It can make us laugh, move us, captivate our imagination,
speak out for our belief, and transcends all our expectation.
Comic has long been a part of our culture, and its social
influence throughout our American history is undeniable.
It is the only sanctuary where you can criticize the overpowering
political figure or worship your favorite superhero icon.
A comic strip is merely combination of cartoon with a story
line, laid out in a series of pictorial panels across a
page. The comic usually concerns character or set of characters,
whose thoughts and dialogues are indicated by means of "balloons"
containing written speech. Comic strip developed in America
towards the end of the nineteenth century. Throughout the
years many types of comic came about, from political to
humorous strips. Soon enough comic strips evolved into the
ever popular comic books. The history of comic art in America
is quite a roller coaster, but through the ups and downs,
comic art has withstands the test of time and became a staple
of our American culture.
Sequential art has had a long illustrious history.
Cave paintings were the earliest form of sequential art
. Such paintings were from the cave of Lascaux in France,
frequently depicting animals; these images were usually
an illustrated chapter of a prehistoric tribe's hunt for
food. At around 1300 BC, Egyptian hieroglyphic inside the
pyramids glorified their pharaohs (Richard Halegua, Online).
The Greeks and the Roman also had marble carvings that told
story of their great rulers. Michelangelo’s masterpiece
of the scene of Adam and God is part of the largest sequential
story in picture form, covering the entire ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel. These were some of the predecessors of what
we have come to know now of comic art.
In the beginning, comic strips were published exclusively
as weekly features in the Sunday supplement of American
newspapers, originally created as a tool to draw customers
to the Sunday edition of the local newspaper (Halegua, Online).
The comic strips originally evolved from the traditional
cartoon. A "cartoon" was any single drawing generally
accompanied by a caption or a legend that conveyed a message
(Stephen Becker 2). It was made popular due to the work
of renowned cartoonists such as Thomas Nast, Honore Daumier,
and William Hogarth. The advent of comic strip was not a
sudden event, but rather a gradual discovery. In the 18th
and early 19th century, William Hogarth and Thomas
Rowlandson regularly used balloons in their cartoons. Rowlandson
utilized "continuity", one story with one cast
appearing regularly, in his Tours of Dr. Syntax (Becker
3). In the 1870s and 1880s, American dailies and
weeklies slowly incorporated more comic-like pieces. One
example of these pioneer comic strips was Frank Bellew’s
six-panel strip in 1881 called Mr. Bowler’s Midnight
Encounter (Becker 3).
Although there were evidences of early comic form in
American newspaper, the birth of the genre came in 1896
in The Yellow Kid by Richard Felton Outcault, which
appeared in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World (Becker
10). The "kid" was bald with flap ears;
he had a wise, slightly Chinese face. The Yellow Kid’s nightshirt
usually was the focal point of the drawing; it was a billboard
with a message. The significant of The Yellow Kid
was that the written word had moved into the drawing, it
was no longer simply a caption or a legend. Words began
to reflect the humor of the drawing, and vice versa (Becker
11). Next came Rudolph Dirk’s the Katzenjammer Kids
(1897), it was the first to make consistent use of a sequence
of panels to tell his stories. The Katzenjammer Kids
combined both the aspect of internal dialogue and panelized
continuity (Halegua, Online), Dirk established the foundation
for which succeeding comic strips follow. The appearance
of pioneering strips such as Happy Hooligan, by Frederick
Burr Opper, Charles Schultze’s Foxy Grandpa, Outcault’s
Buster Brown, and James Swinnerton’s Little Jimmy
(The Columbia Encyclopedia, Online), all the essential components
of the comic strip, such as regularity of cast, use of sequence
of panels, and speech-balloons, were refined and securely
established.
By the early 1900s, there were well over 150 strips
in America, in addition to numerous strips that were in
publication for local paper. Up to this point, the majority
of comics were humorous. Winsor McCay introduced a new type
of genre with Little Nemo in Slumberland that appeared
from 1905-1911 in the New York Herald (Halegua, Online).
The strip was centered on the dreamt adventures of a small
boy named Nemo and his friends. Nemo's adventures extended
through several weeks, McCay’s comic was somewhat of an
adventurous fantasy and at times mild soap opera. In 1924,
Roy Crane’s Washington Tubbs II introduced the idea
of adventure comics (Halegua, Online). Edgar Rice Burroughs
followed up with the idea with his famous comic Tarzan.
Soon other genre of comics emerged, such as science-fiction
tales in Princess of Mars by Burroughs, and the detective
strips of Dick Tracy (1931). By the time of the great
depression, American turned to comic strips as one of the
ways to escape from their dreadful daily life.
In 1933, the comic world was about to change, the arrival
of the first comic book was a surprise to all, and the eventual
success is now truly history. Publishers at Eastern Color
Press were figuring out a way to efficiently use their printing
equipment, which frequently idle between jobs. Maxwell Gaines,
father of William F. Gaines, EC & Mad publisher, came
up with the idea of printing an eight page comic section
that could be folded down from the large broadsheet to a
smaller nine inch by twelve inch format. The result was
the first modern comic book. The name was the Funnies
on Parade, it contained reprint of newspaper comic strips
and was given away for free. Realizing that there was a
market for repackaged strips, the following year Eastern
published Famous Funnies and sold it for ten cents
through chain stores (Halegua, Online).
The Golden Age of comic history was creeping up, and
all it needed was something to ignite the fuel. From the
creative minds of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster came Superman.
