The few animated shows for the older audiences are mostly directed toward teenagers and young adults. Matt Groening created “The Simpsons”, which started out as a sketch on the “Tracey Ullman Show”. It was given a slot on the Fox network, and was extremely successful. The show is now proceeding into its 8th year and is still gaining popularity. “Bevis and Butthead” is also a cartoon aimed at teenagers. The show, created by Mike Judge, is about two high schoolers, music, and their experiences.
These cartoons are also heavily merchandised. Very seldom is there a record store that does not sell “Bevis and Butthead” T-shirts or posters. One of the events that has helped the “Simpsons” was the banning of their shirts in school. These were considered to be bad influences on children.
Fast food franchises also use televised cartoons to sell products, most directed toward young children. “McDonald’s” makes small plastic figurines of the latest popular cartoon, and includes them as incentives in things like “Happy Meals”. Other stores offer items like watches or clothing with a cartoon on them for buying a specific item.
Cartoonists also design comics specifically for certain advertisements, books, and things like music album covers. R Crumb, one of the leading underground cartoonists of the 60s, designed album covers for Janis Joplin, Big Brother, and the Holding Company.
Crumb drew popular underground cartoons such as the Keep on Truckin’ guys and “Fritz the Cat”. The latter was made into a animated film with the same name. Crumb hated the film so much that he drew a final Fritz comic book and killed off the cat with an ice pick.
Popular comic strips today continue the original traditions and even started a new category. Jules Feiffer made a combination of the comic strip and the political cartoon which was first published in the Village Voice in New York City in the 1950s. This style has somewhat continued into other comics such as Gary Trudeau’s “Doonsbury”, Gary Larson’s “Far Side” (which was retired in 1994), Cathy Guisewite’s “Cathy”, and Matt Groening’s “Life in Hell”. Another popular comic using this style was “Bloom County” wich was retired in 1989, but the author, Berke Brethed, has brought the characters back in his new strip “Outland”.
Comic books have also progressed into the 90s state of mind and have become very violent but have also moved mostly beyond the more realistic ideas into more science-fiction directed topics. Popular story lines in today’s comic books include space samurai, alien attacks on earth, and disposable assin droids. The comic book’s popularity is dimishing though, due to their high prices, television, and kid’s lack of motivation to read.
The internet is also a large source for comics. Not only can the published comic strips be posted, but amature artists can post their artwork on webpages, wich is usually soon spread across the web as others use this art in the production of their own page.
The modern comic has become very diverse and will become much more so in the near future. Comic strips and books are not the only form, but are in compition with television and the internet. The comic has changed much since its creation, and will comtinue to do so probably untill till the end of man.
Biblography
McHam, David, “Mass Media and the American Experience: A Cultureal History of Our Time” Southren Methodist Universty 1995
Goulart, Ron “The funnies” Adams Media Corporation Holbrook, MA 1995
p1-6
Goulart, Ron “Encyclopedia of American Comics” Promised Land Productions
1990 p5, 40, 48, 61, 102, 112,113, 139
Inge, Thomas M., “Comics As Culture” University Press of Mississippi, Jackson and London 1990
Shulz, Charles “Good Grief: the lif of Charles Shulz” United Feature Syndicate, 1996
Pictures
Pharaon, James “James Pharaon’s Superman homepage” http://www.shsu.edu/~stdsjp/superman.html, Sarycuse University Library
“The Yellow Kid” http://web.syr.edu/~speccoll/yellow.htm
http://physics.oberlin.edu/~jwood/
http://www.spe.sony.com/Pictures/SonyClassics/crumb/ks/art.html
http://www.buffnet.net/~starmist/nast/nast.htm