The Comics:benefit or harm?

The history of comics, like any other, is very complex and full of ups and downs. There are many versions about the origin of hilarious images with the clouds full of text, but one thing is absolutely certain - the flowering of this medium came straight to the beginning of the twentieth century. It was then when this kind of "superhero" comic book originated.  Hearing the word comics, 99.9% of people all around the world usually associate it with a presence of different super powerful characters dressed up into latex costumes. The vast majority are confident that other comics in nature do not exist.

 Among the hundreds of comic book publishers, Marvel and DC Comics take the leading positions, followed by Image Comics, Dark Horse Comics, and IDW Publishing. Fans may argue about which comic book publishers create the best comics, but the main idea of ranking the companies is by market share of sold books. According to the largest distributor Diamond, Marvel, the world's largest maker of comics, and DC as its closest follower, continue to dominate the comics market. It is not a surprise that the publishers of the most well-known superhero titles sell the most comics. Marvel Comics sold about 45% of English comics, where the most popular are Spiderman, X-Men, The Hulk and The Avengers. One third of comics is sold by DC Comics, which is a home for such comics as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. The next-selling comics companies have a far smaller part of the market and don't have as many titles as first two. Image Comics and Dark Horse Comics take the third place, changing each other at this position over the time. Currently, Image Comics sells more copies than Dark Horse (a little over 4% of all comics sold), but Dark Horse has a greater revenue share (about 5% of the market).IDW Publishing, the youngest major comic book publisher, takes fifth place, with about 3.5% of sales, and publishes a majority of comics based on movies and television series, such as Star Trek, Doctor Who, Transformers, G.I. Joe, and The A-Team.

People have different attitude towards comic books. A "noble and enlightened public" with a rich intellectual experience does not like this genre. Such people believe that comics are simple for them, restrict their thoughts and imagination, depriving aesthetic pleasure and joy of reading. But this is no more than a prejudice. The problem is not in the comics, but in the "enlightened public", which is able to dive into the book and does not know how to dive into the text of comics; learned to read literary text and remained totally illiterate in the text of the comic strip. They either cannot read or understand or appreciate.

However, this bias did not arise from nothing. Comics, like any of the genres of art, are created for different groups of consumers: children and adults, men and women, plumbers and academics. This is neither good nor bad. It is normal. This is the way in which the world works where everyone needs their own. But it happened so that comics for "enlightened public" in our market have never appeared. Not finding what would interest them, "enlightened public" jumped to a wrong conclusion: all the comics - rubbish, trash and not worth of attention wastepaper.

The role of comics in society increases and we have to accept it. Comic books have many fans. Some of them like the characters, others - artistic performance of pictures. Most like them as the easiest way of transferring a plot into a series of pictures.

Newspaper, book text, or TV contain up to 70% of excess information. The main advantage of comics over that - it offers a person extremely short but emotionally rich information, in which nothing is unnecessary. Applying in a right way this is may be useful, beneficial, saving learning time and efforts of children. Comics give the child some basic information necessary to explore given idea that may be helpful in development of imagination of the young viewer-reader.

Today's young generation is able to absorb the visual information much better than verbal. To understand the text of comics, television picture or a billboard, it is easier for them than the story, the teacher or the text of a book, tell them. In this sense, comics for children are a much more preferred form of information than a traditional school textbook or a book.

 Our school is too academic and unrealistic. Children do not understand why they learn algebra, geography, biology and they do not see a point in scientific knowledge, the concepts, laws. Comics, showing real-life situations, can bring learning to life and help children understand the meaning of learning activities and to show how to use the knowledge, acquired in school, to real-life situations. In addition, the comics are able to solve the problem of motivation and enthusiasm, without which there can be no education. Dry and academic school textbook cannot handle this task.

However, comics could solve this problem. Offering students familiar visual information in a form of comics, it would help a lot faster to understand data, saving time and energy to its interpretation. The learning process would be more productive, and most importantly - a humane, taking into account characteristics of child, not an adult perception, eliminating violence against weak psyche.

  In this case, unlike educational films and television programs comics allow each child to work at a pace and rhythm that are comfortable for them. They can make a pause, to relax, to dream, to think through it or relive a particular episode. Sitting in front of a screen, children cannot do this. Cinema and TV influence the child's will, but with comics they talk as equal.

