Comics

My 10 year old daughter, who is an avid reader, started getting into comics. The gateway comic for kids her age is Archie, which she devoured. Then she started reading the comics page of the LA Times. Then she started drawing her own comics.

Being the geek dad, I got her a copy of Scott McCloud's classic Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. If you haven't read this book, and you work in a creative field, you are in for a treat. She didn't get everything, but she understood and internalized a lot of it.

Around the same time, I came across this story about important recent comics and graphic novels. And there was the success of 300, based on the Frank Miller comic. So I ordered a bunch of the ones that looked interesting.

One thing that has struck me is how much modern American comics owe to Heavy Metal. My brother and I used to read Heavy Metal in high school -- they had some great artists working during the late 70's. You can really see the influence of guys like Moebius in the art styles, and there's a lot of the nihilism of RanXerox in the Spider Jerusalem character in Transmetropolitan.