Reflections on The Comic Book History of Comics (3 Points)

             While I find the author’s retelling of history to be crude and biased, there is one thing I wholeheartedly agree with him on – that with the rise of new media comes the intense fear of the new. On page 81 the author writes, “… every time a new media has arisen it has also been accompanied by the cries that it is worse than anything that came before it.” As a video game artist, this speaks to me. Just like comics, a video game defender spoke before politicians to defend violent video games in the 90s only to look like a laughing stock before middle-aged parents. And just like comics, it was hypothesized that violent video games will make children violent, only for the same statement to hold little merit a couple decades later.

            The one difference between the besieged video game market and comics is that the video game industry did not crash due to regulation like comics did. In fact, the negative press around the most violent games caused their sales to rise (like Mortal Kombat). Perhaps if video games had been around in comic’s heyday, the god-fearing culture of the 1950s might have also snuffed them out.

That being said though, I am glad video games have a rating system that is practical and does not impede upon a game’s genre or creativity. I can only hope that my generation does not become our parents and decry violence in the latest medium, Virtual Reality, as a corruptor of children. If history is any guide, we’re likely to repeat the same mistakes.