Funny and Comic

When I was a kid, very poor, I had no money to buy comics but I would just sit around and surreptitiously read them in the store.  Maybe that is why I read very, very fast -- I'm still afraid that I'll get caught.

Why were they called "comics"?  Even then, almost nothing that I read was funny.  I was mostly into Superman, Supergirl, Spiderman, and all the good stuff.  My Spokane Indian friend, Margie, got me into horror comics -- she loaned them to me to read at lunchtime.

The first really funny comics I ever read were Doonesbury and Calvin and Hobbes.

But more than the three S's, those two "comics" were wise and deep comments on actual life.  So when I first read Maus, then Pedro and Me, then Persepolis, I wasn't that shocked to see actual content.  Even more, they forced me to think.  For example, Art Spiegelman forced me to try to figure out his allegory.  Judd Winick forced me to take reality tv seriously.  What does Marjane Satrapi do?