The likes of Herge's "The Adventures of Tintin," to the
original "Batman" comics by Bob Kane, despite being wildly different
in seemingly every regard, basic narrative, characters, even locations and
approaches to adventure literature; both are equally capable of inspiring
morals along with having many similar approaches to conveying their individual
narratives. For example, one massively popular trop of visual narrative is to
start off with establishing shots that familiarize new comers to the literature
or old fans to the location or characters, often with mental narrative of the
protagonist informing the audience whats going on. Both comics also use
sequential, action to action art where the start, climax, and ending of a
particular action or gesture is explored by the artists, showing these
characters "move" despite only showing static poses. Adventure
comics as a whole create these larger than life heroes and characters that,
regardless of their direct relatability to the individual reader, relate and
learn themes from these stories in order to explore the narrative in their own
ways, while many times still perceiving the desired end that the writer, (and
sometimes the artists) wishes to convey. Realistically how many people relate
to the billionaire goth orphan who decided dressing up like a bat while putting
small children into pant-less onesies is sane? How many teenage people travel
the world on a weekly basis to go climb mountains, fight off criminals, and
find treasure while escaping death constantly...? And yet these characters and
those like them in the adventure genre are able to cement themselves in our
conscious because of and separate of the adventures they go on, its more than
just the villains they fight and the quests the conquer, it’s the conflicts
they struggle through and the human emotions they explore over the course of
these adventures.
1. My initial reaction to the text I read was sadness followed by acceptance, while certainly a MUCH darker overall tone that ANY golden age Superman story, this joint collaboration by Alan Moore, Curt Swan, George Perez, and Kurt Schaffenberger, is a damn near perfect end to this "run" of the Superman story. Focusing on the dramatic end of Superman, the story throws all of his most, and a few of his lesser, memorable villains and allies at him at once, a sort of collage of the entire Alan Moore run with the character. As Batman later describes it, "like walking through fragments of a legend." This comic celebrates everything that built Superman, from his allies and backstory, to his bitter enemies and emotional struggles; it ties up and ends practically every loose end previously left open in previous issues of the Superman story, while also providing one massive, yet satisfying cliffhanger at the story's end. 2. I grew up loosely following various versions ...
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