Adult and Children's Comics

Posted by Luke Arnott Aug 16, 2009

Funny how a blog post's theme can come together ... your faithful comics correspondent has been effectively bedridden this last week, and hasn't had a chance to post in some time. But I should note that there have been four new feature articles since the last post:

The first two are on Osamu Tezuka and his most famous manga creation, Astro Boy (or Mighty Atom). Although only Tezuka's early stuff is geared toward kids, he's had the reputation of being kid-friendly. It's much like his idol Walt Disney, who wasn't all that wholesome himself; and some of Disney's earlier masterpieces, like Dumbo or Fantasia, have some pretty trippy stuff for "kids' cartoons." But later generations (like those in the "Air Pirates" case) came to see Disney as treacle.

Doing a complete one-eighty, the newest feature articles are on comics for mature audiences. My Druuna censorship article from a few months back is still one of the most popular, so I thought I'd follow up with a guide to some of the more interesting (or, less sleazy and amateurish) examples of racy picture books. Since there was too much for one article, I divided them up into grown-up comics for the art-house crowd, and for the science-fiction and fantasy set.