Comic Books

As much as I love reading comic strips every Sunday morning at the kitchen table, I enjoy reading comic books far more. There are actually many differences between comic books and comic strips. Probably the most obvious difference is the length. Comic books are much longer and larger than strips, which are generally around just a few small panels on just one page. Another major difference that I noticed is that comic books can be much more graphic in their contents. While comic strips are designed to be read by a wide range of audiences and, as such, are more family friendly, comic books are aimed for more specific types of readers. For instance, Carl Bark's Donald Duck comics are generally more family friendly, but they include longer stories and more development than their comic strip counterparts. While on the other hand, a comic book such as Zero by Ales Kot, which follows the life of an ex-government spy, are aimed for a more mature audiences. Comic books such as these include graphic depictions and art such as more graphic violence where we as the reader can see gory scenes such as decapitation and guts and organs literally spilling out of another's body in all of its full, uncensored glory. Even sex scenes are shown to be quite uncensored and graphic, sometimes surprisingly more than one would think a M-17 rating would generally allow.

This last week I read various types of classic comic books intended for various audiences. Generally I focused on the DC published Action Comics series and the Tales from the Crypt series by EC Comics. Action Comics included numerous stories, including the original Superman series, the sci-fi epic Tommy Tomorrow, the jungle adventurer Congo Bill, and many more. Like the name implies, most of the content in these books focused more on action and adventure and were geared more towards young boys. The Action Comic series also included numerous other types of comics such as those depicting more average and normal people similar to the ones used in the works of the Archie Comics, while others seemed to be more of just a way to sell a type of real life product such as a specific brand of bubble gum. The Tales from the Crypt series focused more on telling various horror and noir style stories and was more for an older audience such as teens and young adults. Each story opens up with the narrator cracking open the Tales from the Crypt book and reading a section of the book to the reader. This is an example of a more graphic comic book and included stories such as a doctor who caused the suicide of two characters, and is eventually killed by the living, severed hand of one of his victims. It is later revealed that the encounter was all a hallucination caused by his own guilt, and that he actually choked himself with his own hand. Another entry takes place in a hospital wing where an old man by a window tells the other occupants of the room, who are all paralyzed and bedridden and are unable to see anything other than the hospital ceiling, what is going on outside, such as people taking walks in the park, kids playing, etc.. One day a criminal is admitted for murder so he could recover from temporary blindness before being sent to jail. Using the old man's observations, the criminal maps out an escape plan and proceeds to jump out of the old man's window, only to find everything to be bricked off and that the old man was just lying in order to lift the spirits of his fellow patients.

Overall I find more enjoyment in comic books than I do with comic strips. They are generally much longer and cover a much more diverse group of genres. There are also much more geared toward an older audience compared to a strip, which I find to be quite enjoyable since they can cover greater variety of styles, genres, stories, and even more interesting characters without having to be tied down to the limitations that exist with the comic strip.