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Carlos Alberto Pea

Zack de Piero Writing 2
7 March 2015
Comic Books: Adults vs. Children
Genres usually have a specific audience that they are generated for, in
which case they follow specific conventions because of that. Yet, there are
some genres that can be manipulated to have two audiences by changing its
conventions to designate its appropriate audience. One genre in particular is
comic books, which can be directed to a younger audience and can also be
directed to an older audience.

By doing so, it is possible to change one

genre to another as well; like changing a scholarly journal into a comic book.
As I research through different kind of scholarly journals to manipulate, I find
myself thinking, How am I supposed to change this work into a different
genre? It sounds difficult and it is something I havent done. How do I
interpret what is in the scholarly journal into the conventions of a comic
book? One of the scholarly-academic journals I have searched for is one
based on Comic Books. Kat Kans journal, What Kind of Kids Read Comic
Books, consists of the many different kinds of kids that read comic books and
how comic books are relevant in academics. To convert the scholarly journal
into a comic book, I had to take into consideration the target audience and
the conventions the genres have.

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The course readings of Writing Identities by Losh and Alexander use

certain moves that I also used to convert the scholarly journal into a comic
book page. They used the conventions of a comic book to convey their
points. The moves they use are sound effects, illustrations, quirky jokes and
puns, and elongated dialogue. It is interesting to see all these conventions
put into one comic book. I believe that some conventions are more for young
audiences like the quirky puns and jokes and the sound effects. Other
conventions like the elongated dialogue represents the conventions of a
comic book for an older audience. By reading this essay/article, it gave me
even more insight to my genres like in things that I can add such as the
authors moves.
When you think of genres for younger audiences, many ideas come to
mind like cartoons, texting, tweets, social media status updates, and children
books. With all these genres, to convert the academic journal into one of
these, you have to think about the conventions of that specific genre. For
example, when you think of a comic book for children you think about
illustrations, sound effects, color, and short simple words/sentences. Also,
another big factor in being a comic book for a young audience is having a
moral or something to learn from the resolution. By taking these factors into
consideration you can create your own comic book. A few moves that I used
to create my genre was the use of sound effects in various panels of the
comic book. For example, I used the sound effects to bring the characters
actions life, POW! BOOM! OOPS! CRASH! In this case I took the topic of the

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different kinds of kids that read comic books from the scholarly journal and
put it into a different perspective. I used short and catchy phrases for a
younger audience so that it is easier to interpret the moral of the story. Of
course, what I considered to be the moral of the story is the main point of the
scholarly article which is the different kinds of kids/people read comic books.
On the other hand when you think of genres for older audiences, you
come across bills, resumes, newspapers, emails, and poems. Yet, if you were
to translate this journal into a comic book for adults, you can take the
complex language from the journal and add other conventions of what an
adult comic book would have. Some more mature comic books have the
convention of having profanity, a focus on the artwork of the panels, more
dialogue, and almost no sound effects at all. For example, I used more
mature words in the dialogue of the characters in this comic book, D-BAGS
IMBECILS VENGEANCE VULNERABLE RESILIENT. Another thing I did
was expand the dialogue, this time one of my characters has much more to
say about who reads comics books. Many adult readings have elongated
texts because there is more to elaborate on scenes and the audience, adults,
care about the dialogue.
Again to change the scholarly-academic journal to a different genre, we
must consider the conventions of the genre and also consider the audience.
It was challenging to do so, but fun at the same time. It was something
different that I had to do and this time I had to consider a different audience
rather than thinking of a professor or T.A. The audience I specifically targeted

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consisted of children with an age range of 5-10 years-old for my younger

audience and late teens and beyond for the older audience. Because of this I
thought about the expectations of the audience; kids wanted a fun comic
and teens wanted a more adult-like comic. With this I realized that I have not
really considered my audience as much as I should have in my other papers.
With this assignment, I believe it made me more aware of considering my
audience in my writing, that way I can just adjust my writing to their
expectations.