Week 4:The Comic Book

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This week we discussed the rise of the Comic Book.  Starting as advertising giveaways, publishers put together books of issues of their comic strips, and with this introduced what we know as comic books.  People could read multiple parts of a storyline, or just several different stories of their favorite characters in these compilations in one sitting.  No longer did people have to wait for the next strip.  Instead a whole collection could be purchased at once.  Popularity among WWII soldiers was huge and lost of books were shipped to active men in the war.   But as that recognition grew, so did the criticizing of the media.  These books were seen as un-educational and juvenile, and underwent a lot of censorship through the 50’s and 60’s, eventually giving rise to underground comics movements.

 Something that comic books are responsible for is solidifying the popularity of costumed heroes.  Now that people could see larger stories of them, their fame was inevitable.  Amongst some of the earlier and cooler characters was Plastic Man, on which I looked over a few of his stories.  Originally made by a company called Quality comics, and later acquired by DC Comics, Plastic Man was a crime fighting superhero, created by Jack Cole.  He stretched and curved his body around all sorts of things, being able to bounce back bullets off of him and defend the innocent.  But the most awesome part of his story is that he was an ex-criminal, something unheard of at the time.  And not only that, but he was sympathetic to criminals and his enemies, often protecting them from the gunfire of police trying to chase them down, so that they could be taken alive.  Although he didn’t become as popular as Batman or Superman did, he was still largely influential to writers and artists of comics of later decades.  One of my favorite illustrators, Alex Ross, has depicted him more than once in his works as part of the Justice League, which to me really solidifies his status among important characters.  I think the character is cool enough that, with the right people behind, could merit a nicely produced animated feature.