contemporary audience — than traditional heroes. So what exactly makes them more appealing and do their unconventional qualities actually have an effect on the works of literature that they are in? In order to begin understanding the answers to these questions, it is important to recognize what

It is an interesting view, highlighting how passive the audience becomes to hegemonic beliefs in a movie if the story happens to be adapted from a comic that was written roughly 40 years earlier.

“‘Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.’” The similarities and differences between Doctor Faustus, a play by Christopher Marlowe, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel by Oscar Wilde, are pronounced and characterized by their underlying gothic theme. These can be seen all throughout both forms of literature, including in both character's’ demise through plot progression and internal struggles.

The time period that my group and I worked on was the modern time period. This time period was 1914-1950. There was a lot of major events that influenced this time period. Some of those were The Great Depression which occurred in 1929-1939, World War I and World War II. The Enlightenment was another huge event that happened during this time. All of these events occurred during this time and influenced the writing during the modern period. A lot of important people wrote many important pieces of literature. During this time, there was many different values and beliefs. The modern time period wasn’t just a type of literature, it was a movement. It was really a great incline of the youth culture. The type of writing that is has is mostly

The American comic book era took hold in 1938 with the debut of Superman2. The idea for Batman began in 1939 and has been a staple of American comic books ever since. The comic book style of today involves small pictures with text bubbles with one to two sentence narrations explaining the story. This style only conveys a small amount of detail so the drawings used in comic books are increasingly important. The details embedded here, shape the reader’s mental image of the character and convey information that the words alone miss.

Analysis of Comics: Words, Pictures and Beyond Comics has been a strong medium of telling stories to children as well as to adults. In comic books, writers try to tell a story using the combination of words and pictures. People often assume that pictures in a comic book is meaningless without the texts. Scott McCloud has identified seven word-image relationships unique to comics in Show and tell, and tried to explain that the combination of words and pictures is not as simple as it is often thought, and he has shown it by using words, and images as metaphors and stories. He also gives examples of such uses of word-image relationships throughout this chapter, which is taken from his book Understanding Comics.

The comic style is an art form in its own right that grew amongst the various movements that evolved throughout the years, such as classism to the modern art we see throughout the world today. Through these movements, the level of emotion, professional skills and ideas fluctuate and swaps in importance as art switches between the real and the unknown. These sometimes may not have an impact on the art movement as a whole, yet still has enough unique differences to showcase a whole new style. This is how the comic style was born. The comic style has appeared in various movements, influenced our emotions and actions, built franchises and culture and continues to influence the world today. It’s the style that takes realism and recreates it in a

Comic books are not only a source of pleasure,but they also serve as a unique reflection of the culture to which they belong.Comic book characters are usually depicted in visual and contextual extremes.These extremes are representations of how common stereotypes are turned into archetypes and can help us learn about contemporary American social structure because representation means using language to say

The ability of a classic book is to be reinterpreted. A classic is something that is ‘Judged over a period to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind’ (kimsunjin, 2013). A classic book is a book accepted as being paradigmatic or prominent, for instance, books like Pride and Prejudice, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men and so forth, are listed in a list of great books. Either through an imprimatur or a reader’s opinion. Per Henrik Blidal, Casper Sylvest and Perter Wilson in ‘Classics of international Relations: Essays in criticism and appreciation’ they define a classic in five key ways; ‘the acknowledged or undisputed classic”, “the archetypal classic”, “the classic in the making”,” the overlooked classic” and lastly the “Alternative format classic”. Kenneth Waltz’s neo-realist ‘Theory of International Politics’ is arguably the utmost significant book in International relations, as Jack Donnelly argues it is “causing a fundamental discursive transformation and conveying the notion of anarchy to the forefront” (Donnelly, n.d.). Similarly, Keohane and Nye’s ‘Power and Interdependence’ re-examined the military and economic interests of state and non-state actors. The authors widened the dominant realist worldview of the time and contributed to many of the advances in our modern era of globalization.

And such rewritings are important because the new characters may be more similar to students from the 20th and 21st century. That means that canonical literature should be included but not imposed as the only tool, as in Western modern society students might find it difficult to feel identified with patriarchal characters such as the boy who fights with dragons to save the princess or the girl who is the damsel in distress waiting for her beloved