Week2

Do you think comics are a children’s or adult genre/media?



I think comics are both a children and adult genre/media. I think that comics were mainly designed for children’s entertainment. This is because children may have some difficulties in reading and understanding the texts, so pictures (the visual features) could help them understand the content of that particular media, but it is also considered a favourite genre for adults as well. Harvey (n.d., as cited in Varnum & Gibbons, 2001) discusses that both word and image are necessary for the completion of meaning, which shows that both children and adult cannot get the exact meaning of comics without images. As for me, English is my second language, comics are much enjoyable because it is much easier to understand or guess the meaning with images even if there are any difficult words or expressions that I haven’t learnt. 

Children will enjoy reading the visualized comics like ‘The adventures of Tintin’. Although some of the contents are difficult to analysis the meaning for the children which is focusing the adults who seek for better contents and significances.

The genre can be originally decided by the author who creates comics and determines the age group of the comics. The comic ‘the adventures of Tintin’ also has own genre of age group. In the Michael Farr’s writing, Herge (n.d., as cited in Farr,1991) who is the author of “the adventures of Tintin” explains that “Tintin” was aimed at all young people aged from seven to seventy-seven. Therefore, it depends on how the author decides the readers’ age limit and makes suitable comics for them, but as a whole, “comics” are for both children’s and adult’s media.




Reference

Farr, Michael. (1991). Introduction. In Tintin: the complete companion (pp.8-9). London: John Murray.

Varnum, R. & Gibbons, C. (Eds.). (2001). Introduction. In The Language of Comics: word and image (pp.ix-xix). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.