How do you think comics have affected your life?

A comment by BarkingMatt in another thread got me to thinking: what has been the impact of comics on your life?
In my case, I grew up reading comics.
I started drawing comics in grade school. I've written and drawn a few comics for various small publishers; I've published a graphic novel, Blue Moon: The Adventures of Lyssa and the Pirates. Currently I write and draw a webcomic: www.groovykinda.org

And Mad Magazine taught me to question everything.

Comics are affected life because it includes different types of information which may be related with inspiration, some news or some other topics. If we read some inspiration quotes or story then it definitely inspire us to get success and be continue with our work. Thus, different types of comics provide different effect on mind and that affects life.

My small apartment becomes smaller every month. My wife freaks out.

For me it's always been a fun form of storytelling. As with other kinds of books, some are serious and thought-provoking, like Persepolis and Maus, some are good yarns that make you think, like V is for Vendetta or Akira. Some give a different angle on difficult concepts, like Logicomix or Cartoon History of the Universe. Some are just good stories that take you away, like Lone Wolf and Cub and Britten and Brulightly and Batwoman: Elegy. Some are autobiographical, like Fun Home, and so on.

So for me comics have affected my life in the same kind of way other books have. I do like the fact the more readers are coming around to accepting comics as a worthwhile form of entertainment and education.

>4 jnwelch: I couldn't have put it better myself!

They had not (except that I have less space at home because of them).

I am one of the late comers to the comics - no comics where I grew up when I grew up. So they are just part of literature for me - an interesting and different part but essentially a part of it. And that's all.

Truer words have never been spoken, cheers.

I made some of my best friends through comics.

And also learned how to draw, and how to think visually. But it's mostly the friends!

It would be much easier to list the ways that comics haven't affected my life. Comics inspired my love of reading. Comics inspired my love of the visual arts. Comics inspired my love of genre fiction. Comics taught me that just because people look down upon what you're into doesn't mean it's crap.

I've been reading comics since I was a child, mostly Spiderman and El Capitan Trueno because that was what came with the newspaper on Sundays.

I really fell in love with comics at college where The Sandman opened a whole new world for me. So now, I have the "Sandman altar", a dedicated bookshelf with only the absolute editions and the Sandman bookends, all other bookshelves are packed full.

Less money and less space. :)

A very positive influence in my life. They open my creativity, give me things to talk about with my friends, help me make new friends, got me interested in art...

Comics to me are a totally unexpected bonanza of beautiful artwork. I draw on the level of stick people but I get great happiness from looking at the work of others. When I first discovered comics like Scalped by Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera I was amazed: how could something this beautiful be tucked away in a comic book?!

Then there are the unique story lines. I really value originality in a plot because I've spent way too much of my life reading (as opposed to say, saving lives or skydiving nude on TV). Comics are even better than science fiction for truly bizarre and utterly original stories, eg Preacher, Chew, The Art of War by Kelly Roman (specifically the insect thing) and so many more.

Finding comics, in my 40s, has been a bit like those dreams where you find an extra door in your house that leads to a whole new freaky set of rooms that are fantastically cool.

>13 EnidaV:
how could something this beautiful be tucked away in a comic book?!

Well - comics are part of art and literature. The fact that a lot of people call them books for children is just these people's problem. :)

If you look at my profile, you will see a reasonable summary of my thoughts about Cartoons/Comics. I think they are important in defining our sense of humour.
I have met a few people with almost NO sense of humour. I do wonder & worry about them :-(

ETA. I know this group is mainly about Manga and that ilk, whereas I like Disney/Carl Barks Doonsbury Breathered Ronald Searle Hargreaves etc. etc.
Just look at my library with the Tag Cartoon.

I know I should look at some of the Japanese Cartoons. Any suggestions?

I recently bought 4 versions of the 49 Ronin Saga from the 1941 version to the 2013? version (which was panned) Perhaps someone knows some classic""
Comics around that theme you can recommend?

Guido.

