Week3 Comic Strips

 By reading some comic strips, I found that the key point of comic strips is the empathy of readers. I found it by character design and scenario setting.

In several stories, there are simplified face characters even the entire art style is realistic drawing. I think this is the same structure written on Understanding Comics, the previous reading assignment. According to Understanding Comics, people tend to see themselves when the drawn human was iconic than realistic and detailed. The simplified face characters in comic strips were mostly the protagonist of the story or at least the important character who appears many times. I think it is because these characters are designed to get the most of the audiences’ sympathy when they are reading comics. For example, the audience may feel that they are walking within the dreaming world as Nemo does in Little Nemo. 

 It is also fun for me to see how authors reflect their experience in the story. Many comic strips in this era use the real-life topic which may come from the author’s personal experience. For example, Little Nemo, Sunday with Walt and Skeezix, Dondi… All of their main characters’ model is the son of these authors. Sunday with Walt and Skeezix is one of the most interesting of these because of the main character's actual growth within the story. The baby in the first story reaches adolescence at the end of the book. I could feel the reflection of the author’s real life. This way of making a story is not outdated even today. The real-life-related story gets much attention from readers because they feel empathy with the story by finding common points between the story and their life experience.

 By considering these points, I think comic strips are well-considered to get people’s empathy in both character design and story scenario. It may be because most of the comic strips are in the newspaper and may be seen by several people. Getting attention and giving readers a good feeling was important to them to continue publishing.