10/12/2006

Labor of Love




GAT-X105E Strike Noir HG 1/144

I bought this waste of plastic on Sunday, because the Chicago Bears dominated over the Bills. I'm not much of a football person, but with enough Whiskey Sours you can convince me to drink Coke II laced with bleach. 4 days of laborious work to make this model worthy of at least 1+ otaku points. Either way, I'm still single and hobbies just make up for it.

Let's Get to the Comics

In a small cave, poor Ugh found himself bored with all the hunting and gathering.

"Wha' am a I gonna do", said Ugh despairingly.

As he warmed himself by the fire he began to play with the ashes that lined his cave floor. His simple play became a dance and soon he noticed that the ashes began to leave marks on the walls of the cave. Intrigued by the lines and scrawls, he bagan to draw figures and shapes. Soon the scribbles took form and he began to draw the many animals he saw on his hunting trips. And thus begot the birth of comic books....

Wow... what a heart warming story, let me go ahead and choke on my tears!

Okay, the same crappy story can be applied to anything: art, writing, and even porno. But really folks, comic books started small, in the form of comic strips. These small sequences of drawings began to appear in the early 20th century and appeared in various magazines and newspapers.

Here is an example of an early comic strip: Hogan's Alley featuring the lead character The Yellow Kid

image from www.universohq.com

No, don't get any mixed signals, the Yellow Kid does not represent the oppression of Asians by the MAN. Simply, he was a kid who wore yellow and had zany adventures. Don't quote me on the yellow/zany part... I've actually never read the comic strip.

But I can say that the comic strips began to increase in popularity, simply because it was cheap and one did not need the gift of reading to understand the story. It wouldn't be long before whole collections of these strips would be gathered into books and distributed to the masses. These simple books would be one the very beginnings of comic books... or is it?

Well ladies and gents, I'm just going to let you chew on that for a while. Next week we will visit this idea of the birth comic books and later we'll get deeper into the heart of Asians/Asian Americans in the comic book game!

Until then spend this weekend watching the movie Cobra and compare that with the movie Commando. I'll be expecting a paper on Monday!

I'm no expert on this whole thing... feel free to prove me wrong by posting a comment

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