The idea was heavily inspired by Philip Wylie's 1930 novel
Gladiator (Derek Santos, Online). Though Siegel and
Shuster thought they had discovered a goldmine, selling
their idea to newspaper turn out to be a difficult task.
They were hit with rejections after rejections from newspaper
such as the Bell Syndicate and the United Features. The
strips finally made its way into the hands of McClure Syndicate
editor Sheldon Mayer who immediately fell in love with it.
Mayer then passed the idea up to Harry Donenfield of DC
Comics, who agreed to buy the strips (Santos, Online). The
first issue appeared in the news stands in May 1938, Superman
was born and the rest is history. The success of Superman
kicked starts a revolution of superheroes in comic books.
Along came Batman by Bob Kane, Batman made his first appearance
in Detective Comics No. 27 in May 1939 (Santos, Online).
At the time of World War II, marked the arrival of Captain
America. Created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, its first
issue came out in February of 1941 (The Columbia Encyclopedia,
Online). By this time, comic strips and comic books began
to diverge from each other. Comic books stood as the domain
of the superheroes.
As the world war ended, so did the golden age of superheroes.
Other genre in the realm of comic arts began to flourish.
Walt Disney’s comics and stories became more and more popular.
Crime comic became a huge success with "Crime Does
Not Pay". Horror comics crashed onto the scene in 1948,
and by 1950 Eerie Comics had three horror titles on the
stands, Crypt of Terror (later Tales from the Crypt), Haunt
of Fear and Vault of Horror (Halegua, Online). These comics
raised the bar with their gory art and violent story line.
In 1940, Dr. Frederic Wertham published a book called
Seduction of the Innocent accusing comic books to
"systematically poisoned the wellspring of children’s
spontaneity and prepared the ground for later aggressive
behavior." (Reinhold Reitberger and Wolfgang Fuchs
132). Dr. Wertham viewed that comics seduce the reader into
a future of crime and sexual perversions. On October 26,
1045 the Comics Code of the CMAA came into effect. It regulates
and forbids many things in comics, they include no two piece
bathing suit, criminals must pay for their crimes, no blood
or gore, words like weird, horror and terror could not be
published on the covers (Halegua, Online). The comic world
took a huge blow as sales plummeted, almost all crime comics
went out of business, DC had only a couple dozen titles
left, and Atlas (which later became Marvel) was almost out
of business.
The comic world needed something to catapult it back
on its feet. Julius Schwartz of DC comics brings in The
Flash. Written by Robert Kannigher and illustrated by Carmine
Infantino, the Flash made its debut on the stands on September
of 1956, his origin story was a success. Then came the "Brave
& the Bold #28", dated February-March of 1960 (Halegua,
Online). The Justice League of America was formed by the
Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter and
Aquaman, with Batman and Superman making occasional cameos.
Their popularity grew exponentially, and it kick started
the second age of superheroes.
Creeping behind DC’s superheroes success, Marvel comics
was about to make its mark in history. Seeing the success
of DC’s Justice League of America, Martin Goodman worked
with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to create their own superhero
team. The Fantastic Four made its first appearance in September
of 1961 (Santos, Online). Its success was overwhelming.
Marvel followed that up with the Incredible Hulk in May
1962. Stan Lee then flirted with the idea of a "spider-hero"
with Martin Goodman. This led to the creation of arguably
the second most famous comic superheroes of all time, Spider-Man.
The Spider-Man debut in Amazing Fantasy on cover dated August
of 1962 (Halegua, Online). In the many following years,
Jack Kirby and Stan Lee would introduce numerous heroes
into the comic world such as the Giant Man, the Mighty Thor,
Iron Man, and reintroducing characters like the Sub-Mariner
and Captain America. The massive success of Marvel comics
was due to the fact that their superheroes differ from DC’s.
Superman and Batman chose the path to heroism and they did
not possess the regular problems of ordinary people. Marvel
heroes on the other hand were beset by human problems. "The
Thing" didn't want to be an ugly monster, nor did Bruce
Banner wanted to change into a creature with uncontrollable
rage, and Peter Parker had all the ordinary problems that
teenager could relate to. August of 1975, marked the arrival
of the X-Men, another by-product of comic genius Stan Lee
(Santos, Online). The franchise would flourish into success
and maintain comic popularity in our contemporary culture.
We all have come to understand that pictures strike
us more efficiently than words. The clichés "a
picture is worth a thousand words" exemplifies the
significance of comic arts in America. From cave paintings
to the Yellow Kid to Superman, comic arts have had
a long lasting history. What started out as just an advertisement
scheme to draw customers to the Sunday edition of the local
newspaper, has manifested itself into a profiting entertainment
business. Comic books now stand on separate grounds from
comic strips, but the relation and transition from one to
the other is undeniable.
Pictures Links
http://www.comic-art.com/history/history1.htm
(The Yellow Kid)
http://www.comic-art.com/history/history3.htm
(Funnies on Parade)
http://www.comic-art.com/history/history5.htm
(Captain America and Crime Doesn’t Pay)
http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.dereksantos.com/comicpage/comicpage.html
(Superman and Batman)
http://www.bdoubliees.com/echodessavanes/sfig1/katzen.jpg
(The Katzenjammer Kids)
http://www.comic-art.com/history/history9.htm
(Spiderman and Incredible Hulk)
http://www.biglittlebooks.com/images/Dell%20Dick%20Tracy%20Fed%20hard%20c%20.jpg
(Dick Tracy)