What is the most important part of a comic book? Some might say the cherry of the colorful graphic narratives is it's cover page, a large image accompanied by the title of the book, and is meant to attract consumers to buy the book. Others might say the most important part is a panel that shows a dramatic scene of the story, for example when Tintin get into danger. Oh wait, that happens in every story of Tintin.
Anyways, I do not have a personal preference on which part is the best. I am more interested in understanding every parts of the book and putting equal importance on the parts, rather than placing one over another. The focus of this blog post would be the last part of a comic book, or in this case, a story, where Supermen's story ends. Whenever the story comes to an end, there is a small image that serve various functions.
Out of the 8 endings panels of the Action Comics, I divided them with regards to four main functions. To start with the ending of the first Superman story, the image shows Superman breaking chains, with texts that describe him as a "physical marvel." I think this image (I am unsure of the terminology that I should use) is important in that it is how the producers of Superman wish to represent the character to the public. In a sense, it shows a similar purpose as the cover, trying to attract viewers to the superhero that will "reshape" the world!
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| Action Comics No. 1 |
Secondly, the endings of Action Comics No.2, 3 & 5 strive to increase reader-to-comic interactions. By directly addressing the readers as "Fellers," "You" or "All American Youth", the panels try to make the readers feel more connected to the producers or the comic itself. Asking the readers to submit their application for membership, prizes, and more availability of comics, the panels also do a great job of making the comics more popular and wide-spread among the youth.
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| Action Comics No.2 |
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| Action Comics No.3 |
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| Action Comics No.5 |
Thirdly, the last panels act as inspiring young readers. The last panels of Action Comics No. 4 & 6 show ways of getting stronger, with simple ways, rather than elaborate work out plans. Personally, this seems like the producers are trying to tell the young readers that they could get stronger everyday with hard work, and eventually become superman themselves! Ironically, superman is an alien from outer space who was born with amazing powers, where all, or rather most, readers are normal human beings who don't have metal skin that could block bullets.
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| Action Comics No.4 |
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| Action Comics No.6 |
Finally, the last panel of Action Comics No. 7 show a very important part of a comic book: transition. In this case, however, this panel show a transition from a story-to-story; a transition from Superman to another comic book story that is inside Action Comics. In fact, the panel is so small that readers might miss it while reading through the comics. This panel exists since Superman was considered a very famous comic, and the producers of Superman might have wanted to use it's popularity to advertise other stories mentioned in the other parts of the Action Comics book.
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| Action Comics No.7 |
As mentioned above, the last panel of Superman functions to introduce the character, increase user engagement, inspire readers, and create natural transition to other comics. The different purposes served by last panels show how even the smallest part of a comic book could have significant impact to the comic book readers. It may be last, but it certainly is not the least.
Great post! You had a lot if insightful ideas --- I particularly liked your analysis of the last panels in Action Comics vol. 4 & 6. I think that this was most likely a marketing tactic, trying to convince the readers that they can merge the gap between the fictional world of Superman and their own lives, thus falling deeper into the story and becoming more highly invested in the comics.
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