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Comics

This article is about the medium and art form of comics. For the entertainers known as comics, see comedians.

Comics, (sometimes spelled comix), use a combination of words and images as a medium for telling stories. They are typically printed on paper, with the most common formats being newspaper strips, magazine-format comic books, and larger bound volumes called graphic novels.

Comics are also thought by some to be an art form, although whether they are an art form or are merely a medium in which sequential art is practised is still a matter of debate amongst creators, scholars and readers.

Manga is the Japanese term for comics, and French comics are known as Bande Dessinée or "B.D." (literally, "strip drawings"). In the UK, the term comics most often refers to domestic comic books, whilst comic books implies that they come from the U.S.

Table of contents

Definition

Note: Although it takes the form of a plural noun, the common usage when referring to comics as a medium is to treat it as singular.

Scholars disagree on the definition of comics; some claim its printed format is crucial, some emphasize the interdependence of image and text, and others its sequential nature.

Will Eisner defined comics as "the printed arrangement of art and ballons in sequence, particularly in comic books." He differentiated between the medium of comics and the language employed within, which he preferred to name Sequential Art.

In Understanding Comics Scott McCloud took Eisner's term sequential art, equated it with the medium of comics, and defined both thus: "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer"; this definition excludes single-panel illustrations such as The Far Side, The Family Circus, and most political cartoons from the category, instead classifying those as cartoons. By contrast, the Comics Journal's "100 Best Comics of the 20th Century" included the works of several single panel cartoonists and a caricaturist.

Fumetti, (sometimes called fotonovelas), are comics using photographs instead of illustrations, with speech balloons added. By some definitions (including McCloud's, above) the definition of comics extends to digital media such as web comics and sprite comics.

Eddie Campbell has preferred to define comics as "humorous art...but with the proviso that in our own times it has come to embrace not only cartoons but comic strips and comic books which are not necessarily humorous due to their own evolutionary patterns, but they remain under this rubric as they evolved from it.."

Most agree that animation, which creates the optical illusion of movement within a static physical frame, is a separate form. With comics, readers connect a series of static images at their own individual pace, usually with each in its own frame. Some digital-media works combine the techniques of comics and animation as a hybrid form.

History

When and where comics originated is another matter of debate, largely dependent on its definition. Many authors and sources, Scott McCloud being the most recent, observe precedents in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Japanese emaki, European stained glass windows, pre-Columbian Central American manuscripts, and the Bayeux Tapestry. However, this view is countered by critics as an attempt to co-opt a history with which to somehow justify comics as an art form, and feel that whilst it may be true that comics share a rich tradition, tapestry and stained glass were not in their time thought of as comics, something these critics see as an important distinction.

Other arguments tend to cite the invention of the printing press, noting that comics have been intrinsically linked with printing, and taken together with the explosion of cartoon and caricature in the 18th century, these arguments feel this era as being better used as the firmament upon which comics grew. The Punishments of Lemuel Gulliver by William Hogarth, (1726), is certainly a leading candidate for the origins of the form of the medium, and Thomas Rowlandson is a later exponent of the form.

Other scholars are of the opinion that modern comics began in the 1820s with Rodolphe Töpffer. Sir Ernst Gombrich certainly felt Töpffer's great discovery was that of an abbreviated art style, which worked by allowing the audience to fill in gaps with their own imagination, thus evolving a new pictorial language.

It's certainly true to say that satirical cartoons in newspapers were popular through much of the 19th century. In 1841, Punch magazine launched, which soon became a great sucess, and apart from cartoons also featured strip cartoons. Its popularity led to imitators, and soon a market was formed. Into this market was thrust Ally Sloper's Half Holiday, (1884), reputed to be the first comic strip magazine to feature a recurring character. In 1890 two more comic magazines debuted to the British public, Comic Cuts and Chips. These magazines also republished American material, previously published in newspapers in the US. It is certainly thought that the term comics was coined in this era, originating as a shortened form of comicalities, and from there becoming attached to the comic strip, and it had gained such common currency that when the medium branched out into adventure strips and romance strips the term came to define them too in popular parlance.

It is at this point that British comics tradition and that of the American comics tradition diverge. What follows is a brief overview of the American tradition.

R.F. Outcault's Hogan's Alley, (1895), is widely recognized as the first ongoing newspaper strip to feature regular characters. Its success in promoting newspaper sales prompted the creation of other strips, and marks the beginning of comics as an ongoing popular art form as it is still known in the 21st century.

The term comics almost certainly migrated to the US from Britain, but in the US came to define early newspaper strips, which featured a variety of genres, but were largely gag humor, hence the adjective comic. Collections of strips in the 1930s led to the name comic book. Alternatively, newspaper strips were called funnies and the collections funny books, though the latter term has faded from use. The modern double usage of the term comic, as an adjective describing a genre, and a noun designating an entire medium, has been criticised as confusing and misleading. In the 1960s and 1970s, underground cartoonists used the spelling comix to distinguish their work from mainstream newspaper strips and juvenile comic books; ironically, although their work was written for an adult audience, it was usually comedic in nature as well, so the "comic" label still fit. The term graphic novel was popularised in the late 1970s, having been coined at least two decades previous, to distance the material from this confusion.

While the medium is not intrinsically limited to any particular subject or style, some genres have predominated. For older readers there have been journalistic, historical, educational, erotic, autobiographical, non-narrative, and propagandistic comics. But most comics have been marketed to the young, who prefer anthropomorphic funny animals, humor, science fiction, horror, crime, romance, and superheroes. Since the 1960s, humor comic strips and superhero comic books have been the most popular genres.

Underground comics have gradually developed into an artistically ambitious international movement. Usually published outside the "mainstream" comic book industry, these have been dubbed "independent" or "alternative" comics.

Media

Most images in printed comics are produced using graphite and/or non-photo blue pencil, then inked using either a pen or brush. Colors or shades of gray are sometimes added, usually using digital tools. Lettering is often done digitally, but some still use pen and ink. However, the use of other illustrative media is not uncommon, including paint (either by itself or as a coloring technique), pencil alone, digital drawing tools, digitally-rendered images, and photographs. In theory, any non-sculptural visual arts medium could be used.

Related articles

Comic Formats

Regional categories

Comic Genres

  • Caricature comics
  • Children's comics
  • Educational comics
  • Erotic comics
  • Editorial comics
    • Political
    • Satirical
    • Social
  • Narrative comics
    • Action (see also Superhero)
    • Anthromorphic funny animals (see also furry)
    • Autobiographical
    • Crime/Detective
    • Historical/War
    • Horror
    • Illustrated Classics
    • Romance
    • Superhero
    • Science Fiction
  • Non sequitur comics
  • Wordless/"Silent"/Pantomime comics

Comic book awards

Miscellaneous

Lists

Reference

  • Perry, George; Aldridge, Alan (1989 reprint with introduction). The Penguin Book Of Comics. Penguin. ISBN 0–14–002802–1.
  • Eisner, Will (1990 Expanded Edition, reprinted 2001). Comics & Sequential Art. Poorhouse Press. ISBN 0–9614728–1–2.

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