School Projects- subject is maturing of comics...help

[ZorBrak]

I have decided for my senior exit to examine the way in which comics have matured into a medium directed to people of all ages, not just kids and young adults, in the past decades. But I need help with this. I need some literature examining the industry and things like that. Can someone give me some references?

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,

I have decided for my senior exit to examine the way in which comics have matured into a medium directed to people of all ages, not just kids and young adults, in the past decades. But I need help with this. I need some literature examining the industry and things like that. Can someone give me some references?

Well, one thing you might want to take a look at are Les Daniels' Complete History series of books, which cover Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman from their creation until the 90's (they cover the Death of Superman, Knightfall, and the Artemis Wonder Woman periods). While it's not directly about the "adultification" of the industry, it's got a lot of stuff about the evolution of the characters over time, and the influence of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns on making comics darker and more adult can't be underestimated.

Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics has a very brief history section, but may be more worth checking out for its bibliography. He did a LOT of research on technique and history, and I'm sure there's gold to be mined there.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of the literature about the "maturing" of the industry isn't in book form yet -- you're probably going to have to sort through a periodical search, and plow through a lot of articles most of which seem to have titles that are variations on, "BIFF! POW! Comics Aren't Just For Kids Anymore!" In fact, I think if you searched for "BIFF" in a periodical search, you'd probably pull up most of what the mainstream press has written about the adultification of comics.

-- Ed/Ace