The history of comic books

Résumé du document

The history of comic books is linked to the history of the american society. Studying the story of comic books is a good way to understand some evolutions of the american society through the 20th century. In this talk, you will also discover where a lot of american heroes are coming from. The creation of the modern American comic book began slowly. The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, which appeared in New York in 1842, is the first comic strip to be published in America, it was written by the swiss Rodolphe Töpffer. At the beginning comic books were not as we know them with word balloons but blocks of text under a single scene. The first entirely US produced comic book was, The Yellow Kid in McFadden's Flats in 1897 which in addition to using word balloons regularly also introduced the term comic book. That is why we can use it as the starting point for the Platinum Age. The starting impulse is due to the prosperity which followed the Secession war (1861-1865) and to the european immigration. The increase of press publications helped the comics to get known among the american population.

Extraits

[...] That is the beginning of superheroes comic books. Superman and superheroes, the Golden Age of comic books The two authors made the cover of the first Action Comics in June 1938 and created the most famous superhero: Superman. Superman, dressed in colorful tights and a cape, became the archetype of the "superheroes" that would follow. Action Comics would become the American comic book with the second- largest number of issues, next to Dell Comics' Four Color, with over 860 issues published. [...]

[...] Histoire de la bande dessinée The history of comic books is linked to the history of the american society. Studying the story of comic books is a good way to understand the some evolutions of the american society through the 20th century. In this talk, you will also discover where a lot of american heroes are coming from. Proto-comic books and the Platinum Age The creation of the modern American comic book began slowly. The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, which appeared in New York in 1842, is the first comic strip to be published in America, it was written by the Swiss Rodolphe Töpffer. [...]

[...] He fought against violence and all of the bad messages given to the youth by Comic books. He for example declared that Batman and Robin were “like a wish dream of two homosexual living together”. All of this was of course amplified by mass media and when they stopped to encourage the hate against comic books, all this frenzy ceased. Silver Age of Comic Books The Silver Age represents the period in which superheroes returned and came to dominate the comic-book lines of the two major publishers, Marvel and DC. [...]

[...] We can also think of Calvin and Hobbes created in 1985 by Bill Waterson. Today, famous examples can be given such as Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware or Ghost World by Daniel Clowes. Those authors, among others are extremely talentuous and creative and I will conclude that Comic Books are not dead. For me, there is a new golden age which is now concerning alternative comic books. And to finish, a small comic strip. [...]

[...] The “Committee on Evaluation of Comic Books”, the mayors, the educators, the Parent-Teacher Associations and the religious groups began to criticize Comic Books. In 1949, some autodafé were organized where comic books were thrown on the ground and burned down. The frenzy stopped during the end of 1949 but it started again in 1952 and in 1954, in a context of mistrust (it was the golden age of McCarthyism) some senators decided to determine if comic books were encouraging criminality among the young or not. The doctor Wertham was a strong leader of the movement against comic books. [...]