I’m a hobbiest cartoonist and was thinking that a comic that explained economics in a fun and understandable way might be a way to educate some people. I could never understand a lot of how economics affected me until reading “Economics in one Lesson” by Henry Hazlitt. That book changed my whole view of economics and enlightened me to how government policy actually affects me.
My general idea is to take a summarized version of Hazlitt’s book and put it in comic form. It wouldn’t show all the examples to save space, but enough to make the point that you need to look at what is “unseen as well as what is seen”.
I did have the idea to have the beginning start with some kind of bad situation where superman is called in to help, but he can’t handle the problem so he calls Economics Man or Free Market Man or something like that, but I’m not sure what the bad situation would be. Maybe a stock market crash or a giant Debt Monster. I’m not really sure. I just wanted to start it with something to grab the readers attention. This could possibly be a dream sequence of the narrator imagining himself saving the day with economics. Or maybe (this just occurred to me) the narrator is this economics superhero and he is going to train the reader in economics so they can be a superhero too.
Yeah, I’ve seen that one. Great stuff but I would like to take a different route by making it more like Hazlitt’s examples rather than starting with nothing like Irwin did. Irwin really explains what money is and free markets in that comic, but I want people to understand why the government can’t create jobs through public works or protect jobs through tariffs. Those are issues that I don’t think the common person fully understands. I know I didn’t. I knew I wanted less government, but Hazlitt’s book told me why.
Irwins comic does get to those issues but it takes a long time to get there.
Cool. Thanks for that link. It would help if the debunking information was posted there as well but it’s good to see them to get somewhere to start from.
I thought of starting the beginning by having a bunch of evil toxic assets that super-duper man can’t handle so he calls in Economics man to save the day. I want Economics man to have a few moves that can beat the toxic assets. So far I have thought of a “Liquidization punch”. Know of anything else that might kill a toxic asset?
Thanks for the link. Lots of good info to look over in there.
I have the first page finished. The hero “Economics Man” will make his appearance on the next page. The first two pages are just to get a hook and the lesson on economics won’t begin until the third page.
You can zoom in on the page by clicking the picture.
Great idea. we need as much info out there as we can get.
how about instead of an economist, a child is the hero and uses his innocence ( non brainwashed mind) to think through issues logically etc. also personally i would not use terms like free market or capitalism- with words like that you guarantee a market of the choir only.IMHO
Thanks macsnafu. I will have to check that out. Maybe it’s at my library. It does look good.
Here is page two finished. The hero makes a quick entrance and a quick exit to get to the next page where the learning will begin. I’m thinking the title of the comic can be “How to be an Economics Superhero” and that can be the class that Economics Man is going to teach to the reader.
I’m thinking the next page will state Hazlitt’s one lesson and a few reasons why economics is so shrowded in mystery by common people. That’s how Hazlitt started his book. Maybe I should read some more books before going forward because I’m not really sure what the best way is to move forward or what examples to use. I’m kinda just following Hazlitt’s book.
I’ll let you know this. I pulled up the screen to enlarge the picture and my three year old son who was on the other side of the room ran over here and just asked me what that was. I said, “a comic”. He said, “comic, cool, I like comics”.
There ya go. He can’t read, but loved the pictures.
Good deal. Looks like the “hook” of the first two pages is working then. They will be disappointed after that though. Unless I could somehow make the economics examples interesting. Maybe I could somehow make some villians like “Corn Lobby Man” and “Military Industrial Complex Man” to make it interesting.
I think putting the quality concepts into these matter abstractions, meaning, able to put what seem like ideas into more concrete images is the comic-artist endeavor. Putting those ideas into action by providing characters to fit certain abstract ideas and let those characters play it out the way the ideas play it out is the goal, ah?
