Week 2

According to Horricks (2004), how have perceptions of comics as a media changed?

In the beginning, comics were seen as morally outrageous, by many different facets of the Western population. This produced many anti-comic campaigns, which claimed that comics were corrupting our children and undermining our civilised society (Horricks, 2004). Today, we have a much different view of comics, with book-length comics being branded as “graphic novels”, signaling our acceptance of the comic as a unique art form. No longer are comics seen as anti-intellectual or offensive. It has become so accepted by society that graphic novels are being awarded the Pulitzer Prize and are being studied in our universities (Horrick, 2004). I think that comics are currently seen as a medium which only smart or “nerdy” people are interested in, which has been exhibited in various television shows and films such as The Big Bang Theory and The Simpsons.

Horricks (2004) suggests that what happened with comics has happened to most other mediums when you really think about it. When society is presented with a new medium, in this case a comic, people will not bother to see how it really works and instead take it on face value. I suppose it’s like when you hear about a new film that’s coming out and exclaim that you don’t like it based on the short description given, but you haven’t even seen the film. This is what people did with comics, and have done with countless other mediums. People still continue to do this with media such as the internet and video games (Horricks, 2004).

What does Khordoc think the Asterix series does better than Hergé’s Tintin?

According to Khordoc (2001), the Asterix series creates the illusion of sound more effectively than Herge’s Tintin. Herge (2005) attempts to create this sound by using a variety of devices, but fails in making the comic seem audible for the readers. Sometimes when you read a comic, or any text where there is dialogue, you use different voices in your head for each of the characters, and this is what I think Khordoc (2001) means when he refers to audibility. Khordoc (2001) mentions that Tintin, whilst it does make use of speech bubbles, uses them mostly for narrative comments as opposed to dialogue. The way Herge (2005) tries to compensate for this is to use symbols and onomatopoeia to create an illusion of sound, which seems to fall short. Asterix succeeds in using speech balloons to create an illusion of sound, and this is consistent throughout all of the episodes, often creating a light and humourous atmosphere (Khordoc, 2001). Whilst Tintin has more of an involved storyline which means that there has to be more time spent explaining the situation and less time talking to other characters.

References

Horricks, D. (2004). The Perfect Planet: Comics, games and world-building. In Williams, M. (Ed.), Writing at the Edge of the Universe. Christchurch: U of Canterbury Press.

Khordoc, C. (2001). The Comic Book’s Soundtrack: Visual Sound-effects in Asterix. In Varnum, R. & Gibbons, C. (Ed.). The Language of Comics: word and image, (pp. 156-173). Jackson: U P of Mississippi.