What comics changed your view on something?

[Kamikaze]

Hey y'all!

So I ran across this comic today ->

I Share Too Much: True Stories | Tapas

It's about how the artist overcame her frustrations with her own shyness and insecurity. I've always been an introverted person. Not necessarily shy per se, but quiet. The idea that someone like this can go from being so introverted and quiet to getting confidence and being more extroverted by sheer will power? That hit me, and makes me kinda think...maybe I could do that too!

Have y'all ever had comics that made you change your view, or inspired you to make a change in your life? Share em!

[Wumbl]

Hmmm.....
Well there are a lot of comics I have read that made a lasting impression on me. Mainly comics like Hellblazer and Preacher.
I grew up a roman catholic and it was pretty oppressive since I was growing up gay. I was surrounded by catholic family who essentially made me want to closet myself out of fear.

After I got together the courage to start practising my true faith and came out, I started appreciating Hellblazer even more. The main character, John Constantine, is in a similar position to myself. He grew up in an oppressive and often terrifying situation, and almost fell off the rails because of it. However, in spite of everything he lives as openly bisexual (as I now do) and isn't afraid to say what he thinks. He suffers from various mental issues but manages to survive and learn to cope over time, which was a major inspiration.

Preacher was a pretty big impact on me. The main character has a hostile and abusive homelife early in his life, and finds himself reeled back into it several times until he finally confronts his fears and takes on his family.
Seeing a character triumph over his abuser has meant so much to me in my life, as someone who had suffered abuse in childhood. I learned so much from that protagonist, no matter how goofy and even tragic he could seem. I learned that my abuse experience didn't have to keep me down and that if I could really buckle down on recovering I could do it, and move on from it.

I went off on one there but comics have done so much for me.

[Mari]

This is going to sound very odd and not politically correct, but here's the story;

I was raised with very enforced gender roles (being the only girl it was decided before my birth I would be going to college and be the one who helps with cooking and house work and has to be at home by 5 pm while my brothes just goofed off until 10 pm every day ._.) and heteronormative ways. We just weren't taught about homosexuality. So I kind of didn't know it existed.
When I was 11 or 12, I had gotten into manga (Ranma 1/2 to be precise), and I was in this art/dance hobby group. Anyway, I was waiting on for the art class to begin, and a friend of mine was reading Gravitation. I ofc was like HOMG MANGO LET ME SEE, so she did. I happened on a page of the main couple kissing, stopped for a minute and asked "are they both guys?". She was like ayup. I was like okay cool.

And that's how I learned homosexuality exists. Strangely I feel like if I hadn't come across it that way on my own and left it my peers and whatever I would've probably grown up bigoted

[NickRowler]

Sorry for bring up a conversational topic...

However, Doonesbury changed my view on abortion. I used to be extremely anti-abortion until I read a strip about the topic. And I guess it gave me a different perspective at looking at the topic and I've been pro-Choice ever since.

[ratique]

That's a very cute comic you linked, @Kamikaze. I relate to the author a lot (a little too much, even).

I think I always bring up this comic, but my answer is "Battle Angel Alita".

Alita was powerful and flawed. She was beautiful and incredibly lonely. She was independent and still used by others. She fought back when she needed to or simply felt like it, and sometimes that resulted in the worst possible outcome. But man, she always stuck up for herself and her ideals.

I didn't understand Alita truly on my first read. The older I get, the more I relate to her and her thinking. Fighting for your ideals isn't a given. It can really kick you in the butt. But it is also so very important.

[jpnakashima]

So many, so many. I'm sorry for going on and on. This kind of talk gets me excited...

I tried to select a few, but the way I see it, I'm usually more influenced by a creator's work, since I believe themes echo through various works of a single artist.

Most of the way I see the world come from Grant Morrison's work. The Invisibles was the first one to really grab me. I was 14 and it really opened up my eyes to many possibilities about many things: the radical potential of comic books, anarchism, time as something not linear, chaos magic, freedom... It really blew my mind, as Morrison intended. Since then, the everlasting mark his work left on me was probably the idea of how stories save us, ''psychomagic''. Morrison is adept of the idea that ''before it was a bomb, it was an idea'', everything starts in our heads, and as he says, ''Superman was stronger the bomb. He was a stronger idea.'' His central utopian theme of wanting to make reality more like fiction, and not fiction more like reality, this really spoke to me in different points of my life. All Star Superman and The Filth also left a mark. Actually, Superman means the world to me. Stuff like Kingdom Come, Birthright and Secret Identity really inspired me. There is a me before and after becoming fascinated by Superman, when 12. It truly is my favorite character ever.

