A Brief History of Comics

Examples of proto-comics: Earliest type of storytelling using sequential art:

400th to 320th Century BD, Cave Paintings: The earliest European cave paintings date to the
Aurignacian, some 32K to 40K years ago. The oldest known example of figurative art, Venus
of Hohle Fels, comes from this culture. It was discovered in September 2008 in a cave at
Schelklingen in Baden-Wrttemberg
in southern Germany. The purpose of
the Paleolithic cave paintings is not
known. The evidence suggests that
they were not merely decorations of
living areas since the caves in which
they have been found do not have
signs of ongoing habitation. Also,
they are often in areas of caves that
are not easily accessed. Some
theories hold that they may have
been a way of communicating with
others, while other theories ascribe
them a religious or ceremonial purpose. Another one of the oldest known cave art is that of
Chauvet-Pont-dArc, France dated 36K years old, to Upper Paleolithic Age. Also in France,
Lascaux Cave contains several fauna depictions dated back to 19K years.

Furthermore, hand print marks placed by

use of pigments onto cave walls were
discovered in Leang Timpuseng Cave,
Selebes Island, Indonesia dated back to
40K years ago, and Santa Cruz, Cueava de
Las Manos Cave, Argentina, dated back to
36K years ago, in two very distant
geographical locations, also belonging to
Upper Paleolithic era. Many animal
depictions in Apollo 11 Cave, Namibia dated
to 27K years ago are another example of
homo sapiens thinking in abstract terms yet
in another corner of the world.
A 15 cm. in diameter cup made out of the
shell of an abalone and other artifactsused to prepare paint out of pigments to be
applied as body or object ornament were
discovered in Blombos Cave, South Africa,
dated to 100K years ago. Some argue that
our first narratives surfaced as far back
as 265K years ago, based on the discovery
of Berekhat Ram Venus, found in Israel:

2nd Century AD: Trajans Column (Italian: Colonna Traiana): It is a Roman triumphal column in
Rome, Italy, which commemorates Roman emperor Trajan's victory in the Dacian Wars. It
was probably constructed under the supervision of the architect Apollodorus of Damascus at
the order of the Roman Senate. It is located in Trajan's Forum, built near the Quirinal Hill,
north of the Roman Forum. Completed in AD 113, the free-standing column is most famous
for its spiral base relief that artistically describes the epic wars between the Romans
and Dacians (101102 & 105
106). Its design has inspired
numerous victory columns, both
ancient and modern. The
structure is about 30 m. in
height, 35 m. including its
large pedestal The shaft is
made from a series of 20
colossal Carrara marble drums,
each weighing about 32 tons,
with a diameter of 370 cm. The
190 m. frieze winds around the shaft 23 times. Inside the shaft, a spiral staircase of 185
stairs provides access to a viewing platform at the top. The capital block of Trajan's Column
weighs 53.3 tons which had to be lifted to a height of 34 m. Ancient coins indicate
preliminary plans to top the column with a statue of a bird, probably an eagle, but after
construction a statue of Trajan was put in place; this statue disappeared in the Middle
Ages. On December 4, 1587, the top was crowned by Pope Sixtus V with a bronze figure

11th Century AD, The Bayeux Tapestry (French: Tapisserie de Bayeux; Norman : La Telle
Du Conquest): It is an embroidered cloth -not an actual tapestry- nearly 70 m. long, which
depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England concerning William, Duke of
Normandy and Harold, Earl of Wessex, later King of England, and culminating in the Battle
of Hastings. The tapestry
consists of some fifty scenes
with Latin Tituli (captions as
we would call today in comics
vocabulary), embroidered on
linen with colored woollen
yarns. It is likely that it was
commissioned by Bishop Odo,
William's half-brother, and
made in England in the 1070s.
In 1729, the hanging was rediscovered by scholars at a
time when it was being
displayed annually in Bayeux
Cathedral. The tapestry is now
exhibited at Muse de la
Tapisserie de Bayeux in
Bayeux, Normandy, France.

14th Century AD, The Codex Zouche-Nuttall: It is an accordion-folded pre-Columbian piece

of Mixtec writing, now in the British Museum (Add.Mss.39671). It is one of three codices
that record the genealogies, alliances and conquests of several 11th & 12th century rulers of
a small Mixtec city-state in highland Oaxaca, Tilantongo kingdom, under the leadership of
the warrior Lord 8 Deer Jaguar Claw who died early 12th century at the age of 52.

The codex probably reached Spain in the 16th century. It was first identified at the
Monastery of San Marco, Florence, in 1854 and was sold in 1859. A facsimile was published
while it was in the collection of Robert Nathaniel Cecil George Curzon, Lord Zouche of
Haryngworth by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard in 1902, with
an introduction by Zelia Nuttall (18571933). The British Museum acquired it in 1917.

18th Century, AD: William Hogarth (10 November 1697 26 October 1764) was an
English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has
been credited with pioneering western sequential
art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture
to comic strip-like series of pictures called
"modern moral subjects". Knowledge of his work is
so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in
this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian."
He completed and displayed two distinct series of
paintings consisting of a sequential art in the 18th
century; these usually are accepted as the
earliest examples of a story telling using a
sequence of images arranged in deliberate order
and juxtaposed to convey a story: First one was
A Harlots Progress composed of six scenes (paintings) and the second one was its sequel
A Rakes Progress composed of eight scenes
(paintings), in 1731 and 1735 consecutively
There were cartoons and illustrations in newspapers
and pamphlets in the early 19th century and even
some precursors to comic strips, in the sense of
"sequential art", such as Dr. Syntax by Thomas
Rowlandson in 1812, William Heaths caricatures,
political cartoons and Monsieur Vieux Bois by

19th Century, AD: Rodolphe Tpffer (31 January 1799 - 8 June 1846) was Swiss teacher,
author, painter, cartoonist and caricature artist. He is also considered to be the modern
comics creator. He was born in Geneva to Adam-Wolfgang Tpffer (20 May 1766 - 10
August 1847). His father was a professional painter and occasional caricature artist. The
elder Tpffer's main claim to fame
is serving from 1804 to 1807 as
"Drawing Master" of Josphine,
Empress-consort of the First French
Empire. He sought an education in
Paris, France from 1819 to 1820.
Then, he returned to Geneva where
he found employment as a school
teacher. By 1823, he was able to
establish his own boarding school for
boys. In 1832, he was appointed
professor of Literature at
the University of Geneva. Relatively
successful in his chosen profession,
Rodolphe would gain his fame from
the activities he pursued in his spare
time. He depicted a number of local landscapes in paintings considered influenced by the
contemporary movement of Romanticism. He became an author of short stories and
occasionally entertained his students by drawing caricatures. The latter two of his activities

The first of them, Histoire de Monsieur Vieux Bois, was completed by 1827 but not
published until 1837. It was consisted of 30 pages, each containing one to six drawn panels
with a caption of narration just below the drawings. It was translated and re-published in
the USA in 1842 as The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck.

Tpffer's stories were produced by autography, a variation of lithography, that allowed him
to draw on a specially prepared paper with a pen. This process allowed for a loose line,
quicker and freer than engraving, the usual process for printed illustration at the time.

Another one worth mentioning here as an

example would be Charles Ross Ally
Sloper in Britain in 1867: A onepage/seven-panel comic strip in the
contemporary sense has been introduced in
Judy which was a two-penny magazine
introduced as a rival to the three-penny
satirical magazine Punch both of which
were aimed for lower-class, lower-income
readers that included women and children.
Ironically, starting with 1869, Ally
Sloper was drawn by Ross wife Emilie de
Tessier who used a pen name Marie Duval,
signing her work as MD. This strip
introduced and Ally Sloper and Isaac
Moses (Iky Mo) who can be seen as the
Victorian-era frontrunners of the double
-act comedy such as Abott and Costello,
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, etc. The
strip played heavily on the caricutarized
and stereotypical representation of its
cartoon characters. Also, it was possibly
the first paperback compilation of a comic

20th Century: Frans Masereel (31 July 1889 3 January 1972) was a Flemish painter and
graphic artist who worked mainly in France. He is especially known for his woodcut printings.
His greatest work is generally said to be the wordless graphic novel published under the
title Mon Livre d'Heures (translated to English as The Passionate Journey) that is
composed of 165 woodcut pieces. He completed over 20 other wordless novels in his career.
Masereel's woodcuts strongly influenced the works of Lynd Ward and later graphic artists &
illustrators such as Clifford Harper and Eric Drooker.

