Atticus Finch and Clarence Darrow are the reasons I do what I do.

Vocabulary?  Oh, tremendously so.  I was introduced to so many words and concepts in comics that it had a profound effect.  Plus, I always liked the brainy characters, who tended to have rather distinctive and academic speech patterns.  At the same time, it also influenced my use of words like "criminey" and "ever-lovin".  At the same time, my father was a teacher (and my mother had been one) and we had a lot of reading material around the house, as well as weekly visits to the bookmobile (we didn't have our own library in the little town, where I grew up).  We also had a set of World Book Encyclopedias and the companion Childcraft Library.  I come from a family of 5, with one bathroom; so, if you wanted to get in the shower at a reasonable time, you had to get there early.  As a result, I was dressed and ate breakfast before everyone else.  I used to kill time, before going to school, by flipping through the encyclopedia volumes, looking for interesting articles.  So, it all wove together.

I can say, I was the only one  in my high school class, when we were doing ACT prep vocabulary tests, who knew what "vulpine" meant, thanks to the X-Men story in the Marvel Super-Heroes prose short-story collection (with and Avengers story, a Hulk and a Daredevil one, as well), which used the word to describe Wolverine's mask.  I went and looked it up, as a result.


Values?  To a certain extent, though by reinforcing those being taught to me.  It certainly did in terms of values beyond my world experience.  The 70s DC comics were filled with PSAs about racial tolerance, as were the comics, which went beyond my experience in an all-white rural school.  That was further reinforced by the socially relevant tv shows of the 70s, like Room 222, the Norman Lear shows, Happy Days, etc...  I think it is more that I grew up in the early 70s, when you got similar messages from several avenues, in the post-Civil Rights era.  At the same time, much of my ideas of justice and fairness were definitely shaped by Superman and Batman stories, as well as other comics.

Vocabulary definitely. I grew up in a non-English-speaking household, and initially had real reading comprehension problems in school. When I started to actually thoroughly read the comics I had, instead of just looking at the pictures and skimming over the text, my reading skills shot through the roof and I went from being one of the worst readers, and spellers, in my class to the best. And I learned tons of new words. Also, comics led me to becoming a voracious reader of 'normal' books as well.

Values - yes, they definitely played a role here, too, mixed in with what I was getting from my parents and the nuns at school (some of the lessons picked up from the latter were eventually discarded by the time I got to my teens, of course). Similar to codystarbuck, I grew up in a rather rural, conservative and mostly white area, so any comics that dealt with racial issues and tolerance in general were real eye-openers. Specifically, I recall that when I read McGregor's (often unfairly maligned) Black Panther v. the Klan story in Jungle Action, the issue of terrorism against minorities really hit me; the same can be said of the times the Holocaust came up in various comics, esp. the X-men. More than any of the bland ways these topics were discussed in school textbooks, it made me want to learn more, and check books on those topics out of the library.

Quoted for the absolute truth.

Yeah, I would say comics helped with my vocabulary. My mother always encouraged my reading (as weekly trips to the local library would testify to) so she never saw comics as any of kind of detriment on my development. I think it also helped with spelling too. I learned fast to ask for a sentence in school spelling quizzes/contests. For you never know if they are meaning 'there' or 'their'.

As for values, I'm sure they did to some degree but as others have said, it's hard to discern which from other pop cultural influences such as TV and movies. Superman, Spider-Man, etc have about as much influence as James T. Kirk and Yoda in that regard. 

I had to do the same thing on the books that you've mentioned and that's brought memories as well. I totally forgot about until I read your post and that's the cool things about comics that really makes you wonder about the words that they used in their storylines and all. Thanks for sharing that and jarring my memories here and there.

Right, yeah.  It's a moral fable about what it means to do the right thing?  That is endlessly fascinating and (I'd wager) requires quite a bit more skills and self reflection to write than, say, Deadpool.  

This thread has certainly helped crystalize in my brain why I hate the grim 'n gritty '90s.  

As a french man, comics and table top role playing game rule books were my first exposure to the english language apart from the Beatles and Louis Amstrong... I would say that comics influenced my language mostly on the swearing side of things, especially because of 2000 AD and its childish analogues to curse words I still to this day surprise myself using. Reading comic books made me some kind of linguistic boy scout.

As for values, I had already been exposed enough to the likes of Sartre, Voltaire, Hugo, Rousseau and the bible to have a good enough idea of what was an honest man and a hypocrite (or worse), and most of the shdes of grey in between. I would say that a few comics may very well have influenced my morals and inhibitions though, namely the books from Crumb, Spiegleman and Sandman from Gaiman.