I found this week’s readings really cool- I enjoyed reading through the Mafalda comic strips, and I found Isabella Cosse’s article engaging, as it took on a perspective I hadn’t yet considered on the social, cultural and political role of comics. I never really read too many comics growing up, and something I have come to understand since reading Cosse’s writing is the power of a youthful angle or perspective from which they are often written, and their visual accessibility to readers. The Mafalda comics are short, to-the-point, and leave little room for misinterpretation- even when considering the political and social messages they communicated. Cosse discusses the comic as an ‘instrument’ or tool, an “emblematic representation” of the Argentine middle class and an evolving, progressive national, or world, view. 

What fascinates me, as mentioned by Cosse, is Quino’s use of humour, wit, and a child’s thoughts and feelings in communicating with the reader. There is something so digestible about the Mafalda comics (from only the several that I have read), and it is this ‘readable’ nature of them that seemed to not only grow a significant reader base, but further allow for the stories to shape, and be shaped by, the changing social and political landscapes in Argentina. Humour is something so culturally binding- it is valorized and molds and constructs shared social identities, as argued by Cosse. But I think what is most powerful about humour, is its ability to evolve and shift with time people and still generate the same reaction, or amusement. It is often something so transient, and that becomes so evident whenever you watch, read or listen to something from a time before yours. Things are funny often because they are relevant, but while this holds true for most, the messages implicit in many of the Mafalda comics have continued to hold a timelessness about them. Of course, when political, social and cultural environments change, so does humour, and so did the Mafalda comics, but that doesn’t mean that much of the commentary made about feminism, cultural identity and class don’t still hold rather true today in many contexts. 

In your opinion, what is it about comics that draw in readers? What makes comics so popular?