There is now a Frans Masereel Centre (Frans Masereel Centrum for Graphix) in the small
village of Kasterlee in Belgium.

Max Ernst (2 April 1891 1 April 1976) was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist
and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement
and Surrealism. His collage work of A Week of Kindness was another exquisite example of
storytelling in the form of sequential art: The 184 collages of Une Semaine De Bont were
created during the summer of 1933
while Max Ernst was staying in Vigoleno,
Italy. The artist took his inspiration
from wood engravings, published in
popular illustrated novels, natural
science journals and 19th century sales
catalogues. He cut out the images that
interested him with infinite care and
assembled them with such precision as
to bring his collage technique to a level
of incomparable perfection. Without
seeing the original illustrations, it is
difficult to figure out exactly where
Max Ernst intervened. In the completed
work, each collage forms a series of
inter-linked images to produce
extraordinary creatures which evolve in
fascinating scenarios and create
visionary worlds defying comprehension

Lynd Kendall Ward (26 June 1905 28 June 1985) was an American artist and a graphic
story-teller, the son of a Methodist minister and prominent political organizer Harry F.
Ward. He illustrated more than 200 juvenile and adult books. Ward was best known for
his wood engravings and is considered one of the founders of the modern comics, if not
modern American graphic novel, but he also worked in watercolor, oil, brush and ink,
lithography and mezzotint.

Right at the turn of the 19th century, a technological advancement played a huge role in the
future of graphic storytelling: Color printing Comic strips in newspapers were made possible
by other improvements in printing, but especially in the print of colored drawings: That
breakthrough happened in 1894 with the invention of the Hoe Color Press; a printing
machine that allowed for the creation
of color supplements. For comics, this
meant a vehicle for attracting greater
leadership by such newspapers as
Pulitzer and Hearst in major cities. At
one point, strips became so important
that this medium has become a war
zone as these two publishing companies
literally started to steal artists from
each other back and forth. This
printing press made it possible to
generate a more vivid yellow color and
in turn this led to the characterization
of a rascal immigrant boy in 1895, which was the first Sunday supplement newspaper cartoon
by Richard F. Outcault and the subject of the new cartoon: The Yellow Kid. It was published
under the name of Hogans Alley as a single panel comic strip in Pulitzers The New York
World. It playfully mocked the odd slang and dialect of the slum kids, of whom the Yellow
Kid was one, and their adventures. Getting a more vivid color, such as yellow, was a shift in

First in Pulitzer and then in Hearst newspapers, this strip also gave rise to a related term,
"yellow journalism. It was because the newspapers in that era were sometimes creatively
muckraking in a positive direction but also they were willing to engage in a kind of distortion
of the facts that served the political preferences and interests of the publishers.
Today it might be considered to be more like the kind of tabloid journalism in which the
facts are not always checked at their source or even distorted to serve a subjective goal.

In the ensuing decade, a variety of comic strips were created. Some of these involved
rather skilled feats of artistry and composition. Lionel Feininger has more recently had his
cartoons revived in books that speak about his near-surrealistic approach. Circa 1906:

Another artist, Rudolph Dirk, drew the character "Happy Hooligan that was about the
rebellious twin brothers Hans and Fritz. His cartoon which has started in 1902 also includes
characters you might recognize: The Katzenjammer Kids.

Also around 1906, Windsor McKay began to produce his series of amazing, surrealistic
comics. One was called "Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend", featuring another kind of surrealistic
expression of the dream-world; also there was an ongoing adventure, quite elaborate, of a
little boy named Nemo in his dream-life: "Little Nemo in Slumberland".
Historians of art have
declared that McKays
and some of his
contemporaries such as
George Herrimans
Krazy Kat art are as
worthy of respect and
consideration as any
fine-art work of many
other artists whose
paintings and drawings
have been traditionally
placed in that more
refined arena, i.e.,
high-art

George Herrimans Krazy Kat came in 1913. The history of comic strip is extensive and
these meant to give you just a taste. Suffice it to say that many characters were developed
and there are many books now about the history of comic strips.

In 1920s, pornographic strip collections Tijuana Bibles

were produced that illegally used copyrighted popular comic
strip characters in lurid sex adventures. Typically eight
pages long, the print was cheap and B&W. Their popularity
peaked during the great depression and declined rapidly
after photographic pornography became dominant in the 50s.
They were an important influence for the Underground
Commix movement of the 60s.

Another development in the 1920s was the emergence of pulp fiction, an extension of the
"penny-dreadful" from several decades earlier in England, and the "dime novel" in the United
States. These were prose with illustrations being mainly on the front covers. If there were
illustrations in the pages, Illustrated Novels was one of the terms used to describe these
type of books among several others. Adventure stories, horror, science-fiction, etc. all
evoked the thrills of the movies and the fantasy. The Amazing Stories at the lower left
issue of the picture in the middle featured one of Buck Rogers' adventures. In 1929, Buck
Rogers was made into a comic strip.

Many comic strips would

follow in the Golden
Age: Blondie drawn by
Chic Young and Mickey
Mouse by Floyd
Gottfredson debuted as
a comic strip (1930),
Dick Tracy by Chester
Gould (1931), Lil Abner
by Al Kapp, Flash
Gordon by Alex
Raymond, Terry and
the Pirates by Milton
Caniff (1934) followed
with Mandrake (1934)
and Phantom (1936) by
Lee Falk, Sheena the
Queen of Jungle by
Will Eisner & S.M.
Iger, Prince Valiant by
Hal Foster while Donald
Duck by Carl Barks
(1937), Spirou by

The Golden Age led the next step into the comic book. People would save and read their
comic strips again and again. In 1933, Max Gaines, who was arguably the inventor of the
idea of the comic book, was working for Eastman Color Printing Company and it occurred to
him to compile comic strips into a booklet format, tabloid-sized anthologies, initially to be
distributed to businesses to give away as premiums. Later he started to sell these @ 10
each at newspaper stands. He was the father of Bill Gaines who later became the publisher
of the EC comics that was one of the centers of the controversy over comic books and also
one of the founders of MAD comics and later MAD magazine. One example of those comic
books was Funnies on Parade which was compiled and given away as premiums by
Wheatena, a hot cereal brand. It proved very successful, so it was followed by another
compilation, called Famous Funnies. Max tried selling them at newsstands and found out
that they sold well.

Then, he convinced Dell Publishing to release Popular Comics, which featured the first
comic book appearances of various newspaper comic strips,
including Gasoline Alley, Dick Tracy, Terry and the
Pirates and Little Orphan Annie, among others that also
included many of the comics presented earlier The next
idea was the development of the superhero: Jerry Siegel
and Joe Shuster had been working up a number of comics
characters since 1934, including the one which evolved into
Superman.
Finally,
DC
Comics,
one of the
major
publishing
houses, picked it up and featured him
in 1938 in Action Comics; a mint condition
of this first comic sold for about $314,000
in 2001 and for a few millions again in
2011. (We will come back to that topic
later: Comics as collectibles) There were
a good deal of business dealings back and
forth in the form of hiring and stealing talents and artists from each other among the

These practices and the fast growing interest to comic books among teenagers led to a new
series of superheroes that followed soon thereafter: Batman and Robin was published
around 1939, Captain Marvel and Green Lantern came out in 1940.

Captain America and all the rest began to fight not only crime but, during the 2nd World
War, they fought against the Nazis and the Japanese military, spies and other nefarious
influences. A psychologist suggested that a woman superhero would be empowering for many
women who were becoming increasingly involved in the
war effort and Wonder Woman began in 1942. One
thing that was great about these guys is that they
took on Hitler in his lair. Stalin got his butt kicked,
too, in the beginning, until he became an ally of the
U.S.A. During the era, comics began to be produced
in great numbers fueled by war stories and necessary
war propaganda.

