Week 4: The Comic Book

Comic books have always been something of a love/hate relationship for me. Love in that I adore the medium and I have three large boxes under my work bench back home filled with a couple hundred comic book issues I've been collecting since the age of twelve. And hate due to how much collecting them has killed my wallet. But I digress, I still love to collect them and read them occasionally.

The comic book medium has, in my opinion, been such a great storytelling medium. While I admire simple text and lack of pictures from the many books I’ve read since it left me to using my imagination to fill in the void, comics have made reading a story much easier. This is because comics already have the visuals of their stories drawn out. You don’t have to imagine what the main character looks like or what color the monster of the week bleeds, you get all this detail from the images drawn out in each panel drawn in the comic medium. This I feel makes it easier to read through a story because you don’t have to put extra time into visualizing what you’re reading.

Comic books are also great because the stories told in them are always ongoing unlike most comic strips and you can pick off where one part left off in the next issue.  Depending on how the paneling is done to comic books can really draw in a reader to the story they’re telling. One of my favorite types of comic books is the Japanese Manga. Besides the incredibly diverse stories and worlds presented in many stories told through the Asian comic medium the way in which the action is drawn inside the panels is like the American comic strip on steroids. What the heck do I mean by that? I mean that the art is at times incredibly drawn and the movement is darn amazing. Mangakas really outdo themselves with their work.

Blue Dragon Ral Grado