re #3: 60s Marvel certainly wasn’t JUST marketed to kids - Stan Lee very much had hip teens and college students on his mind too, all the “A POP ART PRODUCT” stuff, beatniks in the X-Men, etc etc. There’s a semi-ironic “for men who should know better” style to the whole thing.

Of course Lee’s great, possibly accidental, marketing genius was to hit on a style which worked AMAZINGLY well at attracting 8-12 year old kids too. I should try and read up on the history of marketing to kids - you can see echoes of the whole FOOM!, MMMS, bullpen hijinks style in almost every for-kids communication ever since*, and I wonder the degree to which Lee invented it.

*it’s why I found 80s Smash Hits so appealing, for instance.

Eisner’s occasional topless woman in his graphic novels fits with your opinion there.

Not nearly as shocking/explicit as the Tijuana Bibles material, it’s more like: “oh, this Disney animator used to get bored at his desk all the time and draw pin-up girls”

The most startling revalation by far: the nudes drawn by Carl Barks. What’s really bizaare and creepy is when you can actually recognize Bark’s unique linework on like, a girls’ legs in the drawing. Your brain starts reading it as both a naked woman AND a Barks duck simultaneously. It’s not intentional, of course — it’s just how he drew — but it’s still really weird to look at.

also: Will Eisner cannot draw breasts! who would have guessed?

Also, re gothic spine chillers: the next piece will be on horror comics. I’m not sure what you’d have seen, but what I am covering seems unlikely to be what you’re talking about, I think.

Of course I grew up on the Beano. Also on the American comics my dad brought home from the shipyard (they were used as ballast on transatlantic ships) - there were all the usual suspects: Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, the Flash, and so on (which amused me but never really grabbed me) but also a lot of what seemed to be one-offs, some of which I really enjoyed - good, gothic spine-chillers of a completely different order from the rather preposterous superheroes. It would never have occurred to me to identify the artists, mind.

Astérix and Tintin are another matter, of course. I can’t bear either of them in English - somehow they only seem to work for me in French, but I got really hooked on both when I spent time in France. I even persuaded my French exchange to send me Pilote regularly. When I was in what would now be called Year 11, in a group which had already done O-level French, had no intention of doing A-Level French, and were still bound by a school policy which demanded compulsory French, our prof tried to entice us, unsuccessfully, with La Peste, Moderato Cantabile and Le Grand Meaulnes (aka “Big Moans”). At length she cried out in despair “Qu’est-ce que vous voulez? Astérix le Gaulois?” And the class cried with one one voice, “YEEEESSSSSSS!”

I can’t see comics moving out of their largely-kids position for a long time, if they ever do. There is very little for adults in comparison to the vast amount for kids/teens. I’m not sure how they got this way - they grew out of newspaper strips, which weren’t so aimed at children, with a large dash of pulp mags, which weren’t either. Obviously the Wertham-led palaver in the ’50s in America juvenilised them even more, killing off just about everything aimed at older readers.

There’s nothing inherent in the form that makes it unsuitable for adults, obviously, and its position is not universal - comics sell to adults in Japan in vast numbers.

There are bigger questions to ask about the medium which are probably better asked later, after the beginners guide is over! Lets not scare off the neophytes who have and awful lot of good stuff to discover.

A lot of my categories come far less from thinking “Okay, I want to say something about children’s comics” than from noting down lots of people or comics I want to mention, and lumping them together in more or less plausible groups.

European comics are a stranger business. Whilst I am sure Asterix and Tintin have a massive childrens audience, a flea market I was at in Switzerland also suggested that these book also have a massive adult audience too (perhaps in perpetual nostalgia like the US market). The dreaded tag All Ages is wafted around, but I wonder whether you could append that to Leo Baxendale’s work - beyond admiring the terrific artwork.

(I may have more to say on this issue via the very odd comic Tiny Titans).