In 1941, Albert Lewis Canter created Classics Illustrated series that adapted the
important works of literature into comics form which were very successful in sales @ 15 to
25 each although their educational merit was, as it is today, debatable.

Radio had become mainstream: Kids gathered around the

radio to hear the Adventures of Superman and also other
crime fighters, such as Gang Busters, The FBI in Peace
and War and many other programs.

Later during the 2nd World War, the comics appealed also to
teens and many servicemen, many of whom were not only
young but also bored.

The government realized that sequential art, i.e., comics, offered useful ways to
communicating practical information to a wider range of people. Thus, information books were
issued in comic book format during and after the war.

But the war

being over,
the medium
required a new
bunch of
villains. For
example, Supe
rman found
himself dealing
with new
characters
such as an
elf-like fellow
from another
dimension, Mr.
Mxyzptlk (see
the first cover
below). Other
publishers
began to
publish Western comics such as Jesse James and The Lone Ranger or detective stories such
as Rip Kirby by Alex Raymond; Italian comics started Tex Willer by Gian Luigi Boneli &
Aurelio Galleppini, also in France Lucky Luke by Morris made its first appearence along with

However, comic books were not seen by everyone as harmless. There had been voices raised
by editors of newspapers such as Sterling North since 1940 that these stories were bad for
kids' minds and were harming the good family values that the parents were trying to instill
in them. Two developments increased this controversy: The emergence of more flagrantly
brutal crime comics and the beginnings of horror comics. Not that there weren't prevalent
trends for both these developments: Crime stories had been around for centuries and
certainly became more prevalent in the 1920s. On the radio and in movies, the theme had
been explored at length. There were vigilante crime fighter shows such as The Shadow
which initially was a radio show to boost the sales of Detective Story Magazine, a pulp
magazine, and others Horror comics hadn't really gotten gruesome but their roots were in
the fascination with the morbid and the scary. Again, present for over a century in the
mainstream literature, from the early Frankenstein story told by Mary Shelley to the
writings of Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce in the 19th century, these themes were
prevalent and accepted as literary works of
prose. During the 1940s, Charles Addams,
the cartoonist featured in the sophisticated
New Yorker magazine, made his weird
family rather popular and in the 1960s, it
became the source of a television program,
The Addams Family, followed by some
movies and also with several knockoffs, such
as "The Munsters" Movies in the 1940s
also featured Dracula, Frankenstein's

Crime comics began to push the edges: The women were depicted frequently bound, with
dress torn, vaguely implying sadistic sexuality in the sense that although lip service was given
to how the villains lose in the end, it seems often that
they get away with a lot and have fun being aggressive
before they're captured or done in. They accounted for
as many as one out of seven comics published. Other
comics were a mix.
There were also Disney
characters, the teen
adventures of Archie, et
al, aimed clearly at
children.
There was also comic
gruesomeness; the contest of very popular Lil' Abner"
comic strip: When
the characters
had a contest for
the picture of the
ugliest woman in the world, many people submitted
drawings. The winner was "Lena the Hyena": The
artist Basil Wolverton won and drew similar pictures
later in MAD magazine as horrendous as Lena,

EC Comics
Let's begin by remembering that Max Gaines was one of the key (if not the key) founder
of the idea of the comic book in the U.S.A. around the 1930s. He had then a variety of
ups & downs with various other publishers and businessmen and in the early 1940s, he was
publishing a few comic books that were relatively wholesome.
In 1947, he
died in a
freaky
boating
accident
and left his
comic book
business to
his son,
William "Bill
" Gaines,
then 22
years-old.
Bill hadn't really planned to go into the business but, under the circumstances, he tried to
make a go at it. In fact, while there were some back issues of Max Gaines' "Picture Stories
from the Bible" and such, those comics weren't being produced any longer.

Instead, Bill and his staff tried out a

new line of what had become trendy in
the late 1940s such as western,
romance and crime comics, as well as
funny comics. EC at that time stood
for "Educational Comics". Alas, these
measures did not suffice to make the
business an economically viable
enterprise. Bill Gaines joined with Al
Feldstein as managing editor and
finished with EC's 1948-49 fare and
embarked on a new EC line, the one
that would make them both infamous
and famous at the same time. This line
included three horror comics, a couple
of shock and crime comics and two
science-fiction comics. Then they
changed the meaning of the comic book
line so that EC meant "Entertaining
Comics." Later, they hired the comic artist Harvey Kurtzman to edit two war comics and
added them to their repertoire. They also hired very good artists, let them sign their name
under their work which was rarely done in the comic book world back then, treated and paid
them reasonably well, compared to the standards of the era. As a result, the artists did

What is Horrible?
The horror and crime comics seemed in line with how people were feeling at the time. It
probably didn't seem half as horrible as what was coming into the consciousness of the
people: The reality of the world, stories of the Soviet Gulags, the growing awareness of the
reality of the Holocaust and then there was the Bomb. If the threat of Nuclear
Annihilation isn't horror, what was? Duck & Cover" exercises were required in all schools.

Meanwhile, there were scary shows on the radio: The Shadow, Twilight Zone and so
forth And yet there were also forces that were trying to put a lid on it and of course
there always have been such forces. Still, it was the ripe time for a major scandal, to
worry about "juvenile delinquency." Marlon Brando's role as the leader of the pack of
motorcycle riders and rowdies in The Wild One was reinforced with James Dean's movies.
Remember, if you can, early rock & roll songs that romanticized this alienated youth image.

The political scene fed this hysteria: It was the era of Joe McCarthy and the communist
witch-hunt, of the loyalty oaths, of many people trying to comply with the governments
pressure and keeping their heads low in the face of entertainment industry "black-lists" to
be able to keep making a living.

Historians of comic books have agreed that the artists and creators of that era were an
especially able bunch.

For example, there was Wally Wood, whose detailed drawings you'll see below in some of
the historical war stories. Jack Davis' work was also impressive. Here are the two war
comics added to the line in 1951 with Harvey Kurtzman as the editor. In the middle, with
the tank, is the July 1952 issue of Two-Fisted Tales, featuring articles not only about
tank warfare in Korea and the battle for Saipan in 2nd World War, but also one on the
battle for Pell's Point on what is now Manhattan Island and Washington's strategic retreat
that kept his army intact.

Also in this same issue is a piece on the Alamo (see above picture on the right), as told
through the eyes of a Mexican foot-soldier. These shifts in perspective made these comics
fascinating and mind-expanding.

In this story about the Revolutionary War naval hero, John Paul Jones, the research turned
up interesting stuff:

It turns out that the EC staff were inclined to do a fair amount of research to ensure a
degree of accuracy in their pictures. In these comics, there were special issues on a variety
of historical events, from the Civil War to other ancient battles.
These comics greatly enhanced peoples interest in history.

EC was unusual in running solid stories. For example, they included comic book story length
treatments (eight pages) on a number of the stories from the acknowledged pioneer of
fantasy and science-fiction, Ray Bradbury.

Many of the EC Comics were fairly simplistic bits of horror and crime and perhaps qualified
for kids stuff. But they didn't make normal children and adolescents want to go out and do
horrible things; on the contrary, they could vicariously blow off a bit of steam by reading
those comics. This is one of the functions of what psychoanalysts call the defense
mechanism of sublimation.
EC Comics also often presented issues that were thought-provoking and controversial. In one
sequence, in "The Guilty", when a sheriff feels compelled to find a killer, he arrests and
coerces a black man simply passing through town by chance into confessing the crime. Then
setting up a phony event in which he tricks the accused run for it and shoots him. Later, it
becomes apparent that this poor guy was innocent. While it was taboo back then to consider
that sometimes police were corrupt, innumerable events in the last several decades showed
this practice to have been more pervasive than anyone wanted to admit back then

Other topics addressed by EC Comics included anti-semitism by running story lines like an
anti-semite who discovers that he was adopted and his original parents were Jewish, other
kinds of prejudice prevalent in the society and so forth. In some of the war comics, instead
of simply presenting the Americans as heroic good guys, which it did in many cases, there
was some balance: War was often confusing for the troops on the ground and this was true
for those fighting on either side. EC took some of the glamour out of war: In a story about
the Atom Bomb, it looked at the tragedy from the viewpoint of the civilians living in
Nagasaki (In Kawasakas autobiography, Barefoot Gen, we will consider this subject matter in
depth). This was aside from whether or not it was wise to drop the Bomb. It just raised
consciousness about what all that meant. In one of the EC comics' science fiction stories, a
monster appears: a mixture of Godzilla, Thing, and King Kong; not really intentionally
destructive at first, still, it is perceived as such and is harassed by humans as a threat,
finally they kill it. Later, some adventurers explore the island and find out that it is an alien
life form. These moral twists and turns were typical for these comics.

