Are we dumbing down comics for today's kids?

Cap Haggis · Post by **Cap Haggis** » 27 Jul 2007, 18:34

I was reading the wonderful and informative Frank Bellamy illustrated Churchill strip and it dawned on me how times really have changed - I hate to sound like I'm slagging off the younger generation, but can anyone honestly imagine today's kids actually taking the time to read and enjoying a strip like this nowadays, one that is equally entertaining, informative, excellently executed and requires time and effort to absorb the story - or am I being to harsh on todays kids?

ROY ROGERS · Post by **ROY ROGERS** » 27 Jul 2007, 19:11

it would have to be on ps2 ,xbox etc just to get most kids now to even think about looking at a comic.

Peter Gray · Post by **Peter Gray** » 27 Jul 2007, 19:37

The Simpson comics are quite clever writing and not dumbed down...

also lots of reprint books from the past e.g Best of Look and Learn bumper book will hopefully inspire young people....
also like Al's comicsuk- Frank Bellamy illustrated Churchill strip for all to see..
update-
just read up to page 40........very good......good way to read history...thsnks Al...
also Classics of the comics

but mostly we are dumbing down

colcool007 · Post by **colcool007** » 27 Jul 2007, 19:56

To be brutally honest, comics are dumbing down. This is not a criticism, but kids today are used to information being thrown at them in terms of Mbs (Megabytes per second) not kbs (Kilobytes per second) as we were used to in the early 70's. So for a lot of today's kids, if it hasn't got style, it hasn't got substance. Kids today have a lot harder choice of how to receive information as even Primary school kids need to use the Internet to do their homework.

It's difficult for comics to respond as comics are a static medium and today's publishers have to respond to the myriad of influences on the kid that buys the comic. As a Jock that lived close to Dundee, the occasional reference to Alistair Thompson (news reporter) and Muriel Gray (Adventurous Training/Outbound Training) was good enough for me.

tolworthy · Post by **tolworthy** » 28 Jul 2007, 00:26

I can't find the reference, but a lot of academic work has (apparently) been done to show that kids today simply don't have the skills to "read" a comic like we did. Instead they have other skills that we lack. (Like how to chat, blog, and surf Youtube simultanrously.) They can assimilate visual information more rapidly than we can, but everything has to be shallow and extreme to catch their eye. I think their visual stuff is shallow. They think my detailed stuff is boring.

Manga is the perfect example of this. Manga works like TV. 300 oage Manga collections are read in a single tube journey. Eyes scan over the action with such speed that it's effectively moving. Each page gets maybe two or three seconds of eye time. Manga sells. Personally I find it incredibly shallow and unsatisfying. But kids find my comics difficult and boring. We just read in different ways.

The sad result is that, if people made comics that I like, deep and detailed, then kids today wouldn't buy them.

brisey · Post by **brisey** » 15 Aug 2007, 09:39

Not just for kids.

Witness recent news with reporters standing up to waists in water-so the viewers could recognise a flood.Or reporters standing next to Arrows with 40% down written on them and saying this shows that something has gone down by 40%.Saying is not enough there has to be a simple visual.

But then I am on to my pet rant of the quality of reporting in general and have to go take my happy pills.

brisey

Lew Stringer · Post by **Lew Stringer** » 15 Aug 2007, 11:09

It's not that comics are dumbed down as such. It's that they're now aimed at a younger audience than they used to be, on the whole.

Most weeklies used to be aimed at the 7 to 12 year old group, with the idea being to pitch the level of stories at the older end. After all, as soon as a kid thinks a comic is too young for him he'll drop it like a stone. For some reason some comics now pitch it to the younger end, so as not to alienate them. But end up alienating the older readers.

However, the 12 year old age group who used to read Tiger and Hotspur are now buying Batman Legends or Avengers United, which have the same level of sophistication if not more in some cases.

Step back and look at the whole history of British comics; they've become ever more simplified and basic over the past 100 years. It's nothing new.

Society as a whole is becoming more dumbed down by the media though. A less intelligent society preoccupied with "people stories" on the ITV news or "reality game shows" on tv, or "celebrity" stories in the tabloids is less likely to study politics, therefore less likely to revolt. It's fairly transparent social control and pacification.

Lew

philcom55 · Post by **philcom55** » 15 Aug 2007, 11:43

Lew Stringer wrote:Society as a whole is becoming more dumbed down by the media though.

It's tempting to draw this inference from things like Big Brother, but on the whole I think there's a far greater range of intelligent TV programmes to choose from today. Our memories tend to be all-too selective, so we often remember Quatermass and the Pit or TW3 yet forget all about the brain-numbing stuff that used to fill 90% of the schedules: the Lulu and Val Doonican Shows, or the dreaded Black & White Minstrels! As far as I'm concerned the new Dr. Who is far more sophisticated than its 1960s equivalent.

1965 is a nice place to visit...but I certainly wouldn't want to go back to living there!