Also comic books can educate, and not only train. Any situation, even the most difficult, can be easily and beautifully written on the pages of the comics in such as way that no child will be left indifferent. Reading the comics for 3-5 minutes, once a plot is understood, students can spend the rest of the lesson to discuss it. This will be useful, efficient, and that the most important, will not cause a negative reaction in children, who are often bored during conversations and discussions of literary texts and wait for a life-saving ring. 

 Therefore, the prospects of using comics in education is very wide. But we should not go too far. Comics should not supplant existing training methods at the school but to supplement them.

I understand: there is no guarantee that instead of completed educational works, children can be offered trivial pictures with labels. And even then, in the best case everything depends on level of child's brain development and imagination. The simple example is a story of two kids describing the picture. One gives a brief and general answer: "Winter" and the other lists all the details that he sees: "Here - snowdrifts, here - a frozen river, and here - birch covered with snow".

We and children have different perception. It is much easier for us to accept the text and words, for children images and characters. It is generally better for them to see once than ten times to read. Since children, put the letters into the word harder than us, they spend all their strength on "useless, mechanical work converting graphics and signs into words containing at least some common sense, when reading a book or textbook .After all, they don't have strength to understand what they read about. Another point is, in my opinion, children and adults, read comics in different ways. Children hold visual strategy, in other words they go from image to text in bubbles, and adults, who are used to working with a word, prefer textual strategies, meaning they move from the text to the image. That is why ,probably, the text strategy of reading comics - one of the reasons whhy adults consider the comics as a kind of primitive art. After reading  rows with text in bubbles, almost ignoring the images and comparing the text with images and pictures, adults conclude that comics are a reading for illiterate. They, to some extent, are right - a concise text in bubbles, compared to the texts of literary works, looks primitive.

In general, a fear that comics expanse our culture is empty.

First, there is a strong competition: video, computer games, the Internet and so on. In US, comics occupied the niche when all this did not exist yet and they maintain their popularity because many movies and games are based on comics plots, thus continuing the life of comics at a new level, keeping the interest of the consumer to their primal form. We have the different situation.

Second, the mass distribution of comics, in my opinion, is directly related to the cartoon industry, cost, production time and extent of which, open huge opportunities for both in media market. However the state of European cartoon industry prevents this.

I think that the child should be interested in comics. However, I do not think they can be a panacea for all our troubles: to return a child to a book; teach to think. Instead, children do not have to think through or to read between the lines. A literature raises issues and makes a child to evaluate and conclude. In addition, a comic book deprives the reader of an opportunity to dive into the world of characters, to live life with them, to feel it .A good book entirely absorbs the reader, they fall  into it, forget about everything. Comics don't have such power.

 And can we call "the reader" a man who buys comics? Who is he - the reader or the viewer? And what he is doing - reading or watching, thinking or staring?
In 1954 Frederic Wertham, American psychologist published the book "Seduction of the Innocent"  where he criticised comics' influence on American youth .In his book psychologist insisted that comics were one of the main reasons of juvenile crime ,because they focused on the description of both overt and covert patterns of violence and drug use. "Seduction of the Innocent"  caused a major stir in the community and launched a propaganda campaign against comic books. Comic book publishers had to yield to the demands of society and created the "Code of comics", containing the rules of self-censorship.
In the end of 90th,comics were criticised again. This time they were found guilty in spoiling kids and preventing them from reading. Some of world's famous psychologists claimed that colourful pictures in the comic books put off young kids from reading more serious literature, as well as significantly decrease verbal vocabulary, especially in terms of describing lexis.

Later some surveys proved the ability of comic strips as to discourage reading as to instil interest to literature in general. According to them good quality contents of comics can encourage young children at age of 4 - 6, learning to read, to study the letters and even speed up process itself. However for older ages of 7-10, big influence has reading of more classic literature such as school textbooks. 

  

Comics are usual attributes of our lives, we meet them almost every day, but do not notice, and if we do so, we do not dignify attention. No comic book - no problem, no problem - there is nothing to say. However the genre does exist.