One more example about the overzealous and self-righteous behavior of the people of that
time who were swept by nationalistic pride: During an Independence Day parade, a guy
standing and watching the troops seems to be smirking and doesn't take off his hat when
the flag goes by He's beaten and killed by the mob; read the last word balloon:

MAD Comics
In 1952, Harvey Kurtzman was assigned as editor for a new approach to create a comics
that would poke fun at the various kinds of stories, advertisements, movies and even the
contents of other EC comics. The first story appeared was a play on the horror comic. MAD
was remarkably successful and indeed it was the only one transformed into a magazine in
1955, only to survive in the aftermath of the comics controversy, congressional hearings and
the comics code events of the era of 1952 through 1955.

These comics were successful enough to have spawned knockoffs by other publishers, such as
these below:

Indeed, EC Comics was impressed enough with its sales to start yet
another comic book with this same general format; Panic.

The Horror and Crime Comics

For all of the positives, there were also negatives that were leading EC and the whole comics
industry into a huge controversy. Indeed, some of the EC artists themselves felt
uncomfortable with the edginess, in the sense of provocative gruesomeness, of some of the
crime and horror comics. Not that EC was by any means alone in this approach. There were
many other comic book publishers delving into the same lurid genre. Let's say on behalf of
the EC comics that their line carried a level of self-mockery, lightness, and sly self-parody.
This post-modernist twist later has become increasingly apparent in the "camp style of
Batman television show in the 1960s, the "Get Smart" spoof on spy adventures around that
same time and so forth The Addams family with its over-the-top morbidity was another
example of this genre.

In some of the EC Horror comics, the traditional Grimm's fairy tales were offered a
different treatment as a "grim" fairy tale in which there might be surprise endings, such as
the one about why sleeping beauty was sleeping and what happens when she wakes up
In an
another
"grim"
fairy
tale in
a
horror
comics,
the
artists
can be
seen to
partake
of the
kind of
satire
that
would be more common in MAD comics. Here are the Seven Dwarves, all their names a play
on the actual Disney characters, Sourpuss, Dentis, Shyly, Coughy, Tired, Crazy and Stupid;
the last being a caricature of Arnold Stang, an american comic actor

The point was that EC artists weren't revealing in true and pure horror so much as playing
with it and somewhat neutralizing it, the way more recent movies like "Monsters, Inc." make
monsters who, by definition, are monstrous- into not-so-scary, funny and cute beings.
Nevertheless, concerned parents, librarians, teachers and others found the horror and crime
comics of EC and other publishers very offensive. Letters were written to congressional
representatives, pressure groups were
organizing comic book burnings. Local
law-enforcement agencies were seeking
ways to keep this stuff out of the hands
of the kids and teens. Editorials in
newspapers were also expressing shock
at the negativity of these images and
their implications on young minds.

All of these led to the escalation of the

controversy and in its final stages much
centered on Dr. Fredric Wertham and
his opinions. Raised in Berlin, he became
a physician (M.D.) and then specialized in psychiatry. He studied in Europe and then came to
the United States in the late 1920s. Changing his name from Friederich Wertheimer, he was
able to better assimilate but he continued to speak with an accent that some said reminded
them of the character of Doctor Strangelove in the movie by that name. Peter Sellers
might have based this character on a composite however the resemblance in terms of speech

Actually, Wertham was a pretty middle-of-the-road fellow,

on the liberal side on many issues, well-trained for its time.
He had done good work on the study of brain damage and
was getting involved in criminology. He even opened the
LaFargue Clinic in Harlem for African-Americans, then called
Negroes and became interested in the causes of juvenile
delinquency.

Every delinquent kid he interviewed for his books and articles

read comic books. This is unfortunately a fairly
obvious sampling error because most urban kids and also
many rural kids read comic books. 95% of them didn't turn
into delinquents. But Wertham had a thing about comic
books; he wrote articles and a book in the late 1940s and
1950s about the subject matter.
To the right is an article Wertham wrote in the likes of
Ladies Home Journal, Scouting and Readers' Digest
Perhaps this was also associated with the promotion of a
book that Wertham wrote that came out at the same time.
Basically same argument Pretending to be scholarly, his
work really wasn't.

There were lots of experts and

actual research that did not
support Wertham's bias: There
wasn't much evidence other than
Wertham's own interviews to
support that comic books added
significantly to the problem of
juvenile delinquency. Indeed, it
wasn't that clear that juvenile
delinquency itself had changed all
that much from before comic
books to the mid-1950s. Not
that this stopped him: This was
still an era in which experts
tended to believe their own subjective and biased opinions. Wertham published his articles
and his infamous book, Seduction of the Innocent. Of course, when it came time to hold
congressional hearings on whether comic books were bad for the children and adolescents, it
was politically appropriate and understandable they'd get a big wig, i.e., one known by
virtue of his published works in popular science journals rather than experts who might give
less interesting and more scientifically and academically qualified testimonies. This tendency
to aim for the inflammatory perception of the public by mass-media was noted also by
Deborah Tannen more recently in a book titled "The Argument Culture". It should be noted
that the Kefauver Congressional Hearings were a political response to a brouhaha by a

Also, it must be admitted that by 1953 or so, the various comic book publishers were
pushing the edge of respectability and gradually upping the shock value. This was also
happening in the literature arena: Books like "Lady Chatterly's Lover", Fanny Hill and
Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer had not yet escaped the censor's power as these were all
ruled not obscene" by the Supreme Court in 1959. Playboy was about to publish its first
issue. But people sternly believed that comic books were about little kids and adolescents
and the fact that many adults read
them profusely was still overlooked.
Lets recall Shakespeare's lines
spoken by Marc Antony, the famous
speech at Julius Caesar's funeral:
"...The evil men do lives after them;
the good is oft interred with their
bones". In spite of the many positive
features of the EC comics, horror
and crime comics were going to
do'em in. Estes Kefauver, who had
run for the Presidency in 1952, was
also known as a stern crime fighter
and had held hearings on organized
crime few years before; his
committee met in New York to
investigate comic books.

They had several people testify. No other publisher attended the hearings but Bill Gaines,
against the severe advice of friends who said that he should keep a low profile and let it
blow over, volunteered to speak out against censorship that turned out the mistake of his
life and a doomsday event for the comics in general. The
hearing committee spent most of the day and early
afternoon listening to Dr. Wertham go on and on When
Gaines finally spoke, he was tired of waiting all day and
annoyed. He got flustered when they confronted him with
the alleged sheer tastelessness of many of the covers that
Wertham had objected to in his book. It was a publicity
thing; it satisfied the passions of the do-gooders. At the
end, the committee strongly suggested that the industry
police itself and also develop a comics code, which it did,
that spread the word what the new standards would be
This served the interests of concerned parent groups in
the stores, in the distributors, from churches, PTAs and
others Kids were encouraged to swap bad comics for
good comics. Communities collected comics and trashed
and even burned them! Some tried to protest, saying this
was like the Nazi book burnings, but folks didn't care. The
result was the production of a new "Comics Code": These were sent to drug and grocery
stores, news chains, wherever comic books were sold, placed in libraries and the blue book
explained how to use the yellow book.

