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I am inclined to agree that the more you stick with the characters that absolutely everyone knows something about, the better. Spiderman, The Hulk, Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman... given the movie, you could get away with some X-Men too, if you speak generally. If you stick with characters that you can expect your audience to have a good grasp of, you can add weirdnesses around them without losing too much in trying to explain things; for example, everyone knows who Superman is already, so you can explain the story arc in which he's killed without losing people, and from there you would get to compare the Man of Steel to Christ or Mithras if you felt like it. (Although, Watchmen might be worth explaining if you can give broad strokes and discuss primarily how the fantastic elements of comics rub shoulders with a realistic setting and things get ugly.)
You might organize themes or periods by nailing each one to a single character. For example, discuss Golden Age by talking about Superman, the Silver Age with Spider-Man, the Dark Age with Batman. That could help to make the transitions more obvious to laypeople.
And while it might be fun to talk about modern comics, I think that if you don't expect your audience to be very comic-savvy, I think you could still impress them with Sandman as "new(er)", less kid-associated comics. Midsummer Night's Dream would be ideal.
Ooh... it occurs to me that you could make a nice little circle by starting with folk and fairy-tale heroes that are reminiscent of comic heroes, like Hercules or Cuchulain (or Thor might be an obvious choice, I don't know what he's like in comics), then segue from there into comic book heroes (most of the lecture), and from there into Sandman and Midsummer Night's Dream which runs you right back into fairy-tales about honest-to-God fairies.
Just thinking out loud, hope some of that might be useful.
PS - Scott McCloud compared Egyptian hieroglyphics to comics, if I remember right... then there's the Stations of the Cross (right?)... so if you so desire, you have ancient superheroic folk heroes + ancient sequential art that tells a story = the inevitability of modern comics, rawr!
[ 30-09-2001: Message edited by: doubting thomas ]
[ 30-09-2001: Message edited by: doubting thomas ] |
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