Saturday, October 01, 2005

Comics

I read a lot of comics - I try to read as much as possible and I even have a wall at home dedicated to comic posters. I even have quite a few comic character T-shirts - Wolverine, Hulk, Batman, Superman, GL, JL etc.

I have been called a "freak" by some and have been laughed at by some others - I really don't understand - how come something as intersting as "comics" can be equated to childishness or immaturity! So does someone who reads Ryand or Sagan or the really really fat books automatically become an intellectual?
I'm sorry but I don't subscribe to that point of view.

I read a fair bit - fat books included - and I enjoy reading comics equally.
In fact, there is so much to learn from comics or any kind of medium - I remember reading about the "aurora borealis" or "mount rushmore" or "nanotechnology" first in my comic books - even before I read about them in the newspapers or science journals!
A book is a book - just because it has drawings in it does not mean it is for kids.
In fact some of the graphic novels like "The Dark Knight Returns" speak volumes about the socio-political scene in the nineties (heck some of it is representative of recent times!).
And as for art - do check out the works of "Alex Ross" or "Jim Lee" (again) - now if that is not fantastic artwork then I don't know what is!
And these are only the popular works - stepping outside of the DC and Marvel universe would take one to another parallel universe - but then ...

1 comment:

brij said...

Actually It is a big circle. Read the old myths like Mahabharat and Ramayana and then read Lord of the Rings and then read the Eye of the World series, and then watch Star Wars, follow it up with The Seven Samurai; then watch Sholay, take a break to read batman go on to read Foundation series, then check out all the myths of Xena come back to Superman and everything comes full circle. Half the time it is fun to know what new take on old myths the authors of all these forms will come up with. The few exceptions are the exact opposite of the old myths - like the Simpsons and Terry Patcher's Discworld series.

Apologies for very bad sentence structuring:)