Naturally, this situation generated its own set of graphic art: Harvey Kurtzman, the editor
of MAD, showed the artists getting raided (below right). Something must had to be blamed
for the kids not wanting to follow their parents commands, to be good, to maintain "law
and order," to knuckle under authority Well, scapegoating is as old as humanity. Or
maybe one should have had blamed the communists since it was the time of the cold war!

In fact, comic books were losing ground to another medium: Television. So it wasn't just the
Wertham controversy, though some historians are inclined to blame only him for the decline
of the comics. In later years, in his defense, Wertham denied that he was trying to impose
censorship. However,
what did created ECs
demise wasnt the
congressional hearings
or the subsequent and
industrys selfimposed the comics
code but rather the
general conservative
public's outcry that
had come to impact
the distributors. They
returned EC comic
books unopened to the
publisher. This
situation created a
financial impasse for
running a profitable business and eventually EC folded: Nobody would deal with EC in the
aftermath of those events. Finally, surrendering to the pressure, Gaines closed down the
horror and crime comics. He gamely tried a new direction of eight comic books (shown

Still, Gaines tried to get along within the boundaries of the comics code. As a denouement
to his story, three examples of the power of petty bureaucracy are presented below:
Example 1:

In this first instance, a non-EC comic, Plastic Man, had PM's assistant dealing with a villain
who was also a shape-shifter, one who had changed himself into water in the pitcher.

Example 2: In an issue in Panic comic book, the other MAD-like EC comics, they ran a
satire on Clement Moore's well-known poem, A Visit from St. Nick. First of all, remember
that during the mid-1950s, there was some popularity of "sick" humor such as the little
twist of putting a trap under Santa's foot. The artist, Bill Elder, was known for his
little side jokes, too, and these can be found abundantly in this piece:

The Comics Code authorities found the end of this piece objectionable. It wasn't just
bringing up the taboo of divorce but rather a stuffy judge felt the treatment of Saint Nick
was, of all things, sacrilegious! Gaines went along with substituting another panel (rightmost
image at the top) although he was exasperated.

The third example which was the final episode that clinched ECs demise is from Gaines'
science-fiction story. In the future, there's a Galactic Federation, sort of like Star Trek:

The guy in the space suit is the ambassador, sent to find out whether the life form on this
planet is sufficiently advanced in consciousness to be welcome into their "higher" civilization.
This planet is inhabited by robots.
It turns out that there were two kinds: Orange robots and blue robots. The orange ones
were the privileged ones.
It was obviously an analogy to the racial divide in the U.S.A. in the 1950s.
The visit revealed that under the skin, the robots were the same.
At the end of the story, the ambassador tells the robots they're not yet ready because of
this folly of blind prejudice. Leaving, he takes off his helmet and reveals that he is black.

The judge said the last panel was unacceptable. Gaines argued with him that the ambassador
being black was the whole point of the story!
Finally, it penetrated the judge's mind, but in a back-pedaling, the judge said that
showing sweat was not acceptable.
Gaines published the issue anyway and then closed down all publication, except for MAD
comics, which he turned into a magazine and which was in turn not subject to the

In 1955, MAD comic book was changed in format to a black-and-white magazine, thicker,
costing a little more (25). By this time the "Alfred E. Neuman" and his "What? Me
Worry?" face had become almost a logo. MAD Magazine continued its satirical style, poking
fun at movies and other mainstream trends and developed enough of a following among teens
and adults so that it has become an iconic cultural institution. It has kept Bill Gaines'
publishing activities alive for years and made him millions of dollars. So although EC comics
for the most part folded, there's a happy ending for his efforts. J

The Silver Age

The Congressional Hearings and the Comics Code marked the end of the Golden Age of
Comics, so labeled by a variety of comic book historians. Many comics, such as the Disney
Comics, were hardly bothered. Nevertheless, in a rather complex story involving Stan Lee as
publisher and Jack Kirby as a major artist, Marvel Comics and other publishers began to
create new characters and superheroes, but now taking on a few interesting twists:

1. The heroes were more psychologically complex, often embodying some interesting quirks
that affected their general mission. This made it possible to add some twists in the plot.
Remember the character Marty McFly in the Back to the Future movies in the late 1980s,
who, given the benefit of time travel, does well, but also gets in trouble because of his
character flaw, a "counter-phobic neurosis": If challenged as a weakling or frightened, he
feels compelled to engage in just the dangerous action that he is dared or fears, to prove to
himself and others that he's not frightened: Sometimes this backfires, generating more
dramatic tension in the story
2. There was a move more into the cosmic and inter-dimensional concepts, and the theme of
the activities of gods, while not confronting mainline religious beliefs, still inquired about the
vast cosmic potentials dealt with on the grand stage. Some hints of this are abound in
written sci-fi literature and in the Star Trek and other sci-fi series and movies of the 60s
and 70s.
3. There are occasional suggestions that the characters, and henceforth the artists,
acknowledge the existence of the readers as audience and sometimes even joke about
themselves and their medium a little.

The Marvel characters of Kirby have become quite iconic. In this picture of the artist at
work you can glimpse some of his more famous creations, including the Norse god Thor with
his hammer, Aquaman, Spider-Man, the Silver Surfer, and so forth. The Spider-Man story
shown above was made into a movie a few years ago

It is important to note that the cultural response to those story lines were a process of remythologization, an opening to the old mythic dimensions that people follow unconsciously.

The analytical psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung spoke to this aspect of the mind-inculture and the comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell (e.g. Four Functions of Mythology)
helped explain the pervasiveness of this phenomenon. He said: Mythology may, in a real
sense, be defined as other peoples religion. And religion may, in a sense, be understood as
a popular misunderstanding of mythology. in Thou Art That: Transforming Religious
Metaphor.
A number of other cultural trends weave together and we can see mythic elements in so
many aspects of culture, from the series of George Lucas' Star Wars movie series to the
more recent Harry Potter book series
Part of this speaks to a hunger for re-enchantment, a participation in the intuitive,
imaginative, and emotional dimensions of consciousness-raising. The culture, for a century or
more, had perhaps drifted over much towards the valuation of the rational and the
marginalization of the non-rational and trans-rational dimensions and left out the instinctive
nature of the psyche
Part of the psychedelic and hippie revolution fed into and expressed a deeper cultural
expansion of the category of spirituality which differs from mere superficial religiosity.
Religions and pseudo-religions from the East have fertilized the field and what was emerging
was a more inter-spiritual range of phenomena.

Underground Comix Movement

Another emergent cultural stream in the mid to late 1960s was the counter-culture,
centered on the San Franciscos Haight & Ashbury streets intersection. It was a center also
of drugs & hippie culture, near to the Rock concert emporia and its vicinity.

Many of these trends were going on in many other urban centers in the U.S.A. and
overseas. The idea of self-publishing comics that were distinctly non-comic code, nonmainstream became a manifesto of sorts for the followers of this sub-culture. It was the
era of the Vietnam war and the civil rights movement that expanded at the beginning of the
1970s to include racial equality, feminist struggles, gay rights and other liberal ideas. The
comics were flagrantly sexual, lurid, full of outrageous sex acts and transgressive treatment
of the taboo subjects in comics code -if not of the society-, celebrating marijuana and
other paraphernalia of drugs, violent, appealing to the urge to transgress, shock, titillate
and probe the edges of society's norms (of which would seem tame today, given the content
of many forms of expression). They were sold at so-called head shops which offered drug
paraphernalia and therefore offered the perfect audience for
the anti-establishment underground commix movement. From
this culture emerged a number of artists who have become more
recognized in a variety of ways; the two most important icons
are Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman who both turned highly
introspective after the movements inertia died down and created
very important autobiographical comics such as Maus (1986) for
Spiegelman; My Troubles with Women (1992) and R. Crumb
draws the Blues (1993) for Crumb, among other works, during
the Graphic Novel movement. One detail worth mentioning would
be Harvey Kurtzmans efforts to break the common perception of
comics in publics eye just at the beginning of this era with his
Jungle Book, published by Ballantine in 1959, collecting four

Robert Crumb's Zap Comix jumped

into the scene in 1968 and was selling
like hot cakes despite its independent
distribution method of a baby carriage
pushed by him and his wife, Aline.
It featured the first appearance of
Mr. Natural as well as the now-iconic
Keep on Truckin comic strip.

