Comics

I

Introduction

Comics, series of drawings arranged to tell a story. Most comics also include some text, which appears as dialogue or captions. Comics typically feature a continuing cast of characters. The term comics comes from the first examples of the form, which were all humorous. While many comics remain focused on humor, others involve politics, human interest, suspense, adventure, or serious treatments of relationships.

In their most basic form, comics consist of simple line drawings rendering characters and scenes. They share common roots with the cartoon, a term that encompasses single-panel gag and editorial drawings as well as hand-drawn illustrations and advertisements. Comics are also related to animation, which is defined as motion pictures created by recording a series of still images, often drawings. Animated television shows and movies, sometimes called cartoon animation, are extremely popular. Many times the most popular comics are animated for TV or movies, or turned into live-action shows and motion pictures.

Newspaper comics, also called comic strips, typically appear in three or four square-shaped cells, called panels. The panels are arranged in a row and are read from left to right, like text. Comic books are booklet-length comics that are more stylized and tell a more involved story. They can be written in the same style as comic strips, but they also often feature panels of different shapes and sizes and are read both horizontally and vertically. Most daily newspaper comics are published six days a week in black and white, while those on Sunday tend to be in color. Most comic books are produced in color.

In the early 20th century, comics were accused of glorifying unsavory characters and thus encouraging children to misbehave. They were also condemned as being a waste of time. For several decades this view remained common. But in the 1960s people began to reevaluate comics and appreciate their artistic qualities. International comics conferences were organized, major art exhibitions devoted attention to comics, and comic art museums were founded. Comics are now regarded as one of the most significant forms of 20th-century culture.

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II

Origins

The historical roots of the comics appear in the work of English artists of the 18th and 19th centuries, notably George Cruikshank, James Gillray, William Hogarth, and Thomas Rowlandson. These artists told stories by using sequences of pictures, each of which was known as a cartoon. They also made extensive use of the balloon, a white space issuing from the lips of the characters that held the words that the characters were saying. Perhaps the best examples of early balloon technique appeared in Rowlandson’s cartoons, which he used to make social commentary. One of his major works featured a character named Dr. Syntax who traveled to different places and made observations about people and customs.

Some of the techniques employed by the English cartoonists spread to other European countries. The most popular European comic artists of the time included Rodolphe Töppfer of Switzerland, whose Histoires en Estampes (1846-1847; Stories in Etchings) reveal an unusual ability to tell stories through pictures; Wilhelm Busch of Germany, whose “Max und Moritz” (1865) earned him great fame; and Christophe of France, author of “La Famille Fenouillard” (1889; “The Fenouillard Family”).

III

Newspaper Comic Strips

The art of cartooning developed in the United States throughout the 19th century, galvanizing public opinion about important political issues of the day and even playing a pivotal role in elections. American cartoonists such as Thomas Nast, Joseph Keppler, and Bernard Gillam became very influential during this period. Towards the end of the century, comic strips, originally referred to as funnies, first appeared in the Sunday supplements of major newspapers. Newspaper publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were competing furiously for readers during this time, and they quickly saw comic strips as a valuable feature to attract more readers.

A

Late 1800s and Early 1900s

The first successful American comic strip was “The Yellow Kid,” drawn by Richard Outcault. The main character of the strip initially appeared in Outcault’s earlier cartoon series, “Hogan’s Alley,” first published in 1895 in Pulitzer’s New York World. Outcault set the action of “Hogan’s Alley” among squalid city tenements and backyards filled with dogs and cats, tough characters, and ragamuffins. One of the street urchins was a bald-headed child dressed in a long, dirty nightshirt. Outcault used the nightshirt as a place to make comments relating to the subject of the cartoon, and the printers, experimenting with yellow ink, chose the nightshirt as a test area. The yellow was a success, and so was the Yellow Kid, as the public dubbed the character.

In 1896 Hearst hired Outcault away from the World, and Outcault began drawing “The Yellow Kid” series for Hearst’s New York Journal. However, the World kept “Hogan’s Alley,” and the struggle between the two newspapers over the publication rights to the Yellow Kid character gave rise to the term yellow journalism. This term is still used to refer to sensationalistic techniques that publishers use to draw more readers to their newspapers. Outcault finally won the right to continue his strip and gradually adopted the panel style and balloon narration that mark “The Yellow Kid” as the first true comic strip. Other early comics included “Little Bears” by James Swinnerton, which first appeared in the San Francisco Examiner in 1892, and “The Katzenjammer Kids” by Rudolph Dirks, which first appeared in The American Humorist in 1897.

The number of American newspaper comics grew rapidly during the first decade of the 20th century. Successful strips included F. B. Opper’s “Happy Hooligan” (1900) and “Maud the Mule” (1904), Outcault’s “Buster Brown” (1902), and Swinnerton’s “Little Jimmy” (1904). With their increased popularity, comics soon moved into the mainstream of American culture. For example, Buster Brown’s well-known likeness and name were used to advertise products such as hats, children’s shoes, buttons, cigars, and whiskey.

One great innovator of the period was American artist Winsor McCay. His first masterpiece was “The Dream of the Rarebit Fiend” (1904), about the tortured dreams of a “fiend” obsessed with Welsh rabbit, or rarebit. McCay used the strip to explore psychological themes revealed through the human unconscious. He pursued the idea further in “Little Nemo in Slumberland” (1905), which featured the dream adventures of a young boy. McCay’s comics were especially noted for their artistic craftsmanship. One of his few artistic rivals was American painter Lyonel Feininger, whose short-lived comic creations, “The Kin-der Kids” (1906) and “Wee Willie Winkie’s World” (1906), are full of stunning imagery and whimsical humor.

In 1907 Bud Fisher’s comic strip “Mutt and Jeff” debuted. The strip was an immediate success, depicting the antics of Mutt, a scruffy idler, and his friend Jeff, who somehow believes that he is the prizefighter Jim Jeffries. “Mutt and Jeff” was the first successful comic strip to run every day, and it established the form as an important daily newspaper feature.

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