Preacher was also my favorite comic for a long time. I was 14 (a good year it was) and it really impressed me with its vision of friendship, ''well intended'' sexism, masculinity and that clean clean cleeean storytelling holy crap. Still love it to death.

The last writers to really make an impact on me were Ales Kot and Tom King.
Ales is just my kind of guy and I discovered him on the beginning of his career, end of 2012. It was a rough period and his work helped. Wild Children, Change, The Surface and Zero made me be super excited by comics in a time when it was hard to be excited about anything. It made me revaluate things I saw about me, cycles of self abuse, the violence inside me, the will to be bold and weird about comics. I'm still fighting with these concepts and I read him constantly. ''Nothing is too beautiful to happen, nothing is too good to last.''
Tom King is amazing. His current run on Batman makes me cry more often than not and his musings on alienation, pain, sadness and the cycles we build for ourselves is awe inspiring. I will read and study Omega Men, The Vision and Mister Miracle (which is shaping up to be his master piece) for the years to come!

[jpnakashima]

I feel you. It took me years to process the consequences of the catholic guilt inside of me. I'm still trying to deal with it, honestly.

I love how human Garth Ennis work is. His characters are so deeply flawed but still so deeply human. Powerful stuff.

[Wumbl]

consequences of the catholic guilt

Yeah... I know what you mean bc even if I no longer believe in the faith I can feel this little smidgen of guilt. The part of me that knows my grandparents are talking badly about me when I'm not there. I know I should be able to just ignore it because their opinion on my relationship doesn't matter but obviously... they're family so they get to me. My fear of that catholic opinion still exists, but being at peace with it is most of the journey.

I know I've won when I can turn to my grandmother and say "Yeah, screw you I'm pagan." but that's still not something I can do yet.

[WednesdayAsh]

Specifically comics well...

Fables is a big influence on me, at least the taking of real world inspiration and remixing them thats kind of my thesis in creation

Transmetropolitan kinda veered me off to this wacky, bright, cynical future type mindset (instead of dour dystopias)

Beck (Mongoloan Chop Squad) really intrested me in writing about a band (and actually being in one)

Thats like specifically comic based influences...which can be found on my comic:

Cloverlines | Tapas

haha sorry had to work in a plug in there somwhere XD

[joe_galindez]

What was the strip saying about abortion?

I'm moderately pro-life myself. I support safe abortions but a lot of the time they're on about the same moral level as infanticide.

[NickRowler]

I don't want to say due to me not wanting this forum to shift into a discussion (or argument) about abortion.

[joe_galindez]

I promise, no sarcasm. But we can always take this to the PMs.

[UrMom]

Thinking about it I've never had any story actively change the way I think. Sure, stories can help shape our views, but even as a child I had trouble associating movies/comics/literature with real life.

Comics have changed my views on storytelling though, mostly because it was my first time ever seeing that element. I remember when I first read Chrono Crusade it was the first comic where it hit me that you can make really depressing shit, so I decided to play with that a bit. I can't remember which one because it was soooo long ago, but some bad early 2000's yaoi comic made me realize you can have queer/LGBT+ character in your story... which was weird since I was raised around the queer/LGBT+ community. But I never saw it in any media before then, sooo I never thought about the possibility of having such characters.

Reading webcomics in general made me want to start a comic of my own, other than that the two things stated above are what most prominently and instantaneously changed my storytelling views.

[LittleMissDevil]

Reading Scott McClouds Comics has really changed my mind on how to approach making comics myself. They helped me switch from "just drawing around" to actively trying to improve myself, understand more about comics and use different panel structures and things like that.

Aside from that I have read superhero comics for all my life and still actively collect them (DC, mainly Green Lantern). I couldn't tell you any thing where they actively changed my mind on something, but these comics had a huge influence on my interests, my personality and my hobbies as a whole. So I'd say they probably also influecened my world view or something ^^