You can read a dozen different textbooks or how-to manuals that will tell you the basic rules of what makes a story - a beginning, a middle, and an end.
I was a very sickly kid. While I was in the hospital at age 7, my Dad brought me a stack of comic books to keep me occupied. I was hooked.
The curse of comic book adaptations, when I was younger, was that the director or producer would go, "Don't worry about it, it's just a comic book."
I think jazz and comic books are probably the two uniquely American art forms.