Week 4: The Comic Book

The comic book, though still seen as something more appropriate for children at this time, has started to evolve and develop more mature content which would soon begin to appeal to an older audience.

Even from limitations from publication companies, artists have been able to create works that can carry some depth and complexity in terms of the storytelling. This, in part, was due to the members of military desiring comics with more adult themes.

Comics, like Batman, start to delve more into more serious themes. The Batman comic that I read in class demonstrated examples of more serious topics that dealt with murder and mystery. Though I'm sure children would still enjoy these comics, I feel like it was one of the first comics to probably appeal to older audiences as well because the dialogue was much more complex as compared to comics such as "Peanuts."

In Dateline: Oslo, the target audience definitely is adults. The subject matter is completely serious with slight additions of adult humor and sexual themes. These comics touched on some social constructs of the time too, like the situation of women in submissive roles. Many females in these comics are only placed as character who are crying over men, or fighting over them.

In terms of artistic style, new ways of shading as well as coloring seem to be emerging. Shadows are a lot more bold and done through cross-hatching and overlaying of dotted texture. In addition to this, the color palettes of many of these comics seem to border on a limited color scheme. This might have to do with figuring out how to print certain colors, or maybe it's purely a stylistic choice. Either way, it definitely stands out as a classic distinction for the comic style of the 1940s - 1950s.


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