Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Homework 6 - Underground comics are more familiar than expected

If I am to be honest, the first couple of pieces I read from the “Underground Comics” section confused me on if I was meant to find anything in the stories. Perhaps this was due to the first comic being “Air Pirates” and seeing a bit too many Mickey Mouse genitalia drawings. The vibe the entire genre gave me was a little reminiscent of the “middle school boys” mentality where it seemed that the humor or appeal was drawn entirely from strangeness, sex, or swearing.

Going a bit further into the archives, however, I was quickly surprised at how familiar some of the characters were to things and people existing in current time. It seemed as though some of the comics sought to bring light to issues from the time period through hyperbolized comedy - not unlike common day memes or jokes. I’ve heard of people comparing the millennial time period and mentality to that of the social revolution of the 1960s-1980s, and I hadn’t realized how similar those actually were until I read some of these comics.


For example, seeing this frame casually strewn in a story that had nothing to do with college except for this throwaway line, written in an almost “too casual” manner that resorts to comedy while still bringing up the issue.


This image actually made me laugh out loud as it completely reminded me of the ridiculous female anatomy in comic book drawings that became a meme where people would draw the ridiculous proportions and poses with the character Hawkeye.




After reading a variety of different genres and magazines aimed at different groups of people (for example, the LGBT+ presence), I arrived at a better understanding of the comics in this time period. Just like modern humor, it seems to make light of social issues with comedic nihilism - the moral being, people like to make things that are unexpected or out of the ordinary for shock value and for just entertainment’s sake.

As a last note, it also makes me wonder if future generations will ever write responses on modern memes...

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