Everything you know - or don't know :) about comics and manga Part I
When I was growing up, comics were not popular in my country. I grew up on the adventures of Max and Moritz + the home edition of the comic and satirical strips from the newspaper. It took decades between my childhood and adulthood before I discovered graphic novels and saw the world of panels and speech bubbles again in different colors :)
The history of comics has taken different paths in different parts of the world. It can be traced back to early antecedents such as Trajan's Column in Rome, Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Bayeux Tapestry. Early narratives in art All these examples use sequential images to convey a narrative. In other words, they are ways of telling a story using images or drawings instead of words.
In Comics, if that's how we can define them as such before the 1900s (a source of early printed information), focused on religious themes, with densely illustrated versions of the Bible as a widespread medium that combined many images with text to convey Christian teachings to the illiterate.
The forerunners of comic books, cartoons have been popular in England and America since the early 1800s and originated as satirical and political cartoons printed in newspapers and periodicals. In the 17th and 18th centuries, printed works began to solve aspects of political and social life, as well as to satirize and caricature.
Rodolphe Töpffer’s Page, whose work is considered influential in shaping the form of comics.
Published in 1826, The Glasgow Looking Glass, was probably the first comic magazine. A satirical publication, later known as The Northern Looking Glass, illuminated the fashion and politics of the time. It contained most of the elements that make up the modern comic, including captioned images depicting a continuous narrative, often told in parts, and the use of speech bubbles, satire, and caricature.
Published in 1897 book, The Yellow Kid in McFadden's Flats, is considered to be the first comic book to the extent that it featured the phrase "comics" on the back cover.
The first weekly comic was Allie Sloper's Half Holiday, which debuted in the British humor magazine Judy in 1867, created by C.H. Ross and illustrated by his French wife Emilie de Tessier. Eight pages long and printed in black and white tabloid size. The magazine was popular among the working class, where it enjoyed good sales circulation.
By the middle of the 20th century, comics were flourished, especially in the United States in 1938, publishers were printing original material in the new format. It was at this point that Action Comics #1 was launched with Superman as the cover feature. The hero's popularity quickly established superhero comics as the defining genre of American comic books.
Today, the most popular comics sell around 100,000 copies a month, in the early 1940s Superman, Batman and Captain Marvel titles regularly sold 1.5 million copies per month :)
The modern dual use of the term comics as an adjective, describing a genre and a noun that refers to an entire medium, has been criticized as confusing and misleading.
After sales peaked in the early 1950s, the content of comic books (especially crime and horror) was subjected to scrutiny from parent groups and government agencies, culminating in Senate hearings that led to the creation of the self-censorship body of the Comic Book Code Authority. In 1954, psychiatrist Fredric Wertham wrote in his bestseller "The Seduction of the Innocents," that comic books of all kinds were corrupting America's youth. Wertham claimed that Superman represented fascist ideals, Batman and Robin promoted homosexual lifestyle, and Wonder Woman was a lesbian with a fixation. Members of Congress were so excited that they called Wertham to testify before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency.
The Comics Code sets several requirements for comic books:
- "In every case, good will triumph over evil..."
- "If a crime is depicted, it is as a trivial and unpleasant act."
- "Females should be drawn realistically without exaggerating any physical characteristics."
- "... vampires and vampirism, cannibalism and werewolfism are forbidden."
In 1971, the Comics Code Authority relaxed some standards, stating: "Vampires, ghosts, and werewolves are permitted to be used if handled in accordance with classical traditions..." This concession allowed the return of the horror comic genre.
Underground comics in the late 1960s and early 1970s challenged the code. Underground created the alternative comics movement, that published comics for adults with a different type of superheroes :)
The Adventures of Tintin, with its distinctive clean-lined style, was first published in newspaper comic supplements, becoming an icon of French and Belgian comics. At the time, comics were considered infantile and a threat to culture and literacy; critics pointed out that "none of them withstands the slightest serious analysis" and that comics were "a sabotage of all art and all literature"
It was not until the 1960s that the term bandes dessinées ("drawn strips") began to be widely used in French to refer to the medium of this genre. Cartoonists began creating comics for mature audiences, and the term "ninth art" was coined as comics as an art form began to attract the attention of the public and academic critics.
A group including René Goscini and Albert Uderzo founded the magazine Pilote in 1959 to give artists more freedom over their work. It featured the adventures of Goscinny and Uderzo Asterix, which became the best-selling French-language comic series.
However, even today comics were still stigmatized because the medium was seen as entertainment for children and the illiterate :(
The popularity of comics received another boost when the United States introduced the comics scholarship in the 1980s. A couple of writers who did really good work with superheroes were Frank Miller and Alan Moore. Thanks to the Internet, artists and authors now can publish their works without the need to involve a third party. This means that costs can be kept very low. Nowadays, there are even hosting providers specifically dedicated for content creators or webcomics.
Some well-known comics awards, such as the Eisner Awards and the Eagle Awards, now have categories for digital comics.
Although comics are often the work of a single creator, the work is often divided among several specialists. There may be separate writers and artists, and artists may specialize in parts of the artwork, such as characters or backgrounds. A comic can be split between a penciller who pencils the artwork; an inker who completes an artwork with ink; colorist and letterer who adds captions and speech bubbles.
For 100 years, the comics industry has remained relevant by maintaining a strong connection with its fan base.