- Phil Rushton

Lew Stringer · Post by **Lew Stringer** » 15 Aug 2007, 13:54

philcom55 wrote:
Lew Stringer wrote:Society as a whole is becoming more dumbed down by the media though.
It's tempting to draw this inference from things like Big Brother, but on the whole I think there's a far greater range of intelligent TV programmes to choose from today. Our memories tend to be all-too selective, so we often remember Quatermass and the Pit or TW3 yet forget all about the brain-numbing stuff that used to fill 90% of the schedules: the Lulu and Val Doonican Shows, or the dreaded Black & White Minstrels! As far as I'm concerned the new Dr. Who is far more sophisticated than its 1960s equivalent.

1965 is a nice place to visit...but I certainly wouldn't want to go back to living there!

- Phil Rushton

I was thinking more about news programmes, than light entertainment. A few years back ITV was told to simplify news progs. One result of this is that Central News is now Central Tonight, focusing on "people stories" at the expense of real news. Notice also how they often run distracting background music to news footage.

As for newspapers, compare the Daily Mirror to how it was 40 years ago for example.

Another area: fiction magazines, now practically gone. Newsagents used to have a good selection of SF mags, story papers, and even the sexist men's magazines - almost all gone. Fiction stimulates the mind more than the gossip mags that have replaced them. If a town is lucky to have a Waterstones or Borders fair enough, as there are numerous books to read, but a lot of people shop locally (at their council estate Happy Shopper) and so won't encounter fiction like they would 40 or 50 years ago.

Lew

Earl · Post by **Earl** » 15 Aug 2007, 17:50

Things in general seem to be dumbed down. Stuff like the BBC news that I used to once really enjoy now seems superficial gloss lacking in any real substance and then there is stuff like ?The Times? newspaper that was once impenetrable to me that has now been dumbed down to my level so that I can enjoy it.

Dizrythmia · Post by **Dizrythmia** » 16 Aug 2007, 04:19

I don't know about being dumbed down, but the amount of toilet humour that shows up in your average Dandy (& more frequently in Beano) is a bit worrying. Still... if that's what turns kids on these days...

Kashgar · Post by **Kashgar** » 16 Aug 2007, 10:01

I remember as a kid grudgingly sitting 'watching' the news or something like 'Panorama' with my Dad and finding that over a few years it was amazing how good a test of literacy such programmes were. As what began as so much gobbledegook uttered by Richard Dimbleby and his ilk slowly began to make some sort of sense.
Re the bemoaning of the dumbing down of comics I remember years ago Bill Lofts use to talk of a collector of comics from Wales named Arthur Jones who had a virtual complete collection of comic titles up to 1920. Mr Jones having refused to collect anything after that point because he felt that post the Great War comics had become 'too childish'. So it seems when it comes to people bellyaching about the dumbing down of comics 'twas ever thus'.

Brendan McGuire · Post by **Brendan McGuire** » 16 Aug 2007, 10:21

I wonder if publisher's expectations play a part in all this. If you think your target readership is a bit thick, you are naturally going to go for content that you think will pander to the lowest common denominator. By doing so you are going to turn off a potentially huge market. If you produce pap, you insult the intelligence of the majority of children. Not every British child walks about on their knuckles.
Having said that, I acknowledge that some children expect to be spoon-fed everything, but it's only some.

Lew Stringer · Post by **Lew Stringer** » 16 Aug 2007, 10:28

Dizrythmia wrote:I don't know about being dumbed down, but the amount of toilet humour that shows up in your average Dandy (& more frequently in Beano) is a bit worrying. Still... if that's what turns kids on these days...

Kids have always found that stuff funny. It's just that publishers and retailers used to be too po-faced to accept it.

Lew

Steve Bright · Post by **Steve Bright** » 16 Aug 2007, 10:56

Lew Stringer wrote:
Dizrythmia wrote:I don't know about being dumbed down, but the amount of toilet humour that shows up in your average Dandy (& more frequently in Beano) is a bit worrying. Still... if that's what turns kids on these days...

Kids have always found that stuff funny. It's just that publishers and retailers used to be too po-faced to accept it.

Lew

It's not often I disagree with Lew, and to an extent I agree with him on this, but with qualification. Kids have always found toilet humour funny, yes, but that is true of anything that has a 'forbidden fruit' element to it. That's when it's 'naughty' and much. much funnier.

Forgive the image, but ramming snot, poo and gunge down their little throats as the mainstay of their diet will be like all their Christmases coming at once for a while, but it will lose any edge it had very quickly, and then who knows what the next 'forbidden fruits' might be?

I don't call a desire to steer our kids towards a slightly more intelligent form of humour po-faced, Lew. It may be a misguided notion from the point of quick-fix commercial viability, but it is at least an attempt at being a responsible one.

That doesn't have to be boring - the trick is getting the balance right, and from where I'm standing, the see-saw has all the 'goodies' laden on to one end.

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