Comic Book Art

When planning our annual end of year project, we decided to focus on twelve influential aspects of the creative team's lives. We chose four items each to illustrate and print on badges. (They will be available for the beginning of January, feel free to request one). One of the four I selected was comic book art, a passion of mine since my teens, but I struggled to convince the other two designers in the team, Marie and Emma.


There is undoubtedly prejudice against comic books from some demographic groups, and easy to see why. When trying to engender the same enthusiasm in the rest of the team, I was hard pressed to show good examples of the stunning art form without picking out blood spattered scenes in the more credible volumes, or stupidly revealing spandex outfits on female characters.


There is a real need for graphic novels that bridge the gap between superhero books, full of characters that follow American foreign policy and resemble the Aryan ideal, and the direct antithesis in violent anti heroes. With a little effort, superb titles can be found, but if the style wants to be taken seriously, it must shed some of its negative reputation.