Semi-depressive and perverse worldview

has become more mainline, his cartoons,
sometimes co-drawn with his wife,
appearing in the New Yorker and
other magazines.
Zap Comix included contributions from
S. Clay Wilson, Robert Williams, Spain
Rodriguez, Victor Moscoso and Rick
Griffin, prominent artists of the era

Art Spiegelman was another

underground artist whose
venture into the form of the
graphic novel is Maus: An
exploration of his relationship
with his father, a Holocaust
Survivor, and his telling his
father's stories of the
Holocaust produced a stark,
chilling reminder of the true
horrors that made the horror
comics seem tame. It was
first serialized in the
underground comix magazine,
Raw and then earned a
special Pulitzer Prize in 1992; a recognition that the sequential art might constitute a type
of critically and academically acknowledged field of literature. Spiegelman wrote recently in
a somewhat autobiographical illustrated book about his background, the influence of MAD
comics when he was growing up and how it influenced him. He also mentioned that without
Binky Brown, there would be no Maus, refering to Justin Greens Binky Brown Sampler,
circa 1972, by Justin Green who chronicled the sexual struggles of its title character from
his own experiences. One of the points to be made here is that comics rebounded, despite
the comics code Indeed, the history of comics after the 1960s has expanded into many

Graphic Novel Movement

A Contract with God and Other Tenement
Stories by Eisner, Maus by Spiegelman,
Batman: The Dark Night Returns by Miller
and V for Vendetta by Moore and Lloyd broke
some ground in the sphere of media and brought
recognition onto comics as a mature cultural
object. However, to define what constitutes a
Graphic Novel and when the first Graphic
Novel has been published are ambivalent
endeavors, at best Indeed, a few of these
long-form comics had been tried around
1930s: One was titled "God's Man" and another
was He Done Her Wrong by the popular comic
strip artist Milt Gross. Most graphic novels
have a variable amount of written dialogue in
word-balloons or added narrative but this
particular novel is among those -and one of the
first in the contemporary sense- to have
absolutely no words. It's a classical melodrama,
The Great American Novel being its subtitle;
one of the first attempts to redefine the
comics with another noun.

Between 1950 to 1970, some comics creators saw the potential for the medium beyond kids
entertainment as a long-form aimed at adults. In 1950, written by Arnold Drake and Leslie
Waller with Matt Baker as the artist, It Rhymes with Lust, a film noir influenced story,
was published. In 1959, Harvey Kurtzmans Jungle Book has been published by Ballatine. In
1968, Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin published the science-fiction thriller His Name Is
Savage and Kane also published in 1971 Blackmark, a sword & sorcery fantasy adventure.
But none of these which were conceived as genre pieces for adult audiences caught up with
the fans nor gained popular or critical acclaim. Yet, we accept these works as critical
attemps that wore down the misconceptions prevalent at the era hanging around comics.

Autobiographical pieces began coming out more

frequently after the 1970s and the size of that section
in the libraries continues to grow every day around the
world. These were addressing the complexities of the
self such as illness, adolescence, relationships, etc. and
also genres such as politics, history, journalism and so
forth and therefore constituting true adult themes,
proving that idiosyncracies could be showcased in the
medium: Harvey Pekar, a simple file clerk at a VA
hospital in Cleveland, Ohio -a position he kept well into
his fame- was especially important to prove this as he
was not a comics artist but managed Crumb to draw his
early work. When his An American Splendor, The Life
and Times of Harvey Pekar strip in the form of a
magazine was published in 1976, there was nothing
similar to or like it.
In 1976, George Metzgers Beyond Time and
Again was published two years ahead of the
Contract with God, with A Graphic Novel
advertisement on its title page but is not
remembered much by many comics academicians
and historians for one reason or another that is

In 1978, Will Eisner provided the comics

world with A Contract with God (after
struggling to find a publisher and finally
getting a modest outfit called Baronet Books
to publish it) and finally inaugurated a
revolution for the changing perception of
American comics. He called this work a
Graphic Novel. The irony was, essentially
the first novel created with an intention to
be one, could not be called comics due to
40 years of rather dismissive terminology
used in conjunction with comic strips and
comic books. Although he was not the first
person to use the graphic novel terminology
(and he was not aware that the term was
first used in 1964 by Richard Kyle in a
newsletter published by the Comic Amateur
Press Alliance; even that statement can be
debated depending on the research you look
at), the name stuck from then on for the
long-form comics. Prior to him, several others used other terms instead of comics for the
differentiation of its perception by the public: Seth (picture novella), Bill Gaines (pictofiction), Charles Biro (illustories), Daniel Clowes (comic-strip novel) to mention a few but

There are many critics against the term Graphic Novel who believes that comics is a fine
term and needs no change; Daniel Raeburn said the term is the literary equivalent of calling
a garbage man, a sanitation engineer , but in our age we like fancy labels and thats that
Obviously, regardless of how you cut and dice this, the term graphic novel does not
describe a form as the form itself is irrefutably comics but only represents a movement in
the industry.
One may have a hard time condoning Eddie Campbells remarks which stated that a new term
was needed because the comic book has become an embarrassment however the events
that shaped the perception of the comic book in the Anglo-Saxson world somewhat justifies
that a new term was what just the doctor ordered for the rejuvenation and rediscovery of
the field.
Of course, it is imperative to note that Campbells
remarks were encompassing the superhero, et al,
stereotypical genre which came to be perceived as the
comic book content and henceforth makes sense from
that angle.
Jules Feiffers Tantrum published in 1979 and further
demonstrated the possibilities of long-form comics.
Notice the neurotic inner-world of the artist is conveyed
through chaotic lines, to the left We will talk about this
when studying the lines and how they work in comics.

From that door, to recite some of the icons and their canon of the next 30 years, Seths
Its a Good World if You Dont Weaken, Hernandez Brothers Love and Rockets, Dave
Sims Cerebus, James Vances Kings in Disguise, Dan Clowes Eightball, Chris Wares
Acme Novelty Library, David Mazucchellis Discovering America, Larry Marders Tales of
the Beanworld, Chester Browns Yummy Fur, Raymond Briggs When the Wind Blows,
Frank Millers Batman: The Dark Night Returns, Marjane Satrapis Persepolis, Chris
Wares Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, Joe Saccos Safe Area Gorazde and
Palestine, Joe Kuberts Fax from Sarajevo, Larry Gonicks The Cartoon History of the
Universe, Joann Sfars The Rabbis Cat (Le Chat de Rabbin), Bryant Talbots The
Adventures of Luther Arkwright (which kicked off the British graphic novel movement in
1978), Neil Gaimans Sandman, Alan Moores V for Vendetta and Watchmen, et al,
entered in
From the prose perspective, the actual word-length of a graphic novel is usually equivalent
to a short story or a novella; however a picture is worth a thousand words and therefore
in its entirety, a graphic novel is indeed an equivalent to a novel. To further the confusion,
a graphic novel does not necessarily need to contain any words as words are only a part of
comics vocabulary. Another quirk is that the term novel refers to a work of fiction but in a
graphic novel, there are no such limitations. Also, it is important to note that many early
graphic novels in the Anglo-Saxon world has been initially published in serialized form
because of economical reasons if nothing else and then compiled into book format; we can
call these assembled graphic novels as opposed to original graphic novels which are
intended to be published as single volumes. Manga, in Japan, is traditionally almost always in
the first form and also extremely long in duration.

Comics Conventions (Comic-Cons)

Another trend beginning in the 1970s was the idea of holding a convention of comics fans,
comics artists, sales and related paraphernalia.
Starting in San Diego in 1970, the most notable one grew from
300 participants to over 100,000 in recent years. In addition,
there are now many spin-offs, regional and local conventions
with smaller attendances.
In Europe, the equivalent of this
size of a convention is the
Angoulme International Comics
Festival, held in France every
year which started in 1974.
The point is that there is a
significant niche market and subculture focusing on comics around the world.

