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Why 100 Million of Us (GASP!) Read the Comics
- University Press of Mississippi
- Chapter
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111 Why 100 Million of Us (GASP!) Read the Comics t here is no field of entertainment that has such a large following , and yet has so little written about it as the comic strip. The daily and Sunday page comic strip artists get no reviews from discerning critics, and have only letters from readers and monthly statements from their various syndicates to tell them how they are doing. Thus, when a book is published that calls itself The Funnies: An American Idiom, edited by David Manning White and Robert H. Abel (Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), a host of cartoonists across the land rejoice to see that their neglected medium has been recognized. As the preface states, this book “stems from a three-year inquiry into the whole nature of comic strips and their role in American life which was underwritten by a grant made by the Newspaper Comics Council, Inc., of New York to Boston University’s Communication Research Center.” The regular reader of the funnies, of course, has no idea that such an organization as the Comics Council exists, and that it came into being when some people began to think that the funnies had lost their old-time appeal and were no longer attracting advertising. Most of us were under the impression that we were doing our job when we were drawing features that helped to sell the newspaper. Nevertheless, in a fine report, which probably will not be of much interest to anyone outside the actual production end of the [34.204.52.16] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:39 GMT) 114 My profeSSIoN business, this book notes that “more than 100 million Americans, from the very young to the very old, read one or more comic strips in their Sunday newspapers, and, of these, about ninety million are regular readers.” For over 60 years the comic strip has fulfilled the very human desire of readers to tear aside sluggish description and get right to the dialogue. It has given those readers who are repelled by a huge book with no pictures, a story form that has a picture with every sentence, and action in every scene. Remarkably enough, it has also been able to attract those readers who are not repelled by pages of print and who are able to enjoy good reading, for Robinson and White tell us that the well-educated are consistent followers of the comics. In a chapter called, “Who Reads the Funnies and Why,” they discover that “adults like to read funnies, but are ashamed to admit it. . . .” Apparently people also think that it is usually those on a lower educational or social level who read the funnies, and that they themselves are an exception. “In our children’s readership study, just the opposite was true. The children perceived the truth: the more highly-educated, the occupational elite are among the most avid readers of comics. Contrary to the general adult population’s idea of who reads comics, the higher status group readers are the rule rather than the exception. In order to make a book out of what was initially a report, several articles which are quite dated have been reprinted. Gilbert Seldes’ famous discourse on Krazy Kat is very welcome, for it treats well what was probably the greatest strip ever drawn. Mr. Seldes, however , has not always been aware of other works of art that have been produced on the comic page, and here the authors have also failed us, for in their quest for illustrations to go with writing, they have not given us the work of enough of the original creators of such notable accomplishments as Popeye, Bringing Up Father, Barney Google, Moon Mullins, or Polly and Her Pals. Many of the men who have taken on these strips since the death of the original creators have done good [34.204.52.16] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:39 GMT) 115 Why 100 Million of Us (GASP!) Read the Comics jobs, but to give the modern reader no glimpse of the wonderful pen lines of these earlier cartoon geniuses is a mistake. I, personally, also missed seeing a drawing of good old Captain Easy as originally done by Roy Crane. One of the real tragedies of our form of art is that characters such as Captain Easy go down to the most miserable of all deaths, dying day by day in the hands of those who try to perpetuate them. An added...