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Post by Muzzlehatch on Feb 16, 2010 19:24:12 GMT -5
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Post by antiyonder on Mar 1, 2010 17:29:59 GMT -5
But are all mentioned comics really stupid, or is this a case where people equate simplicity with stupidity?
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Tea
Yellow Trout
Posts: 87
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Post by Tea on Mar 5, 2010 18:15:22 GMT -5
they're kinda cute in fact
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Post by Nutzkie on Mar 10, 2010 12:11:48 GMT -5
Methinks the author is missing the point here.
While it is true that comic sales today are a mere shadow of what they were fifty years ago, it's more of a testament to changing technology and social practices than to changing content within the comic pages.
The over-reaching fact is that a half-century ago comics had relatively little in the way of competition for children's attention. Most television markets only offered four stations, and the broadcast day didn't even begin until early afternoon in most cases. And all of that is assuming that a family even HAD a television, which a statistical majority of American homes did not. There were no such things as video games, either in the home or in arcades, and Hollywood was not nearly so sophisticated in its offerings as it is today. Basically your choices in juvenile entertainment came down to reading or playing outside, and if it was raining that particular day, well...
But our modern age is a thoroughly electronic one, and is increasingly saturated with entertainment choices. Between the proliferation of video games, the internet, suburban shopping malls, movies, cell phones, Facebook and 250 channels of satellite TV, there's exponentially more competition for both the attention and disposable income of juveniles and adolescents alike. Comics are simply forced to share the entertainment pie with a much larger group of entities, and that means their own slice is that much smaller.
Instead of asking ourselves why these so-called "stupid comics" outsold their contemporary counterparts, perhaps we should be asking how much worse off the modern comics industry would be if they hadn't upped the ante in terms of sophistication and story development?
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