I’ve never been much of a comic fan, in fact i don’t think I’ve ever really read or paid attention to comics other than the ones at the back of news papers as a kid. Which were always based around current pop culture events mostly based on politics.

In this weeks Reading Mafalda: Middle Class, Everyday Life,and Politics in Argentina, 1964–1973 by Isabella Cosse, Cosse analyzes the comic Mafalda by Quino which uses a littler girl to articulate important messages. One of the strips that stuck out to me the most was in ‘Mafalda 10, 1974 where Mafalda interacts with a man who uses  humour through ageism as a response to her wanting to the change the world, to which she replied ““We’re doomed, guys! It turns out, if we don’t hurry up and change the world, the world changes us!” This really resonated with me because through Cosse’s article  there is a sense of using comics as way to have discussions through social perceptions of the world. This theme of the article really helped me to understand that stature of Mafalda, and the littler messages that the illustrator wanted the public to see and think about.  It was also great that through his work he used a girl to spark these conversations in areas that are though of to be a male driven community such as politics.

The strips of Mafalda spark conversations and discussions in communities as Cosse said ” a comic strip is not merely the texts and images it contains but also the practices involved in its production, circulation, and appropriation by those who read, discuss, and use it.”  The comics personifies the relations ships that should be exuded in reality. Mafalda  touches on real world problems but in a playful way that makes the readers actually take a minute to ponder the real life instances that are represented in the strips. My question would be, through this type of medium is there a line between a comic being just art and it being taken serious?  And does this make conversations differ from how people interpret it?