If you are an avid comics admirer, you may know about all the changes that have happened to the comics industry in general for the past few decades. After all, everyone in the know noticed that the very process of formation of this ‘entertaining’ literature had undergone dramatic modifications. The latter happened due to technological breakthroughs, a natural evolution of the main characters, not to mention the requirements and expectations of the reading audience. The comics manufacturers and developers have realized that the absence of all these changes will lead to a total decline in interest on the part of readers. After all, if you don’t keep up with the times, you stand still and lose scores. It is perhaps one of the reasons why so many people dwell on their development and do something nonstandard to stand out from the crowd. For instance, some college graduates start working as teachers in Africa to get new experience and add a catchy line to their CVs. The modern world is extremely competitive, so it is not surprising up-to-date comics differ from old-school ones in many ways.
Artwork
When it comes to the biggest and most obvious changes, the artwork will run the table. If you compare comics from the Golden or Bronze Age and modern variants, you will see that the very art process behind creating comic books and their fascinating stories has changed drastically. Although nobody argues that the artwork was always good in the circumstances of the time, modern artists have more opportunities to create bright and outstanding masterpieces. It is because they have generations of experience behind their backs as well as a wide range of tools that allow improving the quality of work from different perspectives. Even if we consider it only from a technical point of view, it becomes clear that today it is much easier to create appealing superheroes thanks to high technologies. Moreover, digitalization has affected the comic books industry, bringing various advantages to graphics production. Today, comic book admirers can enjoy high-quality artwork printed on the greatest materials or demonstrated online.
Storylines
The artwork hasn’t become a single change that occurred in the comic book industry. This aspect greatly depends on the readers’ preferences. Thus, if you look through old-school comics, you will see that most stories were about suspense and crime, while superheroes like Batman took a back seat. People were interested in completely different content. Maybe it was connected with the political situations of that time or something else since horror comics were in demand too. Superheroes started gaining momentum during the time of WWII when the whole world was dreaming about a miracle that could stop that catastrophe and terror. It was one of the turning points in the comic book industry that changed the flow of events and set the tone of new comic book issues. So, it seems superheroes will not stand down in the future.
Characters
A great shift has happened to characters too. Even the way they are introduced today differs much from one we can see in old-school series. Thus, characters that appeared only on the back burner (for instance, Black Widow or Ant-Man) have got a chance to become leading characters. The creators have decided to get the best out of each existing hero and develop them as much as possible. It is perhaps the key reason why franchises are so much extended. Today, one can see even cross overs characters in some issues. For instance, one comic book can involve multiple modifications of Spider-Man. Besides positive characters, antagonists have also got their place under the sun. Some villains are not less popular than superheroes themselves.
Popularization
If comic books were the only available source of information about favorite characters back in the day, nowadays, many people can watch films and TV series created by original stories. Moreover, they can please themselves with all possible merchandise and even play video games pretending to be a brave superhero or a tricky villain. The gaming sector deserves special attention in these terms since some games created on comic books have become iconic already. In other words, comic books have evolved into a huge entertaining industry that tries to meet all possible people’s needs and demands. Considering that creators want to stand on track in the long run, they continue to develop the most popular characters, telling new stories from their exciting lives.
Leave a Reply