Comic Art (and not comics art)

In the mid to late
1960s Andy Warhol
and Roy Lichtenstein
used themes from
comics, some drawings
lifted directly from
certain panels or a
combination of them,
and then these were
introduced with
controversy as fine
art. The point over
the last few decades
is that what is considered fine art is no longer able to be distinguished from popular
illustration, advertising, the icons of media and so forth In these two panels, on the far
left is an example of a Lichtenstein painting and then to its right a satire by a comics artist
commenting on the nerve of the Museum of Fine Art in celebrating this trend without fully
admitting that comics artists themselves are as much artists as those who have inveigled
themselves "officially", therefore successfully, into that field. There are some modern
graphic novels that impress people deeply as high art, such as The Arrival, by Shaun Tan,
another wordless book Low and high art and what constitutes art in the first place is a
discussion subject in this course.

Comic Book Collection

Very few kids in the mid-50s consciously collected comic books, thinking they'd be worth
money some day. That did gradually begin in the 1960s and by the 1970s there began to be
books published with prices noted for hard-to-find or top-quality old comic books. That has
continued to the present. Apparently there was even a bit of a "bubble" in this regard, some
publishers publishing an overabundance of new lines, trying to make some money on those who
were trying to build up collections. That bubble collapsed, but collecting, with less naive
enthusiasm, continues
In an article titled Super Powers: Turning a Dime Into a Million Bucks, in the Week in
Review section of the New York Times Sunday edition of February 28, 2010, George Gene
Gustines writes: Here is a lesson for all those parents who threw away their children's
comic books: Last Monday, a copy of Action Comics No.1, in which Superman first appeared
in 1938, sold for a record $1 million. That price was eclipsed on Thursday by the
$1,075,500 auction of a copy of Detective Comics No. 27, where Batman made his premiere
in 1939. Not bad hauls for comic books that originally sold for 10 cents each!
But this doesn't mean that the masses who converged on comic book stores in January 2009
to grab Amazing Spider-Man No.583, featuring President Obama, can trade in that issue
for a deposit on a dream house. The recipe for what makes a comic book so valuable is a
mix of content, rarity and condition.

Not surprisingly, the Man of Steel had it all. Superman was the trailblazer for all other
superheroes and fans at the time agreed: The alien visitor proved so popular that he took
over Action Comics which was originally an anthology of different stories and characters.
"We had long theorized that Action No. 1 would be the comic to break the million-dollar
barrier," said J.C. Vaughn, the associate publisher of the "Official Overstreet Comic Book
Comic Price Guide," an industry bible That first issue, Mr. Vaughn estimated, sold 130,000
copies; only about 100 remain.

The buyers of those record-setting Superman and Batman comics, perhaps emulating the
superheroes, have kept their identities secret. The condition of the Superman comic, sold by
the auction house Comic Connect, was graded 8 out of a possible 10. Another copy, graded
at 6, sold for $317,200 last year. The Batman book, sold at Heritage Auctions, was also
graded 8. Fewer than 100 copies are believed to exist. A grade of 10 would signify a
pristine book; an 8 indicates imperfections like a cover creases or stress marks on the spine.

In the 1990s, speculators flocked to the comic book market, buying issues in the hopes that
they would increase in value. But print runs for popular titles also greatly increased. In
1991, the first issue of a new X-Men title, written by Chris Claremont and illustrated by
Jim Lee, sold more than eight million copies. "When you have thousands or millions of copies,
it's less likely a candidate to increase in value, Mr. Vaughn said.
The big money seems to be in first appearances. Last November, a 9.2 rated copy of
Incredible Hulk No. 1 sold for $125,475 at Heritage Auctions; a 9.0 rated copy sold for

Here's a look at some of those first appearances: Smashing Debuts:

Direct Sales

Also in the 1970s, comic book publishers shifted the marketing from consignment work
(taking back those that didn't sell) to direct sales. This situation forced deeper discounts
from the middlemen but no sizeable returns have occurred. This supported the emergence of
a new institution: The comics store that specializes in comic books. Such stores often
specialize also in fantasy role-playing board games such as Dungeons & Dragons,
collectibles and models associated with that activity. A few comic books are still available at
some supermarket or Walmart-type stores in the books and magazines area but they are not
that many

Comics Journals
Also beginning in the decades following the 60s, actual journals that are semi-professional
and fanzines, surveyed the comics scene, including graphic novels, comic strips, comic books
and other media. There is a plethora of these now in print and/or in the digital world. They
carry articles about artists, themes, history and commentary and also create, develop and
publish their own parallel story lines based on real and perceived subtext of the original
work.

In 2006, the United States Post Office devoted a special issue to major superheroes of the
1950s and 60s.

International Comics
The British comics are much in line with the U.S.A. in terms of timing and the way it
evolved and therefore can be classified under the Anglo-Saxson comics. If and when to do
research, go with either or both We will discuss it further when we study Alan Moores
work.
European comics always existed outside the Anglo-American narrative. Internet contains
anything and everything in detail, should you want to further dig into the subject matter.
The contemporary comic strip in Europe started in Belgium with Tintin by Herg (Georges
Rmi), in 1929. The main comics house in Europe is Franco-Belgian.
In 1949, after the 2nd World War, France (one of the largest comics market even then)
banned the U.S.A. comics with pressure from French communists who were afraid that Les
Anglo-Saxons were to degenerate the values of the peuple in order to reach their goal of
economic and cultural colonization of the world. From the perspective of Bande Dessines
tradition, this was naturally an oxymoron. Politicized by the events that led to the unrest of
May 68 and the fall of De Gaulle government, a new generation of creators and artists
started to move into the underground commix movement in France.
By the 1970s, they also started to enter the mainstream, just like their peers across the
pond, establishing an environment for adult themed BDs.

Prominent Franco-Belgian comics before the modern era (pre-1970):

XIII by William Vance and Jean Van Hamme

Asterix by Ren Goscinny and Albert Uderzo (1959)
Blake and Mortimer by E.P. Jacobs
Boule and Bill by Jean Roba
Gaston Lagaffe by Andr Franquin
Incal by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Jean Giraud (Moebius)
Jerry Spring by Jij
Jommeke by Jef Nys (originally made in Dutch)
Kiekeboe by Merho (originally made in Dutch)
Largo Winch by Philippe Francq and Jean Van Hamme
Les Cits Obscures by Franois Schuiten and Benot Peeters
Les Tuniques Bleues by Willy Lambil and Raoul Cauvin
Lieutenant Blueberry by Jean-Michel Charlier and Jean Giraud (Moebius)
Lucky Luke by Morris and Ren Goscinny (1946)
Spike and Suzy (Dutch: Suske & Wiske) by Willy Vandersteen (originally in Dutch)
Spirou et Fantasio by Andr Franquin, Jij and others
Marsupilami by Andr Franquin
Michel Vaillant by Jean Graton
The Adventures of Tintin by Herg (Georges Rmi) (1929)
The Adventures of Nero by Marc Sleen (originally made in Dutch)
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adle Blanc-Sec by Jacques Tardi
The Smurfs by Peyo
Titeuf by Zep
Thorgal by Grzegorz Rosiski and Jean Van Hamme
Valrian and Laureline by Jean-Claude Mzires and Pierre Christin 1967 (influence of the series on Star
Wars movie series and many other science-fiction works followed)

In the modern comics era in Europe, Moebius (Jean Giraud) and Enki Bilal (both French),
Milo Manara (Spanish), Hugo Pratt (Italian) have provided comics with true adult themes.

Moebius was one of the canonical artists of the 20th century as he produced several
different works in different media such as film and comic.

Enki Bilal is also another pioneer and a canonical artist with his own particular style and
daring themes that he employs. His works
also are sold on the art scene.

Milo Manara and Hugo Pratt are forerunners

of European comics in the erotica and
historical adventure genres, respectively,
who collaborated in El Gaucho.

