Serious Comic Books Part 1, Neil Paddison.

I chose this article, because I am a big fan of comic books, and the article title intrigued me.

Neil Paddison considers the radical tradition of political cartooning, and in this article and the follow-up in MM18 takes a look at five comic books which address important contemporary issues.

"The rise of one medium does not automatically spell the wane of another..., but at the very least it meant that there were more leisure options for people to choose from." -  I agree with this statement as the rise in television, does not necessarily mean that comic books are dying off.

The main points of his article are that comics aren't only used for fun, or as a means of escape. it is used for political reasons and even more so, propaganda - "With its historical documentary style, Maus tells the true story of Spiegelman's father's life as a Jew in Nazi Germany, and it uses the comic book form to represent different nationalities as different animals: Jews drawn as mice, Germans as cats, and Poles as pigs. The simplicity of the idea underscores the simple horror of the Nazis' plans for the Jews"

"The relative freedom of expression generally enjoyed by comic book artists would perhaps explain a renewed interest in political cartoon books," - I agree with this statement, as some artists can place their own ideologies into comics, and create their own characters to represent these ideologies; for example, in the film "Mall Rats" by Kevin Smith, stan lee states that most of his characters are representations of the emotions he felt at the time of creating the character, so he put his own emotional ideologies into the characters.

My overall opinion of the article, is a positive. The title suggested to me that he was gonna slander comic books, but in fact he praised them, and said that they are not just for fun but to attach your own ideologies on and that comic books have a deeper meaning. So overall the article was informative and useful.