>15 guido47: I know this group is mainly about Manga and that ilk

Says who? :)

>15 guido47:
I think that lots of people started in comics with Disney or strips for children. About Carl Barks, he was a truly bonafide genius.

Hi >16 AnnieMod: you are right, I just got this impression when I first joined this group. I have not seen much discussion about some of the great American Political Cartoonists: Trudeau, Walt Kelly and I am putting Breathered in that select mob. But not Schultz. I did like the first decade he drew but not his last 40 years! So what can I say. My favourite (Arthur Horner) used a style I would call "loose".

I think the best exponent of that style is Ronald l Searle. I also love the "tight" cartoonists. Say Hargreaves & Thelwell and the Australian Jolliffe Collecting Jolliffe is quite difficult.
I bid $200 on an early copy which eventually sold for $2000+. Sorry I can't afford that sort of money :-(

Guido.

PS. I have applied for Associate Membership of the Äustralian Cartoonist Association" which is one of the older Cartoonist mobs in the world! Full membership is only offered
to Published Cartoonists. We Associates are groupies :-)

I liked comics as a child but my parents were quite rabidly against them. I got a (very few) Dandy/ Beanos and Asterix somehow made the not-comic cut, but that was all that was allowed. To this day my mum will mock anything I'm reading with pictures instead of words. She pulls sneery faces and dishes out sarcasm about it. Lucky I'm quite thick-skinned and I'll spend my Euros on whatever I please, be that shitty pulp shifter romances or "comics"!

As mentioned in 18 some illustrators work is worth digging out and certainly that was as close as I was allowed to get to "comics" as a kid. I love Quentin Blake. He illustrated a lot of Roald Dahl' books so it's a total throwback to childhood. Similar sort of loose style like Ronald Searle but less spooky. I got The five of us based on it being by him. Also Gerald Scarfe who did a lot of the Pink Floyd "Wall" art and also advised on Disneys Hercules (which helped make it one of my favourites, although the songs in it are also better than a lot of other Disneys too). There is some documentary of that where he has to keep asking the Disney drawing team to stop trying to do all tidy/ smooth edges!

Hope it's OK to resurrect an old thread!

>19 C4RO: Definitely okay to resurrect an old thread. :) Thanks for sharing your comments.

They fanned and directed my interest in drawing and later on, art in general. I learned a lot especially from copying the styles of individual graphic artists. I was never industrious enough to make my own comics, nor good enough to entertain any kind of serious artistic ambition, but it was a wonderful and enriching activity in itself. It's curious that book illustrations, which today interest me more than comics, didn't have the same influence at all, don't know why.

My niece loves manga and draws comics in anime style.

I learned to read when my mother announced that she wasn't going to read comics to me anymore. This led to literature and art history studies in college and a life in the book business (so it's been a mixed blessing). I'm also one of those people whose first wife said "when are you going to get rid of those comics", causing me to donate what later on were many thousands of dollars worth of comics. Later, they were an important bond between me and my son. My daughter and her fiancee recently gave me some comics they bought at a Toronto comics convention they accidentally ran across, as a gift.

The last comic I bought was the recently published volume of Dell 4 color pre-Disney Zorro comics.

I like many others started reading comics when I was younger, but didn't like reading books or novels. I was drawn to comics because of the art, stories, and characters. I remember living in Italy in the early 80's because my dad was in the Navy and buying comics every weekend at the Navy Exchange and I couldn't wait to go each weekend. Most of my friends then were really into comics too, so that gave us all something we shared in common. Comics these days give me an escape from reality of the busy daily routine of work, school, house/car maintenance. I really admire the art work and the details and also the stories that are written to follow each month.

I can't really say. I've been reading comics for as long as I can remember, both in comic book form and newspaper daily strips. Like books, comics have always been a part of my life. I stopped reading them for a few years in the '80s -- my way of protesting DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths and the death of Supergirl -- but I couldn't really stay away. The withdrawal was awful.