When discussing Genre, a good place to start is BUSCOMBE'S THEORY. This states, simply, that the thing which differentiates one genre from another is the ICONOGRAPHY; that is, the ICONS, the actual objects you can see on that comic book cover or in that movie or whatever. Helpfully, Buscombe offers 4 areas in which we should look for those icons:

- The LOCATION (places - schools, underground lairs, streets... and location in time - the future?)
- Character APPEARANCE (clothes, age, hair, tattoos, facial expressions...)
- TOOLS used by the characters (guns, toys, cars, spaceships...)
- Miscellaneous (everything else!)

TASK: Apply Buscombe's theory to the two comic book covers above.

Of course, Buscombe is only a starting point. Once you've established that there ARE different genres, and that it's not hard to tell the difference, you then need to understand that different genres offer different gratifications, have different audiences, are marketed differently, often use different narrative structures, different representations and so on.

TASK: Having established that The Beano and Batman are indeed from different genres, make notes on what your FOREKNOWLEDGE of these genres leads you to expect in terms of audience identity and gratifications, marketing, narrative, representation - and anything else you can think of!



INDEPENDENT LEARNING TASK:

How important is genre in attracting comic book audiences? You may refer to the examples below if you wish.