Regardless of the adult readership, comic books have primarily been viewed as material for children; but not all children, mostly young boys. Young girls would soon be added to the mix. With the introduction of titles featuring more mature stories, comics began to catch on with more adults. A lot of people in society that don’t read comic books have operated under the assumption that comics are for kids and anyone older reading them must be immature. This misconception held by many people caused them to ridicule readers for being entertained by something they could not or did not want to understand.

Looking at the comics that tend to get the most publicity or news attention, quite a few of them carry teen ratings or are marketed to people who are at least in their teens. Unfortunately for younger readers, many of these titles star many popular characters. Some of the more popular superheroes for example are Spider-Man and Batman. But even both of these characters have several books with more family friendly tales.

There are many titles available for kids to take off the shelves. Marvel Comics and DC Comics as the two largest publishing companies have a solid line-up of comics aimed directly at children. One of Marvel Comics popular titles aimed at kids is Marvel Super Hero Squad. This series is based on the hit cartoon featuring many of the publisher’s popular characters in super-deformed style. Some of DC’s titles that children can readily pick up are Batman: the Brave and the Bold and Tiny Titans. The latter of which features a cute rendition of the popular teenage superhero team.

Of course the “Big Two” are not the only ones publishing kid friendly comic books. Archie Comics and Boom Studios both publish a healthy selection of titles geared at children. The former is a longstanding publisher known for producing very easygoing stories for younger readers. Boom in recent times has taken over for putting out the comics based on Disney properties.

If your child wants to read comics, your local comic shop will usually have a good selection of children's titles easily accessible to them. For parents who want to monitor what their children read, many comics have ratings on or around the bar code for easy recognition. Ratings for comics have undergone various changes over the years. But that is a story for another time.