The History of Comics

Comic books have been around for many years, evident in Ancient Egypt, where wall paintings were accompanied by hieroglyphics, this form of art, pictures combined with captions or symbols has been popular in many cultures throughout history...

The very first comic book is said to be attributed to Richard Fenton Outcalt who created 'The Yellow Kid' in 1986.

http://www.neponset.com/yellowkid/history.htm

Political Cartoons were an early form of comics, as they incorporated cartoon style drawings of political characters with captions to add irony or make a political point..
In the 19th Century publications became more popular and widespread, as printing technology improved, transport systems became more sophisticated, reaching more parts of the country and more people could read, so the target audience became bigger.

It was the 1930's when comic started to resemble the comics we know today, names such as Tarzan, Flash Gordon and Dick Tracey started to become popular and these genres formed the backbone to comic narratives for years to come, particularly, detective and Sci-Fi.

In Britain DC Thompson published the Dandy in 1937 and the Beano in 1938 and in the US the super-heroes started to flood the market and Superman and Batman became part of modern culture.


In the 1950's comics were said to be having a negative impact on youth culture and a code of conduct was written.


In the 60's Marvel Comics started to become a giant in the comics industry and charcters such as the Fantastic Four, X-Men and most notabley Spiderman were created.



Will Eisner created the term 'graphic Novel' in the 1970,s, these were publications that had a longer multi-strand narrative and would often address serious issues through comic style storytelling. The french comic Asterix had for a long time been a popular form of graphic novel on the continent.

In the 60's and 70's many of the most famous comics were serialised on TV. Batman became one of the most popular TV shows of the era, with imaginative sets and comic-style production techniques...



There are now many different types of comics, from manga to peanuts but comics have had to change to keep up with a more technologically advanced world. Characters such as Batman and Superman have become well known characters in the medium of film and Flash Gordon now has he's own TV drama series.

DC comics in particular have benefited from making links with the TV and film industry and are now owned by Time/Warner. Many comics have been transformed into TV programmes or films and this has helped them survive.

Most comics with a big circulation now have their own very successful websites and in turn viewing these comics has become a much more interctive process for the audience.

Over the years animation has been used to represent many a popular comic and today, many of the successful animated childrens TV programmes have been turned into comics, reversing the process. This is often done by the BBC with programmes such as Dora the Explorer and Shaun the Sheep.