Pilote (1959-1989), Mtal Hurlant (1974-1987 and 2002-2004) [established on the

success of mainly Valrian, Luc Orient (Greg) and Lone Sloane (Druillet)] and Spirou
are few of the notable french periodicals. Especially, many of these artists listed above
have all initially started at Pilote. The founders of the Mtal Hurlant were known as Les
Humanoides Associs (Jean Giraud, Philippe Druillet, Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Bernard
Farkas) that became a publishing house (later Humanoids Publishing) for the magazine which
crossed the Atlantic to be published in the U.S.A. as Heavy Metal magazine, published by
National Lampoon Publishing. These siblings were the true adult theme comics magazines,
specializing mainly in science-fiction, horror and cyber-punk erotica.
Speaking of
publishing houses,
LAssociation
that came to
existence in 1990
in France is a
leader in the
industry which
leads the
tradition to
provide new
generation of
Franco-Belgian
comics to readers.

Manga, the Japanese comics, has become very prevalent and read by all ages with
different thematic genres appealing to different age groups and interests in Japan and has a
rather different approach than western worlds
comics in many aspects. Also, see the special
chapter at the end about Mangas origins and its
historical background as until the end of the 2nd
World War Manga followed its own independent
path from the western-style comics.
I Fumetti, the Italian comics, is extremely
prevalent in Turkey since the last 70 years or
so, especially due to the neutral themes and its
true pass-time nature of the western, action
and adventure genres where the story lines and
characters are rather superficial. That fact
made these comics avoid any type of censorship.
However, in recent decades, Italian artists also have started to get into the graphic novel
movement, covering a wide range of themes and styles.

In Korea, Manhwa, in Mexico Quandrinhos are similarly widespread. In Turkey, izgi

Roman consists mostly of translations of the neutral-themed I Fumetti, BDs and other
international works; it is hard to speak of an established Turkish comics industry, except for

comics magazines, although there are many extremely talented artists, trying hard to
change this situation.

Academia
Comic books were the low-brow populist kid's junk until a few academics beginning in the
1970s began to take this modality as a serious art and/or literature form. That has grown
in colleges and universities and more than a few art departments address sequential art and
cartooning along with the more traditional painting and drawing subjects. Courses as well as
publications about comics, its artists/creators and their work, academic analyses about its
aesthetics, form, themes, etc. and scientific/research conventions are also emerging in
increasing numbers. The course you are attending is the first of its kind in Turkey and
therefore we are also pioneers. J
Academic and serious study of the comics and comic strip increased very slowly throughout
the 20th century. This, in part, is due to a perception that comics are trash culture in the
U.S.A. and the United Kingdom and therefore unworthy of serious academic study. Although
progress has been painfully slow, arguably this field of study is now in a similar situation to
that of film studies in the 1930s; subject to not only an increasing interest, but also an
increasing respectability
English language studies of comics have lagged behind pioneering European scholars such as
Francis Lacassin a French journalist/editor/writer who was a specialist of pop-culture and
also the person who coined the term 9th Art for the comics- and Umberto Eco an Italian
semiotician/writer/critic who has analyzed Superman in 1972 in The Myth of Superman-,

but now comics in all their forms and from all over the world are attracting a wide range of
academic interest.
One of the strengths of this academic
interest is that the approach to the field is
extremely varied, attracting scholars from
Art History, Humanities, Languages,
American
Studies, Media Studies, Cultural Studies
and beyond This also tends to mean that
there is no overarching grand theory that
dominates this research. It is also the case
that much comics history and culture has
been neglected and many gaps in knowledgebase still need to be filled. Much of the
earlier serious writings on comics
concentrated on their assumed negative
effects, most famously in Frederic
Werthams anti-comics polemic book, The
Seduction of the Innocent, in 1954. A
similar, if slightly more measured attack on
comics was rehearsed in Geoffrey Wagners
Parade of Pleasure but the cover of his
book clearly illustrates his attitude to the

Richard Hoggart, in The Uses of Literacy, described the reading of American comic books
as, the passive visual taking-on of mass bad-art geared to a very low mental age (1957,
p. 201).
Where comics were singled out for praise (and sometimes this could be extravagant praise,
as in Gilbert Seldes championing of George Herrimans Krazy Kat in The Seven Lively Arts
in 1924) this tended to imply that these comics were rare examples, shining out from a vast
sea of dross. There is also the continuing and widespread prejudice that comics are a
simplistic and juvenile medium, despite clear evidence to the contrary not only in the work of
comic strip artists like Herriman and his contemporaries but many others, from alternative
and underground comix to many forms of Manga and BDs
Comics history began to be more closely examined, largely by fans and collectors, mainly
from the 1960s onwards Through the 1970s, this was consolidated with the growth of
specialist shops and the founding of The San Diego Comics Convention in 1970 and The
Angoulme Festival of Comics in 1974. This followed on from the growth of histories of
comics such as Beckers Comic Art in America in 1959 and Della Cortes I Fumetti in
1961. Further serious comics scholarship continued with Couperie and Horns A History of
the Comic Strip in 1968, Herdeg and Pascals The Art of the Comic Strip in 1972 and
David Kunzles The Early Comic Strip in 1973.
These pioneering efforts were followed by a number of groundbreaking books, including a
reappraisal of the neglected (and often vilified) comics in books such as Martin Barkers A
Haunt of Fears in 1984. There have also been more recent attempts from practitioners to

Storytelling and Visual Narrative in 1985 and in 1996, respectively and Scott McClouds
Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics in 1993 and in 2000, respectively.
Probably the most significant element in the increasing reputation of comics in recent years
has been a small number of key comics texts which have broken out from the ghetto of
limited distribution and been reviewed much more widely than most graphic novels. Most
influential have been Frank Millers The Dark Knight Returns, Alan Moores Watchmen,
Art Spiegelmans Maus which won a special Pulitzer Prize and Chris Wares Jimmy
Corrigan which won the Guardians Book Prize in 2001; however the furor that accompanied
the latters award shows that a strong residual prejudice against comics still remains in some
quarters. Furthermore, an issue of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, based on the imagined
premiere of the same-titled play of Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream, won the
World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story in 1991 and its selection committee promptly
ruled out entries that are not in the form of prose for the future years.

Despite these works, there are still unresolved debates about the definition of comics and a
concomitant variance in the overall view of where comics history begins. As we discussed,
some see their beginnings in the ancient world with Mayan murals, with artifacts like
Trajans Column or with the Bayeux Tapestry. Others see the true origins of comics in 18th
century cartoonists like Thomas Rowlandson and William Hogarth and/or 19th century
pioneers like Rodolphe Tpffer. Such debates on the origins of comics inevitably explore
comics form through the combination of word, image and the evolution of comics iconography.
The intersection of word, image and iconography is also of concern to scholars such as Sabin

and Will Eisner, suggest analysis of the specific components constructing the comics using
semiotic methods, as in semantics, pragmatics, and syntactics.
From the brief overview of research above, it is clear that lively debates have developed
using cultural and theoretical approaches to the study of comics and, as noted above, no
clear grand theory has emerged to dominate the field. For all these reasons, it is an
exciting time to be studying the comics medium.

The point here is that comics have become much more

prevalent in many countries slowly and progressively in
the last eight decades. Hopefully, comics will claim its
rightful place next to all other forms of expression,
both critically and academically, as a legitimate medium
in the second decade of the 21st century.
References: excerpts from Adam Blatners web site
(www.blatner.com); Scott McClouds Understanding Comics
and Reinventing Comics; Danny Fingeroths Graphic Novels;
the Journal of Graphic Novel and Comics 1st issues (June
2010) editorial by David Huxley and Joan Ormrod and Paul
Gravetts article From Iky Mo to Lord Horror; wikipedia;
also lots of editing and additions by yours truly, Gazi
Mehmet Emin Adanal J Warning: This document is compiled
from the above referenced work with the sole purpose of
educational classwork in the course titled FA489 in Boazii

University. Any and all unauthorized use, distribution, copying, publishing, et al. of this document and/or
its parts is prohibited by the laws of governing copyright; unheeding this warning may be punishable by
the full extent of the related local and international laws.