In this thesis I researched the general appearance of the antihero in popular comics.
Firstly I answered the questions who or what is the archetypal hero, what is his traditional role through history of storytelling, his visual and characteristic attributes and what types of heroes do we know of in the mythological sense. From there I analysed the role of the antihero in mythological and literal history, where and when the term appeared and summarised the transition that turned the antihero into a protagonist in the 20th century.
Through a short history of popular American comic books I present the invention of the term superhero. I was interested in how it developed since its inception in the golden age of comics until the Dark Age of mid-eighties when the antihero became popular. Using the comics’ first covers I compared visual characteristics of the most famous superhero Superman and antihero Batman. A special chapter is devoted to the works of Frank Miller (Batman: The Dark Knight Returns) and Alan Moore (Watchmen) whose influence contributed to the general popularisation of the comic book antihero and to the growing-up of the medium.
In the last theoretical chapter I defined the most common categories of antiheroes in comics and summarised and artistically analysed one of their most known heroes in each of them.
For the practical part I supplemented theory with an authorial antihero of whom I drew a short comic. In the pedagogical part I presented the theme to a small group of pupils which then illustrated their own antiheroes. I interpreted and connected their work with the theoretical understanding of the comic book sphere.
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