Pop art is a specific art style that originated in the 1950s in both Britain and the

USA. It is known for its use of bright colours, comic style font and use of dots. It is
featured in many forms of media including comic books, advertising, fine art and
cartoons. Pop art is known for borrowing conventions from the original style of
comic books and due to history repeating itself, comic books during the 1960s
came back to using the art pop style in new comic books.
Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein both presented their work of the pop art style
which was both fresh and trendy. For example, Lichtensteins Drowning Girl was
received extremely well as well as Warhols Cheddar Cheese Campbells Soup
Cans canvas. This is when pop art began to rise into the mainstream during the
1960s.
A famous old style example for this includes the reworked Batman comic book
series. During the silver age of comic books, pop art began to feature as a
traditional style in this particular franchise. The Batman comics during the
1940s were known for reciprocating this style of art through not only the
illustrations but also the narrative.

In both of these examples, you can see the conventional, bright and vibrant
colours used in pop art including: mustard yellow, red, green and blue as well as
using black to outline everything in the strip. This made the overall appearance
appear to be quite camp and comedic which brought the comic book series to a
rise in popularity for adults again. Audiences found the comic series to be funnier
than the original due to its use of onomatopoeia by using words to describe the

sounds of some of the actions. Roy Lichtenstein being one of the first major
influences in the pop art rise was most known for his Wham painting. In the
painting the word: Whaam! uses the technique of onomatopoeia to show off the
sound that is resembles. You can see this convention in the Batman comic books,
in the third image pow is the word that describes the sound of when Batman
punches the Joker.
The Batman comic books were known for being available in comic book form only
as these were the only available sources to read the content. This meant that the
sales for the books sky rocketed which made the overall franchise more popular.

With the influence of pop art, the vibrancy of the new comic book style was also
reflected in the narrative of the books itself. In the snippet of the book shown
below, the content of the narrative also appear to include elements of humour.
With Batmans slightly sexist comment towards women: Theres no telling what
a woman will do gives a slight comedic effect for the audience. This is due to

the main target audience being males so with this slight element makes the
narrative less serious compared to how serious previous Batman comics were.
Whats also interesting to note about the original comic book series was the
materials they used with. They appeared to be hand drawn and painted whilst
using oil and magna paint.
In the image shown above, the viewer can see the use of the Benday dots, a
printing technique that creates small dots throughout the entire picture. This was
first used by the famous pop art artist: Roy Lichtenstein.
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/pop-art.htm#definitio
Pop art is still seen as a popular art style that has grown throughout the decades.
One

popular example of pop art in recent comic books is The Powerpuff Girls series.
Although it originally started off as an animated television programme for
children, the series proved to be quite popular and went on to producing several
forms of media as part of its franchise including a comic book series.
The art style of the comic closely resembles to that of the original pop art style
and this can be seen through the characteristics of the comic book. The colours
are bright and eye catching and are predominantly feminine colours to symbolise

the theme of girl power and female empowerment. Colours like pink and
purple are associated with the series overall.

What also strikes audiences into thinking this comic book series is of pop art
style is that almost everything that is within the visuals of the narrative is
outlined in a bold black line which is commonly seen throughout pop art designs.
It makes a bolder appearance to the overall aesthetics of the comic book as well
as giving a more childlike and cartoon look. In regards to representation of
colours, the representation of women in comic books have changed over time. In
earlier franchises of comic books, females were originally represented as weak
individuals who relied on their male counterparts to rescue them from villains.
This trope is known as the damsel in distress archetype. This is portrayed by
characters such as Olive Oyl from the Popeye franchise who constantly relied on
Popeye to rescue her after being kidnapped by Bluto/Brutus.

Later on, women were given more qualities to their male counterparts. The
Powerpuff Girls is a well-known example of this in which despite being girly,
they can take care of themselves due to them having their own powers and
strengths and being independent in their fighting by not having to rely on men to
save them. They arent the stereotypical princesses as how women were
previously portrayed as. cats

In comparison of the front cover to the actual content of the comic books, the
text displays elements of the original pop art style. The narrative shows comedic
effects through its characters as well as the dialogue. Buttercup (one of the lead
characters in green) is known to be the tough and angry one of the trio and her
anger towards certain situations is often narrated in a humorous way. Often in
pop art style narratives two very different characters with extreme opposite
personalities are often juxtaposed, another example is of Veronica Lodge and
Betty Cooper from the Archie comics and seen in his example with Buttercup and
Blossom.
In this snippet we can also the use of onomatopoeia as a dramatic effect for the
comic books in which sounds are spelt the way they would be
spoken/pronounced. These words are often in bold, written in red and or are
followed by many exclamation marks, which gives a more fun and entertaining
vibe for audiences to read as well as making the overall narrative more realistic.